Tis a speech impediment, they can't help it. Everyone knows us Americans doing everything the best way, and everything else is second hand cast away garbage.
Back swiftly on topic, not sure and have wondered my sen
Is a bit like the name St. John which is pronounced Sinjen
or Magdelaine College, Oxford which is pronounced Maudlin
Both of those are a posh persons thing and is as far as I can make out all their fault.
Speculative explaination before googling
Lieutenant is a softer sound and Leftenant it may have been easier to discern when shouted across a busy deck
Automatically Appended Next Post: Wiki don't know the origin
So my theory is as good as any for now!
Not too sure on the left-tenant one though it's probably linked to the fact they are originally french rank designations. Aluminium comes from the fact there are two spellings of it. The UK (and international standard spelling) has a second I after the N changing the pronunciation. The US spelling is listed as an accepted variant.
LMAO! we don't use loo. haha
Interesting about the spelling of Aluminum. And the deck thing, I get that. My TV is stuck on BBC, I play with British toy soldiers, and Black Library novels have a lot of shrugging going on in them.
Actually there's a bit more of a story to that one, Humphry Davy, the British scientist who isolated the metal from alum, originally chose 'aluminum'; it was only later revised to 'aluminium' to match the then-current system for naming newly-isolated elements. Strictly-speaking, since its oxide is called 'alumina', not 'aluminia' (as lanthanum's is lanthana and magnesium's magnesia) the American spelling has the better claim to correctness.
Despite this, however, the official spelling, as used by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is the British one, presumably because chemists are concerned with other properties of things than their etymology.
Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.
You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?
Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.
You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?
Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.
You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?
/Said the Red-Neck
Hey, we speak English good!
Point being, English is a collaberation of other Romantic languages.
We've also got a couple Norwegian things in there, taken the plural of child and ox for example. According to rules it should be childs and oxes but is instead children and oxen, an old Norse way of pluralization
halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.
halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.
halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.
Quantity does not equal quality.
Says the man from Canada.
Just to prove doubters I'll list a few things Britain does "objectivity" better than anyone else it's music, colonizing, cops, being gentlemanly, humour, TV shows, Top Gear, attempts at successfully taking over the
world, beating Napoleon at Waterloo, etc. The only thing Britain isn't better at is preparing food, that would be France.
halonachos wrote:Don't know, the American version of America is better than the British version. The colonies were so small compared to American America.
Quantity does not equal quality.
Says the man from Canada.
Just to prove doubters I'll list a few things Britain does "objectivity" better than anyone else it's music, colonizing, cops, being gentlemanly, humour, TV shows, Top Gear, attempts at successfully taking over the
world, beating Napoleon at Waterloo, etc. The only thing Britain isn't better at is preparing food, that would be France.
Kilkrazy wrote:I read somewhere that the US Marines also pronounce it Leftenant.
Can anyone confirm?
As I understand it Leftenant is a navel term, which became used in the UK because, basicly, we are a nation of vikings, pirates and smugglers bound to the sea.
No, I can verify that the USMC does NOT pronounce it that way lol
I agree that Britain does the above well, but French Food? I'm afraid I could whip anything up in my kitchen that looks and tastes better than whatever that is! What is that anyways? a burnt turd wrapped in a sock and smothered with snot? lol
Seriousy though, US Midwest grown, prime beef tastes better than anything in the world, I promise. They may have invented the Filet, but we have made it an art.
@ filbert: Bob Ross! one of my favorite Americans, from right here in Indiana RIP!
Since pronunciation doesn't follow any sort of pattern in English whatsoever (see "ough") you can pronounce pretty much anything pretty much any way. But you'd still be wrong.
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Also, the use of the word bollocks (sp?).. how it can be something very bad, or indeed, can be the dogs bollocks.
I like how they bleep out "bollocks" but not 'balls"..what's the difference?
because watching a base**** game, or a foot**** game, or basket**** game would be ridiculous... Golf would be more entertaining though: "And Tiger stroked his **** nicely into the cup, for a birdie"
If you bleep out "balls", then you have to universally bleep it, and therefore wipe out a TON of vocabulary for a generic 'everyday' item.
Kilkrazy wrote:I read somewhere that the US Marines also pronounce it Leftenant.
Can anyone confirm?
No its pronounced Lance Corporal. Just kidding there, different ranks and all.
But as far as I know all of my marine buddies say "lewtenent" and not "leftenant". Of course they also say that the air force and army are not branches of the military and if you say that they're part of the Navy they get mad.
Kilkrazy wrote:I read somewhere that the US Marines also pronounce it Leftenant.
Can anyone confirm?
No its pronounced Lance Corporal. Just kidding there, different ranks and all.
But as far as I know all of my marine buddies say "lewtenent" and not "leftenant". Of course they also say that the air force and army are not branches of the military and if you say that they're part of the Navy they get mad.
lol....yes, and neither will they admit that they have had their thinking conditioned that way either
halonachos wrote: and if you say that they're part of the Navy they get mad.
