The only time we use the word "fortnight" is during Wimbledon and you usually have to have to explain it on the weekends for the casual spectator.

UK ---------------------- American

Bottom : Butt, bottom,ass, tush, fanny (we're ass obsessed in this country)

bugger : sly person, pain in the butt (but not in the sense that the Brits mean it LOL)

chips : your kind are steak fries or cottage fries, but the thinner kind are known as French Fries (although with the current ill will towards the French, they're also known as Freedom Fries)

crisps : chips (thinly sliced and fried potatoes or pieces of tortillas)

shag : a type of carpet or the act of retrieving baseballs, volleyballs, basketballs and other types of sports related spheres

Quote off a random girl in a bar once: 'Anal sex hurts like buggery'. 'bugger' is also used of dirty old men - as in 'he's adirty old bugger'



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Just to add an aussie influence here, we use a lot of British slang (except 'tupping'. that only refers to sheep), but donw here to call some one a 'bastard' is not necessarily an insult. It's very delicatte situation. If you call a friend a bastard, it's a term of inderment. If you say someone in an unfortuante situation is a 'poor bastard' then it means you sympathise, but if you call someone you don't know well a bastard then you're insulting them.

It's all very complex.

WE're pretty much the same, it's reliant on context. It can even be affectionate.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

We use 'bloody' a lot, too. And 'wanker'.

hey guys...again

has anyone every seen the American show Keen Eddie of FOX?
well let me know your thoughts (good, bad, accurate, funny?)
anyways...

signing off,
Panda

Well, I don't say "bloody" very much - I tend to rely more on "f***ing". But we digress.

An introduction to Cockney rhyming slang:
You see, back in olden days smugglers of contraband would have to be careful of what they said, in case the Excise (Customs) man was listening in. And thus rhyming slang was developed, as a sort of smugglers' code. These days, it's mainly restricted to Cockneys (a breed of Londoner born in the East End - quite like Dick van Dyke in 'Mary Poppins', but more violent), but several phrases have permeated everyday English.

For example:
"Apples and pears" - stairs
"Dog and bone" - phone
"Ruby Murray" - curry
"Two and eight" - state (as in, "You're in a right two-and-eight!", i.e. You're looking rather flustered.)
"Trouble and strife" - wife (gives some indication of the popular image of women in Cockney culture - sorry, came over a bit academic there.)
"Brad Pitt" - sh*t (as in to go to the toilet (lavatory). "I'm just going for a Brad".)

And so on. Common usage requires dropping the second, rhyming (and therefore actually useful) part of the phrase - so a "Ruby" is a curry. So if it sounds like your English acquaintance is talking b*ll*cks, stop and consider for a moment that he or she might be using rhyming slang (whether he or she knows it or not).



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

Thanks for that, BJ. I lov eknowing where words and phrases originated. I'm quite the amateur etamologist. And hopefully I've spelt that right or I'm gonna look really silly.

(One word from you, PSD, and so help me....)

LOL that's a brilliant explanation of a very complex subject, BJ - well done! I was wondering how the hell to tackle that one as well, especially the bit about dropping the useful (ie rhyming) part

Then of course there's Wiltshire rhyming slang, which doesn't rhyme at all... hence "marigold and walnut" = stairs, "shoelace and toothpaste" = curry (etc). The only drawback really is that nobody has any idea at all what you're talking about, but hey. No change there.

An introduction to Cockney rhyming slang:

Objection!

I'm a true Cockney (the definition is being born in the sound of the bow bells, i.e. within the radius they can be heard) and I use the traditional rhyming slang once in a blue moon. These days it appears to be reserved for 'true to life' TV shows.

Anyway, you missed the piece of slang that baffled me for a while - kettle = watch. I heard it was because the old style kettles were kept on a chain on the stove, so because watches were also kept on chains...

Then, there's palare (or polari). I don't know if that ever crossed the Atlantic.

Bona to vada your dolly old eek. (It's good to see your nice/pretty/friendly face)



BTW I thought that "Kettle" was short for "Kettle and Hob" = "fob" as in a fob watch, but I may very well be wrong.

KT



Post Edited (07-23-03 11:49)

Excuse me, BJ, but for the purposes of transPondian understanding, can you replace 'quite like D V Dyke' with 'nothing at all like D V Dyke'?



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

re Austin Powers: "incredibly tacky" sounds about right.

USA's 'Aluminum' = UK's 'Aluminium' (the spelling, not just the pronunciation, is different...)

USA's 'Subway' = UK's 'Underground', 'the Tube'.
UK's 'Subway' = USA's 'Underpass' (?) (also used, synonymously with [but probably less often than] 'Subway', in the UK)

In the UK a 'Stone' can be a weight of 14 pounds. (We had a discussion about differing weights & measures in another thread, a week or two ago...)

In the UK dates are written down as day/month/year, not (less logically) in the month/day/year sequence that both Americans & the French prefer.

Kaz: Sorry, it's 'Etymologist.

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!



Post Edited (07-23-03 12:39)

Yeah, Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins sounds like an Australian attempting to copy a 'cockney accent' that he's heard in a 1940's film.

The main thing to remember if you're trying to do a 'Lundun' accent is to drop all your H's, occasionally putting them somewhere else that they're not needed. Frex, 'That's an eavy helephant'.

Cor blimey, lubaduck.

Well, from what I see of east enders on TV , they are a terminally miserable people given to endless argument, dubious pregnancy, gangland murder and spending all their time in the pub, but I concede this may be a false impression based on an unrepresentative sample.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

And instead of "thirty thousand feathers on a thrush'*s throat" (which is an exercise in 'correct' English pronunciation, not just a tongue-teaser...) it's "firty farsand fevvers onna frushiz froat".

(* with an unwritten 'e' here...)

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

I heard of a survey a short while ago that said you were statistically less likely to have an affair in Eaastenders than in real life, but more likely to get murdered.

Mind you, in real life people die, in Eastenders they move to Manchester.

Does someone have that bit of dialog in Goldmember in "true" English?

I can only remember - "The one that shagged the turtle!"



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

Sorry, had my tongue in my cheek a bit there - Dick van Dyke has learned the first lesson of How Not to be English.

Bluebottle - Yes to dropping "h"s, but are you sure about adding in extra pre-vowel "h"s? I thought such things 'appened honly with policemen in pre-war comedies.
If you're not careful I'll start telling them to pronounce their "v"s as "w"s, and then where will we be? The nineteenth bleedin' century, that's where. Wexes it, that's what it does, wexes it.

KT - I think most people would know of palare through Kenneth Williams' radio series 'Round the Horne' - don't know if it was widely used before that, suspect it didn't spread much further beyond that. The only other place I've seen/heard *anyone* use palare is in a 'Doctor Who' spin-off novel, and not an especially good one either. In fact it was a load of old lallies.



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"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

Palare was widely used long before Feldman and Took foisted Jules and Sand on an unwary world .... in certain specialised circles, anyway. But then if you weren't theatrical or gay you probably never heard it, which was kind of the point. If you didn't understand it, you'd trolled into the wrong lattie.

(And lallies are legs, btw).



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty