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English-American
Topic Started: Jan 6 2008, 05:02 PM (1,195 Views)
rc.cope
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http://english2american.com/dictionary/c.html

Now that I have an Englishman in my family, I can use this helpful little website that I've found...the English to American Dictionary. No more guessing, no more embarrasment, no more pissing people off.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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Ali
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Excellent!!

First impressions are that this is an accurate & thoroughly amusing dictionary. Interesting to see that you Yanks don't use 'central reservation' ... now there's something I've learnt already!

I have a passion for words and I adore dictionaries. It was my great good fortune in 1970 to be given the job of preparing the revised edition of Eric Partridge's famous Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional English for publication, which meant, amongst other things, that I got to meet the great man for lunch once a week! He was more than happy to give me free rein to put in any slang I knew that wasn't already there - all the 60s hippie and drug slang for instance - so our lunchtime conversations extended far beyond the immediate task at hand! A very entertaining & learned man indeed.

The other day I turned on the radio to hear a conversation with the man who is doing that very same job today that I did 37 years ago! It is, of course, a task without end! Because language changes and evolves so fast any dictionary is already out of date before it hits the bookstores, or, as we say in England, bookshops!

Now you're sittin' on a Paris train, laughing at your own jokes again
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rc.cope
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I had to use this special dictionary just the other day when someone told me they were "chuffed" for me. HUH!? I said.
Well, I looked it up and found out that my little world was great. I'm so "chuffed" to find that out.
And guess what? "Chips" to you limeys are regular old french fries to us. Here in the US, chips are potato chips...crunchy and salty and loaded with cholesteral. But then again, so are french fries. :huh2:
I'm like you, Ali. Words are continually evolving, and so our language goes. I can recall my mom telling me how Clark Gable saying "damn" in Gone With the Wind created a scandal. Say what?
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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Ali
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rc.cope
Jan 6 2008, 05:55 PM
Here in the US, chips are potato chips...crunchy and salty and loaded with cholesteral.

We call these 'crisps'! :D


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Ade
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Beth-prophet
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Fanny

TEEEEEEHEEEEEEEEE!
Went to the JobCentre today, and the Army were there going "Be the Best" ... now T-Mobile just told me I didn't have the qualifications to sell phones, Microsoft said I didn't have the qualifications to answer the phones, and the Army want to let me loose with a machine gun?
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Ali
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That is definitely one area where one could slip up! :doh:


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rc.cope
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I recall that from the old forum. I said that Beth had a cute little fanny, and I was raked over the coals. Needless to say, I was reprimanded.
It is funny how things are termed right here in the US. For instance, a soft drink in most of the country is called a soda. In Chicago, it is called a pop. In the south, all soft drinks are called Coke. It doesn't matter if its a ginger ale or a root beer, its called a Coke.
Up here in Wisconsin, a water fountain is referred to as a bubbler.
Anyone got any more?
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Ali
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In the fifties & sixties all such drinks would have been called pop (as in ginger pop) which I suspect is a much older English word - probably dating back to the origins of commercially produced fizzy drinks in the nineteenth century. Or alternatively '-ades' (as in lemonade, cherryade, etc), although 'ade' on its own is no sort of a word (unless you are talking about a certain Welsh wizard or other Adrian ;) )! 'Soda' is very much an Americanism, with the honourable exception of 'cream soda', and otherwise only really used here for 'soda water', which of course does contain water but not soda!

Water fountains or soda fountains we don't actually have here, except in fake American diners (these are few & far between)!

Cola here is a generic term for Coke, Pepsi & similar drinks. It wouldn't be used for any other sort of soft drink. And 'pop' hasn't been used for a long time now. I can't think of any equivalent for your 'soda'. One would probably ask for a particular drink by name.

:peace:
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TJ
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Also......

BBC America British-American Dictionary

...and...

The Best of British


And these are good little glossary books. I have the Australian English and Cockney Rhyming Slang editions. They must not have had the RUDE Cockney Rhyming Slang edition when I bought mine, because I definitely would have got that one!

Interesting that they have no Welsh-English edition yet. I guess when your language is made up of random strings of letters, it makes it pointless to do a dictionary!
"Happy Hallucinations, Honeys!"
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Walrus
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It's pop.

People who call everything "coke" should form their own country.
-Steve C.
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rc.cope
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Amen, Steve. It has always been pop to me as well. My brother lives in Philadelphia and calls it soda. Here in the Midwest, if you order a soda you might just be served an ice cream soda...which wouldn't be all bad.
I used to work with a hillbilly from the south. He would get a can of 7UP and pour a bag of salted peanuts into it...thus making some gawd awful concoction of whatever kind of shit. Made me sick to watch him swirl it down.
Ali, I cannot believe you don't have water fountains in England. Methinks we thinks differently. :D
I would just love to see the lads from Monty Python's Flying Circus get ahold of this subject and run with it. I'm laughing just thinking of the possibilities. :vhappy:
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Ali
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Quote:
 
Ali, I cannot believe you don't have water fountains in England.


I think that's why the Pilgrim Fathers buggered off. Tho' being puritans, they couldn't possibly admit it! ;)

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rc.cope
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OK, just answer one question. If you don't have water fountains, how do you get a drink of water. :huh2:
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Ali
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We have things called taps and things called bottles and things called watercoolers, which *ahem* are apparently also known as water fountains.

:doh:

It's soda fountains we don't have.

Talk about two countries divided by a common language! :D

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rc.cope
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Indeed. I wish I could take you back 50 years, Ali. The town I grew up in had a Jack Spratt soda and ice cream shop. A soda jerk would prepare luscious concoctions such as ice cream sodas, cherry phosphates, root beer floats, etc.
It seems like all of those places have been replaced by Starbucks...which I don't really care for. What I wouldn't give right now for a cherry coke from Pete's Drive Inn...
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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