Technically, they aren't part of the Navy, they're part of the Department of the Navy in the civilian leadership structure. They are held as a separate branch under military leadership.
In so far as the military concerns, they are NOT part of the Navy. So they have every right to get mad, because you're wrong.
Their checks are signed from the Department of the Navy, regardless of military structure.
All of the Navy bases in the area around me have Marine Corp barracks as well as Navy barracks, yet these are still Naval bases.
Marines get the naval variant of the Medal of Honor.
The majority of the Marine Air Corp are funded, tested, and acquired via the Navy. The Marine Corp doesn't train noncombatants and the Navy provides them. Marine Corp drill instructors train Naval Officer Cadets. The Marines started out as Naval Infantry and will always be naval infantry.
They both work for the department of the Navy, plain and simple.
dsteingass wrote:I love my Kia, much better than the crap cars built here for the same money. Detroit pissed away those jobs, not Korea.
Interesting anecdote. When we were shopping for a car my FIL insisted we purchase an "American Made Car". I liked the comparable Honda model, my wife the Chevy. Obviously, the Chevy won out.
The Honda was produced in Ohio, the Chevy in Canada (Ontario I think).
KingCracker wrote:Firstly, I pronounce the T anyways
OK so its only a specific few of the many and varied American accents that leave out the 'T' in Antartica then? Interesting...
Some of the people who dont pronounce the first T in Antarctica probably don't pronounce the T in often. Though you can tell a 'real' American by the way they pronounce Mississippi... properly prounounced it's Miss'ippi. kinda like, in the south and certain other regions of the country, New Orleans is pronounced "Nawlens."
There are also certain groups who will want to "ax" you a question, they also go to the dentist to get their "teef" looked at, and when they go to the store they "brought" the new CoD video game.
I would be very surprised indeed if there weren't folks in the British Isles region who didn't have their own "quirks" to pronouncing words.
At the risk of embarrasing myself, I always thought that leftenant and lieutenant were separate ranks (or the same rank, but using different nomenclature between different branches of the armed forces).
I'm sorry, but you cannot get MORE unhealthy that literally a large lump of fat covered in batter (which is essentially a large amount of carbs) then immersed in oil
Plus, I will hand to America, they are miracle-workers on the breakfast menu, pancakes with bacon, hash-browns & eggs (covered in maple syrup), the 'breakfast pizza', pop-tarts and fruit-loops
But still, in support of my country, it is 'A-LOO-MIN-EEE-UM' and 'NU-CLEE-AR', just because you're American doesn't give you the right to re-pronounce something differently to the rest of the english-speaking world. Your like the pronouciation equivalent of a hipster
Azza007 wrote:Not to ruin your fun, but we came first, our language that you bastardized.
You mean, the language of English? That Frankenstein of old Romantic languages haphazardly sewn together in a weak cloth developed by gathering foreigners?
/Said the Red-Neck
Actually English has a lot more then the Romance Languages.... It's grammar and syntax are Germanic, while many words are romance. there are also loanwords from many other sources as well.
dsteingass wrote:
Seriousy though, US Midwest grown, prime beef tastes better than anything in the world, I promise.
Why do people still clutch onto antiquated ideas of nationalism? I'll be damned if I will be held personally responsible for the idiots in the US government and how they rape and pillage in exchange for corporate campaign money. I think having to live with what scraps the rich bastards leave the rest of us to fight over is quite enough punishment thanks. /end
Kobe Beef is an entirely different flavor and texture than what most people would think of as "Beef." It's simply a different (although delicious) experience.
Yeah that video explained it all well. They forgot to mention though that it isn't merely friendly rivalry between nations. Its full on hatred for a great many people, myself included.
I was living with some Welsh housemates (I'm English) during the Aus-England Rugby World Cup final some years ago, and was forced to endure them cheering on Australia during the whole game.
Going into a old-fashioned little tea shop deep in the heartland of Wales I could hear everyone speaking English, the moment I opened my mouth to say something everyone in there immediately started speaking Welsh.
RatBot wrote:Darn British... just speak English, like the rest of the world!
The British also speak Welsh.
Depending on where you are...
And Gaelic (pronounced gah-lic) and Gaelic (Pronounced gay-lic) if you are in Scotland and parts of N. Ireland (But mainly the republic) respectively
Also why do people think top gear is any good?
I would have included Gaelic and Gaelic but it's mostly the Republic of Ireland that speak Gaelic and Gaelic in Scotland is every so slowly dying out...
Pacific wrote:I was living with some Welsh housemates (I'm English) during the Aus-England Rugby World Cup final some years ago, and was forced to endure them cheering on Australia during the whole game.
Going into a old-fashioned little tea shop deep in the heartland of Wales I could hear everyone speaking English, the moment I opened my mouth to say something everyone in there immediately started speaking Welsh.
The whole thing is quite funny really!
Its not funny!
I prefer to immerse myself in rage. If your Welsh house mates could enslave your family, they would. They would dash your chidrens head against the walls and salt your land, and burn your house to the ground.
