Can someone explain the reasons behind these differences between Americans and Brits?

[kurstytemple]

I've noticed that Americans greet people often with, 'hey, what are you doing?' even when it's completely clear what the person is doing, ie, picking them up from the airport, bumping into them shopping. As opposed to the British greeting, 'hi how are you?'

Also Americans can say bye ONCE on the telephone yet us British folk seem to say bye about 1 million times repeatedly whilst hanging up the phone. For example, Americans - 'it was good speaking to you, bye'. Brits - 'it was good speaking to you, okay, you too, okay, bye, bye, bye, bye, byeeeee, bye, bu-bye, byeeeee'. What is that all about?

Additionally, I've been watching a lot of teen mom 2 and the court system over there just seems so much more straightforward and fair. Not sure if that's an accurate representation. But for instance, a person can go directly to the court for custody arrangements instead of all the faffing about before getting to that point, seems to be easier to get protection orders from someone and seems to be a bit more lenient with young people, making deals with them to ensure that certain convictions don't go on their record hence not making them unemployable. I still have to declare a breach of the peace I got at 18 pissed as a fart.

Anyway there's my ramblings. Anyone else noticed this or care to explain why the differences? Or point out any of their own for me to ponder

@Confusedandshaken How will your husband get free train travel? I live in Brighton, and only get a free bus pass. Does London have a different system?

Characters in Jane Austen are often attending to their toilet (making themselves look presentable). I mean Chanel No 5 is toilet water. It has genteel origins that I think we should revive.

[quote sueelleker]@Confusedandshaken How will your husband get free train travel? I live in Brighton, and only get a free bus pass. Does London have a different system?[/quote]
Yes London is different. It's also not quite free. He has to pay a £20 fee for a 60+ Oyster card that gives free buses throughout Lomdon 24 hours a day, free trains and tubes throughout London after 9.30am. It's only for London Boroughs. We live about 3 miles from the Surrey County Council border so we just qualify, but friends who live the other side of the border don't qualify.

Perhaps the best euphemism of all is the one referenced by the ancient royal office of Groom of the Stool.is it a euphemism? Stool refers to the faeces. Pretty direct and to the point.

Can you ask for the "ladies"? In america. Would that make sense or be weird brit teritory?

@GiantToadstool

Can you ask for the "ladies"? In america. Would that make sense or be weird brit teritory?

Gents would probably sound even weirder.

Yes, 'the ladies' would work. Or 'the ladies' room'.

• I think the Stool originally referred to the actual piece of furniture used to contain the pot or bucket, not the poo itself.

@CaptainMyCaptain

Perhaps the best euphemism of all is the one referenced by the ancient royal office of Groom of the Stool.is it a euphemism? Stool refers to the faeces. Pretty direct and to the point.

"Stool" is the euphemism for feces. Because the king sat on a stool to perform said function. There was a chamber pot underneath that could be emptied.

Cross-post with @mathanxiety.

Speaking of French words for the actual fixture, the polite term in the Southern US, if by necessity, you must refer to the fixture itself, is "commode." So it is actually quite possible to go though life without ever having to utter the t-word.

Many young folk in the South are not following this convention, however, including my own offspring who were taught to say "toilet" by my Yankee husband.

I say toilet as in “flush the toilet!” all the time to my kids. But it’s definitely referring to the fixture itself, not the room it’s in.

Ladies room isn’t used much but almost everyone would know what you meant.

Parking is super expensive and there isn't much of it. A secure parking space in London can rent for as much as a small flat. It's a small crowded city so the average driving speed is only 8.7 mph.

@confusedandshaken this is a bit of an exaggeration. Throughout zones 2 and 3 of London (eg Islington, Haringey, whatever borough Clapham is in) plenty of people like me live in Victorian terraces with on-street parking that only costs a nominal amount from the Council, we drive on 20 limit roads and usually have to try consciously not to exceed the speed limit, so we are definitely nut averaging 8 mph. A lot of Londoners use their cars regularly, just not for commuting to work. We use ours to go shopping locally in zone 3, to take our son to soft play, trampoline centre, parks, friends’ houses and as of September we will have to use it for the school run. I agree that car ownership is in the minority in London’s population generally, but it’s pretty ubiquitous amongst middle class families, not the sole preserve of the ultra-rich.

When we lived in London zone 3 we had a car. Plenty of parking available on the street. The biggest problem we had was constant car break-ins, but that was a problem in many other UK areas we lived in too.

