Comprehensive list of Americanisms

[12fromcold]

Some I love, some I hate. Let's try and get them all here! Especially interested in the ones that are only a slight variation from the British counterpart.

Macaroni AND cheese
Hide and GO seek
GotTEN

I'll remember more and come back.

Anyone said "go potty" for going to the toilet yet? Even for adults!! So weird.
I have to vote that the UK takes up "zee" instead of "Zed" it sounds so much better. I work with a woman with a hard to spell name, so they just call her mz. When I called her "em Zed" they all fell about laughing, and I had to agree, it sounds shit.

Do semi detached houses even exist in America? I've spent many a happy hour browsing home decor blogs over the years and I've seen so many photos of streets and I've never noticed a semi detached house. In the movies even very poor neighbourhoods seem to be rows of detached houses. It's like there are apartments and detached houses and nothing in between.

Obviously taking my information from the movies isn't necessarily an accurate depiction of real life

A bit niche but in crochet, you have to know which country’s terminology you’re using for stitches. Otherwise the thing you’re making will come out wrong, wrong, wrong!

The same stitches have different names across the pond.

US vs UK
single crochet = double crochet
Double crochet = treble crochet
Triple crochet = double treble crochet

Treaclesoda we call attached double houses duplexes. More are rpwhouses. The reason we have so many more single family houses is that we have so much more available land/space.

Ah! That's what a duplex is! Thank you. I'm off to Google duplexes now.

Ah but see, when I was growing up in Wales 40 years ago football = rugby and soccer = football. My gran would always refer to my dad as a footballer when he was a rugby player.

Regarding mispronunciation of twat, in Scotland the placenames and surname are pronounced twot. The place name can also be said twat, but twot is also correct. So maybe that’s another Scottish influenced Americanism.

I say 16 hundred instead of one thousand six hundred. Lots of UK people do, especially regarding time periods. (Both years, and the 24hr clock). Fair enough, if I was going to buy a car and it cost £2600 then I’d say two thousand six hundred and not 26 hundred.

Click/cleek for clique.

Dahtah and daytah (data).

From upthread, (Parthenope, I think)
'I visited with Jane' isn't quite the same as 'I visited Jane'.

'Visited with' involves a good old natter. You could 'visit with' someone you sit beside on a long train or plane trip.
Visiting Jane might not involve an in depth or lengthy conversation.
...............
Youse is Irish as well as Scottish, but you wouldn't hear it in boardrooms. Hence its use in east coast urban areas in the US, and also Chicago. Also Yiz.

...............
Taking a rain check
A rain check is an actual thing. You go to the supermarket and find an item advertised at a certain lower than normal price is sold out. So you go to the customer service desk and ask for a chit allowing you to buy that item at the sale price next time they have it in stock even if it's not on sale. You produce the chit at the checkout and the cashier is supposed to honour it.
The concept started out with outdoor events, I believe.

.................
Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior.
I would've thought Junior was the youngest? Why do they have these names as well as Grade 1, 2 etc? Confusing.
The Freshman, Soph, Junior, Senior years are high school terminology, and then you start again for university years.
Grade 1, 2, etc are for denoting elementary school and middle school and also used in paperwork for high school. So you get grade 9 (freshman), 10 (soph), 11 (jr), and 12 (senior). The numerical form is easier to fit into forms than the names are.
(In Ireland your first year of secondary school is First Year, not 7th class/year/grade).
www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/learned-fools-freshman-sophomore-and-the-rest
Origin of Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior.

Also "The student body"?? does that mean "the whole school"?
Yes.

And GPA - Grade Point Average - is that your average marks for a subject?
It's basically the average for every subject, averaged, calculated over the four years of high school.
'Basically'... gpacalculator.net/how-to-calculate-gpa/
Everything you ever wanted to know about calculating the GPA, and good luck.

...and how many school classes do they have during a day? 8 or 9? seems an awful lot.
I believe there are eight class periods in the average high school day. In the high school I am most familiar with everyone does daily PE, accounting for one period. Then there is lunch, another period. Then five or six classes. If five classes, a student would also have a study period, aka study hall, very handy for catching up on sleep or homework, etc. If six classes, a student would have no study hall or might have somehow got a PE waiver so that they could take a class instead of PE and also have a study hall. Just in the school I am familiar with, doing instrumental music involves losing a study hall.