No good sir, It isnt funny. The Welsh and the Scottish are mocking us en masse, in the natural world does the hawk allow the mockery of a pigeon?!
Don't start this again, we're still clearing up the mess you guys made in the 1600s. Also, it's essentially England's fault that the Welsh Language is dying out, what with all this maltreatment of miners and the 'welsh not' in schools and such...
We had the last laugh though, we invented the NHS, and we've been milking English taxes for years to pay for our free prescriptions that treat the diseases caused by our relatively impoverished living conditions and unhealthy lifestyles MWA HA HA
Kobe Beef is an entirely different flavor and texture than what most people would think of as "Beef." It's simply a different (although delicious) experience.
Tried Kobe once. Couldn't handle it due to the obscene amount of fat in it. Just so gross. Give me a nice porterhouse steak anyday of the week.
htj wrote:Interesting. Interesting. Do you speak for all of the Royal Marines in this?
No, I like the Scottish/Welsh Marines loads as well.. some numbering amongst my best mates but you know.. they actually left Scotland for a bit and realise that the brainwashing they received at the hands of their parents is false.
I suppose I've nothing against Scottish and Welsh people that have been outside of the craggy windswept lands that call home.
htj wrote:Interesting. Interesting. Do you speak for all of the Royal Marines in this?
No, I like the Scottish/Welsh Marines loads as well.. some numbering amongst my best mates but you know.. they actually left Scotland for a bit and realise that the brainwashing they received at the hands of their parents is false.
I suppose I've nothing against Scottish and Welsh people that have been outside of the craggy windswept lands that call home.
Some kind of internment and re-education camps should do the trick then. I'll bring the Beethoven, you bring the eye-holding-open clip things.
The american accent (as a general thing) comes from the pioneers, many of whom, were british. They have near as much right to claim ownership of the language as we do. Language comes from people, it doesnt squirt from the top of big ben.....
Australians have no such right however, bunch of criminals
Edit: Btw i still see it as 'Redson' (which i like) rather than 'redsatan' (which is lame)
Perkustin wrote:The american accent (as a general thing) comes from the pioneers, many of whom, were british. They have near as much right to claim ownership of the language as we do. Language comes from people, it doesnt squirt from the top of big ben.....
Yeah no way that could be misconstrued...
Perkustin wrote:Australians have no such right however, bunch of criminals
You got something against penal colonies??
Perkustin wrote:Edit: Btw i still see it as 'Redson' (which i like) rather than 'redsatan' (which is lame)
I do this too. I know it says redsatan but i still read redson.
Biscuit comes from the French for "twice cooked".
Cookie comes from the Dutch for "cake".
Trousers is because we have something we wear OVER our pants (whereas Superheroes wear their pants over their trousers).
Trainers="Training" shoes - as in any kind of "sports" training. AKA "runners". Sneakers probably because they are quieter to run around in on wooden floors.
A cookie and a buscuit are two different things
Jam and preserves are the same thing, jelly is something different (made with fruit juice, not the pulp)
JELLO is a brand of gelatin (same thing you use for making Pork Pie) but we have fruit flavors
trousers, pants, slacks- same thing
A training shoe, a sneaker, and a basketball shoe are different types of tennis shoe
And there is no one "American" accent, we develop our accents depending on the region we grow up in and our family heritage. The East Coast has several accents, as does the midwest, the south, and even the west. Most of the pioneers in the US were NOT English, they were in fact mostly German, Irish, or Dutch immigrants. It was that way because of a desire to be an individual family unit, free from religious persecution, and especially freedom to own land, not have it taken away by Aristocrats or a church.
We've had fruit flavoured gelatin desserts for ever, dsteingass, we don't just use it for pork pies. Centuries ago, I think it was some French bod who look at a horse's hoof and thought 'I can make a pudding out of that.' Thus, what we in the UK call jelly was born. It rose to popularity in Victorian times. It's also key to many of our glourious national sweets, such as Jelly Babies, originally Victory Babies to celebrate the end of the war.
Jell-O as a brand was invented 1902, and the adoption of the name for the dessert in general implies, to me, that the dessert must have not had much popularity in the States up until that point, and was popularised by that product. But I don't know for sure on that one.
Yeah, for some reason, we tend to associate popular brands of product as the generic names for the product.
I think that it's more of a matter of the way marketing and distribution was done at the time than popularity. Popular radio and television jingles had (and still have) a profound impact on the American consumer. Being inundated with advertising and marketing and having your local grocery store stock a "National" brand as well as a "store brand" or "generic" is mostly responsible in the US. So if the Jell-O brand gelatin is $1.99, the store brand is also sold (often the same exact thing and often produced in the same factory), in a different package might sell for $1.29. Brand loyalty is strange in the US, but it is a fact of life. So we tend to refer to all gelatin as Jell-o to identify it in conversation.
Certainly it takes less time to say than fruit flavoured gelatin dessert. We do the same in Britain with vaccuum cleaners and Hoover, incidentally. I'm sure there are others, but I can't recall them at the moment.
dsteingass wrote:Yeah, for some reason, we tend to associate popular brands of product as the generic names for the product.