@mathanxiety

Yes, 'the ladies' would work. Or 'the ladies' room'.

• I think the Stool originally referred to the actual piece of furniture used to contain the pot or bucket, not the poo itself.

Doctors use the word stool to talk about poo e.g the Bristol stool chart. (It's not furniture.)

@HaveringWavering

Parking is super expensive and there isn't much of it. A secure parking space in London can rent for as much as a small flat. It's a small crowded city so the average driving speed is only 8.7 mph.

@confusedandshaken this is a bit of an exaggeration. Throughout zones 2 and 3 of London (eg Islington, Haringey, whatever borough Clapham is in) plenty of people like me live in Victorian terraces with on-street parking that only costs a nominal amount from the Council, we drive on 20 limit roads and usually have to try consciously not to exceed the speed limit, so we are definitely nut averaging 8 mph. A lot of Londoners use their cars regularly, just not for commuting to work. We use ours to go shopping locally in zone 3, to take our son to soft play, trampoline centre, parks, friends’ houses and as of September we will have to use it for the school run. I agree that car ownership is in the minority in London’s population generally, but it’s pretty ubiquitous amongst middle class families, not the sole preserve of the ultra-rich.

It is certainly an exaggeration in the suburbs but not in city centres! And the roads have 20mph limits but allowing for time waiting at traffic lights/pedestrian crossings/double parked bin lorries etc it is a fact that the average journey time across London is 8.7mph is the average speed of a London journey. It's slower now than in Victorian times due to sheer weight of traffic.

And as for parking in Clapham or any of the other suburbs - if you have a street of 100 terraced houses you could extrapolate from that you will get 100 parking spaces. Very neat but that doesn't follow. Of those 100 houses several will be split into flats (particularly in places like Islington, Clapham and Camden. Some of those flats and houses will be multi occupancy. So out of 100 houses you might have 140 families/individuals who would like to park a car, some might want to park 2. Then visitors like nannies/health visitors/ tradesmen will want parking. Additionally a lot of the potential parking spaces will have been replaced by drop kerbs/yellow/red lines/school zones/traffic lights/pedestrian crossing/disabled spaces.

My point wasn't that it isn't possible to drive in the U.K., I drive myself. The point I was trying to make was that it is less convenient, less essential and more expensive than it is in America, hence why a substantial minority of Brits don't bother learning. I didn't even touch on the fact that in America drivers ed is taught in schools whereas here we have to pay privately to learn. At a cost of about £25 an hour here in outer London, the lessons alone are unaffordable for many people.

We lived in London zone 4. One car.

The thing about outer London is that while transport is excellent for getting you to and from central London, it's not always fantastic for trips going east-west that don't go via the centre. It's usually possible but might require multiple buses and take quite a bit longer.

DH also spent a year or so working on-site outside London and the trip would have been incredibly inconvenient without a car.

On the other hand if we had lived in zone 1-2 and he never had to worry about driving to client sites, we could have happily lived car-free.

Should add--I am one of the people who didn't learn to drive until I was nearly 30. Didn't need to. But when I finally did, it was becoming a necessity.

(DH did learn to drive at 17, but that was for the convenience of the family business.)

Lots of people who live in London as adults with cars did not grow up there and learned to drive in quieter, cheaper parts of the U.K. Or Poland. Or Australia. Or Uzbekistan. My childminder grew up in Islington but had all her driving lessons during visits to family in Somalia!

Doctors use the word stool to talk about poo e.g the Bristol stool chart.

@CaptainMyCaptain

It originally meant the actual piece of wooden furniture housing the pot.

The term has over many centuries morphed into a word meaning the reason to squat on the stool.

In parts of Ireland, the greeting is "Well".
The response is also "Well".

I don't know how that came about, but it's very confusing if you're not used to it.

I didn't even touch on the fact that in America drivers ed is taught in schools whereas here we have to pay privately to learn. At a cost of about £25 an hour here in outer London, the lessons alone are unaffordable for many people.

It's not taught in any of the schools my lot attended. We paid for lessons. I think we paid $450 for the theory lessons/test plus 10 hours of driving lessons.

Our children had Drivers' Ed in school, but we paid for private lessons as well because, although the school programs were good, there was limited one-on-one teaching. And the attempt for one of us to be the supplemental private tutor lasted exactly one lesson for both of ours.