Doing 7, 8 or 9 or more courses is the norm for Ireland (more courses for Junior Cert, 7-8 for Leaving Cert) and also I believe Scotland.

Most US students take 5-6 courses per semester. Most courses last all year and are just semesterised into course descriptions like French 1-2 or French 7-8, each number denoting a semester. Some students would start at 7-8 as freshmen and some would start at 1-2 or anywhere in between really. Some courses are one semester long.

Many US high schools offer students the chance to do any course at any level they can qualify for, and allow required or mandated courses like financial literacy to be taken in any year, so you can do an art foundations course that has students ranging in age from 14 to 18, or a pre calculus course with students who are in the same age range..

............
Yes 'quarter of' = 15 minutes before the hour, and 'quarter after' = 15 minutes after the hour.

and how many school classes do they have during a day? 8 or 9? seems an awful lot.

My daughter has 8 classes a day at school, and so did I when I went to school. Is that unusual?

A semi (pr. sem-eye) is a juggernaut.

I've only ever heard "juggernaut" in the metaphorical sense in English. Its original meaning is a massive wheeled wagon for Hindu religious processions. Where are lorries called that?

In the US they're called "semi's" ("sem - eye") or "eighteen-wheelers"

I had never heard of a semi before, in the sense of a lorry. Any idea where the name comes from? What's the lorry half of?

Ladybug vs ladybird. My UK children now say ladybug because of Miraculous.

Craig pronounced like Greg (Creg) Vs Cray-g.

Craig pronounced like Greg (Creg) Vs Cray-g.

I don't think that's an Americanism, that's the way it's pronounced in Ireland and Scotland.

American bashing at its finest. Under the guise of “being fascinated by linguistics”.......

And yet Americans would never craft the following beauty: I was sat in my car, fed up of my baby’s crying, and having a wobble.” Linguistic gold! I do wish I spoke properly, like that.

I’ve never heard a Scottish person say Craig to rhyme with greig, always crayg.

I bet I’d sound a right numpty if I went to the US and asked for gray-um crackers!

HumpHumpWhale, thank you for clearing up 'after doing' something - so if someone called and asked for ds and I said 'sorry, he's after going out' it would mean he's just gone out?

The Germans call a semi-detached house something that literally translates as 'half of a double house', which is closer to the 'duplex' way of thinking about it, I think - a British inhabitant of a semi would never accept they were living in half a house !

Also on Team Zee (you can't read Dr Seuss without it :) )

@mimibunz
American bashing at its finest.
Which posts are you referring to?

The posts i’ve Read are mostly asking questions about unfamiliar terms or highlighting the similarities between ‘Americanisms’ and Scots or Irish dialects

I’ve never heard a Scottish person say Craig to rhyme with greig, always crayg.

Maybe I've got it back to front and it's the other way round, that we say Gregg sigh an 'ay' sound All I know is that in my accent, Gregg and Craig rhyme. I can't imagine a way of pronouncing them where they don't rhyme. This is one that comes up on mumsnet quite often and I end up saying them in my head over and over and I still don't understand how they are meant to sound different.

Craig is Crayg in Scotland! Not Cregg

Also the Scottish “where do you stay?”

I'm English and this completely confused me the first time I heard it from a Scots person. She was talking about a friend and said 'He stays in so-and-so' - I thought it meant he was a regular visitor there, not that he lived there.

I've just seen this on the BBC website - might be of interest!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46846467

I def can’t get Craig and greig to rhyme in my accent. I’ve never heard anyone who has, but I certainly don’t know every accent in Scotland and believe that it must do in yours :)

I definitely got it back to front. I got mixed up, it's the 'ay' sound, I would pronounce anything like leg, or Greg, or egg, with an 'ay' sound. So it's the opposite of what I originally said.

When you say 'Greig' do you mean that it's pronounced 'Greeg' with an 'e' sound?