I think that it's more of a matter of the way marketing and distribution was done at the time than popularity. Popular radio and television jingles had (and still have) a profound impact on the American consumer. Being inundated with advertising and marketing and having your local grocery store stock a "National" brand as well as a "store brand" or "generic" is mostly responsible in the US. So if the Jell-O brand gelatin is $1.99, the store brand is also sold (often the same exact thing and often produced in the same factory), in a different package might sell for $1.29. Brand loyalty is strange in the US, but it is a fact of life. So we tend to refer to all gelatin as Jell-o to identify it in conversation.
Same thing with Crayons. There is alot of knock off brands, but they are all Crayons in my book, same with play-doh
That it does! And I'm the same, it'll always be play-doh to me. Even the stuff my mum used to cook up at home was play-doh.
Interestingly, brands hate this kind of thing. The loss of the uniqueness of the brand impacts on their sales, they say. It takes away the distinctiveness of their product over any other product.
Megabloks is made of bits of dead Chinese orphans, I'm pretty sure. I'll take the overpriced LEGO any day. But then, I still buy things from GW. Clearly I've got issues with sensible use of my money.
A grown man purchasing Lego stuff at all could be consider such an issue. It's, uh, for my nephew. Yeah...
*cashier rings up random toy*
*me speaking to myself*
Yea.... my son will LOVE that.......................................................................
I am a grown man that regularly purchases Lego, we are called AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego) complete with conventions, shows, and clubs, and an active secon-hand market for parts (www.bricklink.com). And there are hundreds of thousands of us (www.mocpages.com) of us. Mega Blocks are NOT the same quality as Lego, they seem cheap-ish.
htj wrote:Megabloks is made of bits of dead Chinese orphans, I'm pretty sure. I'll take the overpriced LEGO any day. But then, I still buy things from GW. Clearly I've got issues with sensible use of my money.
A grown man purchasing Lego stuff at all could be consider such an issue. It's, uh, for my nephew. Yeah...
There's nothing wrong with buying Lego It's just not very good anymore - good as in terrible models of choice with lack of imagination thrown into the models. It's all about playsets now...
KingCracker wrote:I wont lie, Ive used that excuse before.
*cashier rings up random toy*
*me speaking to myself*
Yea.... my son will LOVE that.......................................................................
See, friend of mine at my club brought in this big rubber toy thing, a mummies head, but with a clear plastic ball inside filled with goo and stuff so when you squeeze it it comes out.
He made no pretense, it was for him, his kids can play with books. He even told me about a time he bought a massive lego set for his son, and 10 minutes into it had evicted his son and taken over the set.
htj wrote:Megabloks is made of bits of dead Chinese orphans, I'm pretty sure. I'll take the overpriced LEGO any day. But then, I still buy things from GW. Clearly I've got issues with sensible use of my money.
A grown man purchasing Lego stuff at all could be consider such an issue. It's, uh, for my nephew. Yeah...
There's nothing wrong with buying Lego It's just not very good anymore - good as in terrible models of choice with lack of imagination thrown into the models. It's all about playsets now...
Personally, I like the new city stuff. A real return to form. Very keen on the Indiana Jones knock off stuff too. I don't hark back to the days of it being just a box of coloured blocks, as that was naff.
As an American we all have preconceived notions of other nations. Even those than speak the same language.
I was struck on my last visit to the British Isles by how many freakin' accents you can cram into a relatively small landmass. The US by contrast has many accents and pronounciations as well, but scattered over a far larger area.
It wasn't complete culture shock as I had been 'seconded' to a British unit for a while. One particular Corporal comes to mind, I couldn't understand a thing he said... but then, many of his own unit couldn't either.
I though all Aussies were supposed to sound like Crocodile Dundee. Most don't and there doesn't seem to be much of an accent at all really to those I spoke to. Usually comes out when they're in their cups.
The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that. You'd think the Aussies I spoke to couldn't understand a word a Kiwi said, but that might be another matter entirely.
The Canadians. The closest accent to our own, but even they have their own odd set of accents like 'Newfie'; completely grating to my ear. Then, you go out west and talk to folks in Vancouver, BC and you'd think you were in Northern California (and yes, they sound different than those in Southern California).
Oddly enough, the people who I spoke to overseas that I understood the easiest (other than the Canadians) were the Dutch of all people. Those troops spoke the best American English I've ever heard... even better than that in my own neighborhood. Which, coincidentally, was settled by the Dutch many, many years ago.
Uhlan wrote:The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that.
Aww dude dont do that. Thats a bad move. They hate it when you call em Australians.
Uhlan wrote:I thought all Aussies were supposed to sound like Crocodile Dundee. Most don't
The few American tourists i have met have all thought the the same thing and were blown away/devestated that its not the case.
Uhlan wrote:I thought all Aussies were supposed to sound like Crocodile Dundee. Most don't
The few American tourists i have met have all thought the the same thing and were blown away/devestated that its not the case.
