To hate Americanisms...?

FatOaf · Yesterday 14:15

But "uni" isn't a word:

It's an abbreviation, surely? I don't think I'd ever heard of it until I saw Neighbours, in 1998 (?).

My children are like HotCrossBun's son. They were raised by two Irish people who still speak with Irish accents and use a lot of Irish vernacular/hiberno-Irish and they went back to Ireland a lot. They use more Irish phrases and constructions than their friends but they certainly wouldn't be authorities on how english is spoken in Ireland.

@HotCrossBunplease So how come my son is not native fluent in Scottish English then, and does not code switch?

I think @mathanxiety should have said 'can actually confer native fluency in both' rather than does. Because obviously some individuals can do this and others can't, similar to how some people can pick up accents (either temporarily or more permanently switching) and others can't.

Yes, we use it too. And I'm pretty sure the mental image it might convey is the flaming torch variety not a battery operated one!

So how come my son is not native fluent in Scottish English then, and does not code switch? Same scenario. Cf all the kids in his class who have parents with completely different accents/dialects to them because they moved to the area from other regions. Such as the boy with a US mother and Australian father who speaks with neither an Australian nor an American accent or vocabulary, even when with his relatives from those countries. Or Canadian London resident Katherine Ryan’s observational comedy about her daughter’s cut-glass English accent.

Cup cakes. Grrr. It’s fairy cakes.

Is carrying a torch for someone an American phrase ?

Yes, meaning having a crush/unrequited love

Is it used that way in the UK?

Is carrying a torch for someone an American phrase ?

Yes, meaning having a crush/unrequited love

Is it used that way in the UK?

Same.

Hence the imagery of 'carrying a torch for Mildred'.

South Park have a character called Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo so is it regional or have I remembered it wrong ? Americans on social media seem to say poop.

Having a father who speaks RP English and a mother who speaks Hiberno-English does actually confer native fluency in both. Hence the ability to move seamlessly from one dialect to the other, aka code switching.

After several decades in the US, I've picked up American English too, though I draw the line at the silent H in 'herb'. Fyi, I believe I used the term "fluent speaker" of American English, not "native speaker"; there is a difference that I was careful to observe.

The possibility of having superior knowledge of everything is small, I agree, but as in all things, never zero.

Is carrying a torch for someone an American phrase ?

I assumed flashlight was American like sidewalk or dish soap?

In Scotland it's definitely poop. Never heard poo till I moved to England.

Pooper scooper sounds better than pooer scooper 😁

One I've noticed loads lately is people saying "right?" instead of using tag questions.

The writers of Eastenders are terrible for it, as they seem to have every single character do it, and while it suits some characters, it's totally incongruous for other characters.

So for example, instead of saying "you are coming tonight, aren't you?" a character will say, "you are coming tonight, right?"
Or, instead of "She's the one with the fake eyebrows, isn't she?" it's "she's the one with the fake eyebrows, right?"

It's not the use of "right?" per se that annoys me, but more the seeming erasure of tag questions.

Bored waiting in the queue at Pets at Home and just saw another one that regularly annoys me. They are selling poop bags. There is no need for the extra p. They are poo bags. We all poo. I do not poop.

Also used as a verb meaning to set on fire.

As a child reading about someone "carrying a torch in their pocket" created quite the visual😂

I should add, in the region of the US where I live, "torch" often refers to something that is actually flaming.

I'm pretty sure that it's the other way around. Flashlight is American English; torch is British English. (I'm American.)

I didn’t realise that flashlight was British and torch was American.

And "torch." I also developed an early love as a young teen for British crime novels, and I remember wondering why people were going about indoors with something on fire to light their way.

Wrong on all counts there, hun.

A lot of the books by American authors that I had read as a child made sense to me on several new levels when I got to the US. Many details of Little Women and Huckleberry Finn, in particular, had left me puzzled.

It would most likely be termed a "wool sweater" as opposed to woolly.

I think many Americans would recognize "jumper" as a sweater now, but back in the 80's it was mostly unknown. When the young Princess Diana became a near constant feature in US tabloids more fashion terms crossed the pond.

"Woolly"? Can't say I heard that in New England, but maybe in use in certain other regions tbough.