I was attached to a small unit of Aussies in Iraq, and when one of our guys was like that.. a couple of them were "generous" enough to put on the Dundee accent; He left the room, they went back to talking like normal.. funny thing really, and a great great group of guys.
dsteingass wrote:curious, why do British pronounce the rank of "lieutenant" as "Left-tenant" and not "Lew-tenant" ?
and why do you pronounce "Aluminum" as "alu-min-ee-um"?
I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who and Top Gear on BBC America lately and wondered, thanks
Aluminium has an I in there, the second one, before the U... so the more appropriate question is 'Why do Americans say Alu-min-um and completely ignore the second I?'
ANSWER ME THAT!
Also, why on earth do you spell sulphur as sulfur when you accept that ph makes an f sound my spelling phosphate correctly rather than as fosfate? Fosfurus?
And please, allow a Russian bride to explain the Lieutenant issue:
God, watching that I can feel my IQ decrease in real-time...
Because it isnt spelled here with an extra "I". Just like the unnecessary extra "U" in colour, armour, flavour, and the like. Americans can apparently ignore whatever we like and business continues as usual in the world I guess.
Sulfur is an incorrect spelling, who uses it that way?
That's ok, they taught us in school that in the event of Nuclear war that if we "duck and cover" under our wooden school desk that we would be safe. There was a lot of veiled government propaganda in the US public school system too.
dsteingass wrote:curious, why do British pronounce the rank of "lieutenant" as "Left-tenant" and not "Lew-tenant" ?
and why do you pronounce "Aluminum" as "alu-min-ee-um"?
I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who and Top Gear on BBC America lately and wondered, thanks
Aluminium has an I in there, the second one, before the U... so the more appropriate question is 'Why do Americans say Alu-min-um and completely ignore the second I?'
ANSWER ME THAT!
On the first page of this thread...
English Assassin wrote:Actually there's a bit more of a story to that one, Humphry Davy, the British scientist who isolated the metal from alum, originally chose 'aluminum'; it was only later revised to 'aluminium' to match the then-current system for naming newly-isolated elements. Strictly-speaking, since its oxide is called 'alumina', not 'aluminia' (as lanthanum's is lanthana and magnesium's magnesia) the American spelling has the better claim to correctness.
Despite this, however, the official spelling, as used by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is the British one, presumably because chemists are concerned with other properties of things than their etymology.
As far as i remember from being taught history and english. The English americans speak hasn't actually changed for the last 300 years. You speak the way us brits spoke 3000 years ago. Its just the english language in britain evolved thats all.
Heres a question for you all. I know why americans are called yanks and i know why new zealanders are called kiwis but why are brits know as limeys in america and poms in australia?
dsteingass wrote:Sulfur is an incorrect spelling, who uses it that way?
Sulfur and sulphur are both, according to the OED, correct, and, though the 'ph' form is the common British spelling, both have been used in English for centures. Since the word is Latin and not a Greek loanword, the 'ph' is in fact an affectation, acquired some time in mediaeval period. If we British really want our own spelling of sulphur, we can always spell it 'brimstone' - a rather nice Old Norse-derived term.
As to who thinks the 'f' form correct, oh, only the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
GentlemanGuy wrote:Heres a question for you all. I know why americans are called yanks and i know why new zealanders are called kiwis but why are brits know as limeys in america and poms in australia?
'Limey' originates, as a semi-derogatory term, from the Royal Navy's tradition of providing vast quantities of lime juice (lime rather than lemon, since the former were more readily available in the empire's Caribbean possessions) to prevent scurvy. Can't help you on 'pom', however.
'Yank' also gives us my favourite term for our American cousins: 'septics'.
GentlemanGuy wrote:Heres a question for you all. I know why americans are called yanks and i know why new zealanders are called kiwis but why are brits know as limeys in america and poms in australia?
Limeys has been answered, the reason we used lime rather than the superior lemon is because at the time we were - seriously - at war with all the world's major lemon producers.
Poms are poms because when it was a prison colony a lot of equipment coming from the UK was marked with a stencilled "POHM" for Property Of His/Her Majesty.
Actually Sir Humphrey Davey originally wanted to call Aluminium Alumium, he then changed his mind to Aluminum. The Royal Society made him change it to Aluminium so that it would fall into the convention with Sodium, and such.
Obviously they had forgotten about Platinum.
Dolts.
The lieutenant thing is because it is a French word that we adopted, keeping the pronunciation.
When you adopted it you pronounced it phonetically as you are wont to do.
The problem is that (in Britain) consistent phonetic pronunciation is the mark of a simpleton.
dsteingass wrote:That's ok, they taught us in school that in the event of Nuclear war that if we "duck and cover" under our wooden school desk that we would be safe. There was a lot of veiled government propaganda in the US public school system too.
What possible interest did the Labour government have in telling us that Americans were bad at spelling?
I guess just the little prods like that and the fact that Yankees all be fat would be enough to encourage us to don our redcoats and end what we started over there, eh?
English Assassin wrote:
Henners91 wrote:
dsteingass wrote:curious, why do British pronounce the rank of "lieutenant" as "Left-tenant" and not "Lew-tenant" ?
and why do you pronounce "Aluminum" as "alu-min-ee-um"?
I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who and Top Gear on BBC America lately and wondered, thanks
Aluminium has an I in there, the second one, before the U... so the more appropriate question is 'Why do Americans say Alu-min-um and completely ignore the second I?'
ANSWER ME THAT!
On the first page of this thread...
English Assassin wrote:Actually there's a bit more of a story to that one, Humphry Davy, the British scientist who isolated the metal from alum, originally chose 'aluminum'; it was only later revised to 'aluminium' to match the then-current system for naming newly-isolated elements. Strictly-speaking, since its oxide is called 'alumina', not 'aluminia' (as lanthanum's is lanthana and magnesium's magnesia) the American spelling has the better claim to correctness.
Despite this, however, the official spelling, as used by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is the British one, presumably because chemists are concerned with other properties of things than their etymology.
dsteingass wrote:If all Americans are fat, do all British have bad teeth? lol Cultural diversity as taught by television.
Nah, the loss of our bad teeth was the seductive promise given to us by the dirty commies we let into government who built that dastardly National Health Service that annually places our elderly loved ones before boards of bureaucrats and asks them to justify their existence...
I'm afraid that the Yankee paupers are the ones to look to for broken smiles now...praise Lenin!
dsteingass wrote:If all Americans are fat, do all British have bad teeth? lol Cultural diversity as taught by television.
Actually, there is no truth to the stereotype that the British have bad teeth:
Cracked.com wrote:A study performed by OECD, an international economic organization, on the state of dental hygiene in developed countries has concluded that the British have the very best teeth in the entire world, with an average of just 0.6 of a tooth decaying per citizen.
Meanwhile, the USA have the highest obesity rates in the world. So... yeah. Suck it.
Uhlan wrote:The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that.
Aww dude dont do that. Thats a bad move. They hate it when you call em Australians.
Uhlan wrote:I thought all Aussies were supposed to sound like Crocodile Dundee. Most don't
The few American tourists i have met have all thought the the same thing and were blown away/devestated that its not the case.
But you still point out what is and isn't a knife, right... right
Automatically Appended Next Post:
TrollPie wrote:
dsteingass wrote:If all Americans are fat, do all British have bad teeth? lol Cultural diversity as taught by television.
Actually, there is no truth to the stereotype that the British have bad teeth:
Cracked.com wrote:A study performed by OECD, an international economic organization, on the state of dental hygiene in developed countries has concluded that the British have the very best teeth in the entire world, with an average of just 0.6 of a tooth decaying per citizen.
Meanwhile, the USA have the highest obesity rates in the world. So... yeah. Suck it.
NAh, that's somao with a 94% obesity rate we've only got 66.7%
Uhlan wrote:The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that.
Aww dude dont do that. Thats a bad move. They hate it when you call em Australians.
Oh man, do I know this from experience.
I joined a group of Kiwis and Aussies who were sitting around having a great time. When it was my turn to 'shout' I decided to raise a toast to all the 'Aussies' sitting around me. Most of them quickly looked at each other and it got dead quiet. One of the Kiwis rather flatly pointed out that they weren't all Australian. I innocently implied that I couldn't tell the difference in the accents. The Aussies just sat there smirking quietly while the Kiwis got indignant and accused my mother of some rather aberrant behavior where my birth was concerned. This opened a whole can of worms and a shouting match which led to a very short 'tussle' amongst 7 or 8 of us.
After that exchange I told the Kiwis that if they wanted me to recognize them they had better sit to my right so I could make the distinction. Once over we just sat there and started to laugh and went back to drinking as if nothing happened.
Uhlan wrote:The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that.
Aww dude dont do that. Thats a bad move. They hate it when you call em Australians.
Uhlan wrote:I thought all Aussies were supposed to sound like Crocodile Dundee. Most don't
The few American tourists i have met have all thought the the same thing and were blown away/devestated that its not the case.
But you still point out what is and isn't a knife, right... right
Uhh... For you mate yes. Yes we do...
Uhlan wrote:
Brother Azul wrote:
Uhlan wrote:The Kiwis sound a lot like their southern hemisphere brethren. To my ear the accent is so subtle as to be non-existant. But don't tell them that.
Aww dude dont do that. Thats a bad move. They hate it when you call em Australians.
Oh man, do I know this from experience.
I joined a group of Kiwis and Aussies who were sitting around having a great time. When it was my turn to 'shout' I decided to raise a toast to all the 'Aussies' sitting around me. Most of them quickly looked at each other and it got dead quiet. One of the Kiwis rather flatly pointed out that they weren't all Australian. I innocently implied that I couldn't tell the difference in the accents. The Aussies just sat there smirking quietly while the Kiwis got indignant and accused my mother of some rather aberrant behavior where my birth was concerned. This opened a whole can of worms and a shouting match which led to a very short 'tussle' amongst 7 or 8 of us.
After that exchange I told the Kiwis that if they wanted me to recognize them they had better sit to my right so I could make the distinction. Once over we just sat there and started to laugh and went back to drinking as if nothing happened.
Edit: I can't freaking spell...
Pro tip: If you want to settle em back down with out losing some teeth, buy the next few rounds out of good faith or if its your shout next, like in this situation, buy a round a shots as well and make it something potent. You end up a little extra out of pocket but it can save you a potentialy nasty thrashing.
Other wise that sounds like a fairly normal drinking "altercation"
I used to hate the way the Americans butchered the beautiful eclectic mixture of languages that English has become.
This is nothing in comparison to what the ENGLISH do to their own language.
I can just about make my peace with text speak (C you 8r, and all the rest of that crap)
But when you hear what we in England might call a 'chav' speak it beggers belief that its coming from a sentient human being.
Every sentance has to be followed by either 'nah wat i is sayin blood' or 'nah wat i meen bruv'
These unbearable fethwiths actually go out of their way to sound stupid. It is the greatest tragedy to hit the England for centuries. In this I include the plague/fire of london/the blitz.
This could very easily escalate into me ranting about English working class (or not working class for 99% of them as they are lazy freeloading bums who can't/don't get a job because they can not produce coherant sentances) but I won't allow it to go to that.
American English is what it is. I don't know why we both say you speak English, you don't you speak American and why shouldn't you.
I just wish the English would speak English
Automatically Appended Next Post: The best way to tell a Kiwi from an Aus is the E's
In NZ it works a little like this, the name Edward would sound more like ID - WARD, and TEN comes out TIN
Ask an Auz or Kiwi for sex, if they shout back a SIX in shock, you know they are a Kiwi
Pacific wrote:
Going into a old-fashioned little tea shop deep in the heartland of Wales I could hear everyone speaking English, the moment I opened my mouth to say something everyone in there immediately started speaking Welsh.
I experienced this when I was in Wales, too. I thought it was because I was American (or Texan).
Pacific wrote:
Going into a old-fashioned little tea shop deep in the heartland of Wales I could hear everyone speaking English, the moment I opened my mouth to say something everyone in there immediately started speaking Welsh.
I experienced this when I was in Wales, too. I thought it was because I was American (or Texan).
This tends to happen more in central/northern Wales, never understood why. I used to think this was one of those ridiculous myths, people would say happens all the time. Then it happened to me and I was quite shocked. Mainly because Welsh sounds like someone doing a bad impression of a turkey.
Pacific wrote: Going into a old-fashioned little tea shop deep in the heartland of Wales I could hear everyone speaking English, the moment I opened my mouth to say something everyone in there immediately started speaking Welsh.
I experienced this when I was in Wales, too. I thought it was because I was American (or Texan).
This tends to happen more in central/northern Wales, never understood why. I used to think this was one of those ridiculous myths, people would say happens all the time. Then it happened to me and I was quite shocked. Mainly because Welsh sounds like someone doing a bad impression of a turkey.
It's because they don't like the English... They don't bother to check if you are English however.
lukewild1982 wrote:I used to hate the way the Americans butchered the beautiful eclectic mixture of languages that English has become.
This is nothing in comparison to what the ENGLISH do to their own language.
I can just about make my peace with text speak (C you 8r, and all the rest of that crap)
But when you hear what we in England might call a 'chav' speak it beggers belief that its coming from a sentient human being.
Every sentance has to be followed by either 'nah wat i is sayin blood' or 'nah wat i meen bruv'
These unbearable fethwiths actually go out of their way to sound stupid. It is the greatest tragedy to hit the England for centuries. In this I include the plague/fire of london/the blitz.
This could very easily escalate into me ranting about English working class (or not working class for 99% of them as they are lazy freeloading bums who can't/don't get a job because they can not produce coherant sentances) but I won't allow it to go to that.
American English is what it is. I don't know why we both say you speak English, you don't you speak American and why shouldn't you.
I just wish the English would speak English
Automatically Appended Next Post: The best way to tell a Kiwi from an Aus is the E's
In NZ it works a little like this, the name Edward would sound more like ID - WARD, and TEN comes out TIN
Ask an Auz or Kiwi for sex, if they shout back a SIX in shock, you know they are a Kiwi
I am sure that they said the same thing about the peasantry in the past.
'It's yes MY LORD.'
'Thass wot oi said zurr, oi mean milordshep!'
'CURSE YOU VILLAINS, I AM MOST CONTENTED THAT YOU HAVE YET TO GAIN LITERACY!'
dsteingass wrote:If all Americans are fat, do all British have bad teeth? lol Cultural diversity as taught by television.
Actually, there is no truth to the stereotype that the British have bad teeth:
Cracked.com wrote:A study performed by OECD, an international economic organization, on the state of dental hygiene in developed countries has concluded that the British have the very best teeth in the entire world, with an average of just 0.6 of a tooth decaying per citizen.
From what I recall, the stereotype stems not from dental hygiene, but from how Americans view Orthodontia. Here, we're raised and brain washed into believing that perfect and straight teeth is the norm and beautiful, meaning we put an emphasis on braces and anything else to make them straight, bleached white, and socially acceptable. Anything else, while not actually tied to real hygiene, is viewed as incorrect and thus unhygienic as well.
As I understand it, that's not as true across the pond, where I believe the emphasis is simply on healthy teeth.
My teeth are sort of cream (normal-looking); was always told that just meant they were strong... I felt tempted to describe them as yellowish but they look nothing like smokers' teeth.
At any rate, I'd associate bleached teeth with corny gameshow hosts....
But kudos to that post Platuan4th... it's a good one. I do believe you'll find more broken smiles in the US, though.
Yeah, teeth don't have to point in the same direction to be healthy.
It is just the shade of that slightly raised tendency for our American cousins to be a touch superficial.
My wife loves it, whenever she is in the US she always tells me that she would rather have a service person hate her and pretend to be nice for tips than be totally indifferent and show it.
I have fantastic teeth! Even more so since I stopped smoking some years ago. And I rarely see bad teeth......that I notice. But sometimes those methheads come by and ruin everything
Henners, It is a TV joke, just like all Americans are fat. It was supposed to illustrate how morons can take a TV joke and believe it to be true. No one was being serious. And I certainly wasn't intending on offending you or anyone else my friend
The British don't have unhealthy teeth, they just have unsightly teeth- at least by American standards. Or, at least, that's how the stereotype goes. I've met plenty of Brits with good teeth, and on a daily basis I see Americans with bad teeth. We Americans are obsessed with our teeth; American dentistry is a $100 billion + field, and growing strongly, every year. In contrast, British dentistry is a ~9 billion dollar field. Saving you some math, Americans spend roughly 2x as much on dentistry than the British.
Spoiler:
Here in the US, a dentist goes through at least 8 years of university before he can practice- 4 years of undergrad, most often as a pre-med, bio, or chem major, followed by four years of dental school, and a 1-6 year residency. Admission to dental school is cut-throat competitive- for example, in 2005 Stony Brook Dental School admitted less than 40 students, out of a pool of almost 900 applicants (although, to be fair to the American-educated M.D.'s out there, US Med schools are even tighter with their admissions, the same university's med school admitted 101 out of ~2600 applicants in that same year). The four years of dental school are extremely rigorous and comparable to US medical schools- indeed, some universities have their dental and medical students pooled together in the same classes for the first year or two, in courses shared between the disciplines such as anatomy and pharmacology, and later on during their education in shared disciplines such as radiology and anesthesiology. Dental school alone is a 200k-300k investment in the United States, without including the costs of your four years of undergrad. However, before you non-Americans start feeling sorry for the plight of the American dentists, please recall that they make a ton of money once they're finally through, and a good percentage are self-employed or work in small partnerships where they can essentially make their own hours.
In many other countries, dental school is a 4 year undergrad program that you go into right out of high school. Brush and floss, kids.
American dentists (along with the Canadians, who go through the same slog but never get the satisfaction of being associated with good teeth) are among the best trained in the world, with access to an enormous library of procedures and materials you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere (though I've been told that Japan and S. Korea have exceedingly thorough and advanced dental education systems, comparable to what we've got here). It doesn't take 9 years to learn how to do a routine check-up, and routine check-ups will never pay off that 300,000 in college loans- thus American dentists offer a staggering array of cosmetic and lifestyle-improving procedures, that while not necessary for survival (my landlord has +/- 2 teeth and he's doing just fine, thank you very much), definitely become a quality of life issue, especially here in America where everyone looks at your teeth. This leads to some health problems, however, especially when you've got patients who waste their money on whitening and other cosmetic procedures, yet refuse to maintain basic hygiene and have seriously unhealthy gums and teeth that will fall out if they bite something harder than a chicken nugget.
Britain's NHS reports that 55% of British adults have some form of tooth decay, but didn't specify to what extent that was being treated. With that being said, an estimated 23% of American adults have untreated tooth decay going on in there. Medicare/medicaid doesn't necessarily provide adequate dental coverage, though there are a plethora of relatively low cost dental plans out there- however, getting some of them to pay is like getting water out of a stone, so someone with one of these discount dental plans might still have trouble getting complex and expensive procedures taken care of. Other plans exist only for kids, some offered by private companies and others public incentive programs. Thus, you have a pretty big disparity in the US between the teeth of those with private dental plans, and those without.
Long story short, yellowed and crooked does not necessarily mean unhealthy, any more than pearly and straight means healthy. Prince Charles, for instance, looks like he's sucking on an irregularly shaped stick of butter. On the surface my teeth look like piano keys. Truth be told, I've got enough resin and titanium pins my mouth to make a Forgeworld Titan (a lot of which results from an injury, not necessarily decay, but still). Prince Charles is old enough to be my father, and still has all his original teeth (even if they're ghastly). Who's got the healthier mouth? It depends on what side of the pond you grew up on.
