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 Goliath wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
We won the war.

you say 'war', I say 'troubles in the colonies'.

I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

 notprop wrote:

 Goliath wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
We won the war.

you say 'war', I say 'troubles in the colonies'.

I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

The one that started in 1917 that they won. At least I'm pretty sure.

 Seaward wrote:
We won the war.

Back to back world war champs!

boyd wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
We won the war.

Back to back world war champs!

Saying America won the war, is kind of like me drinking 3/4 of a beer, an American turning up and necking the rest. And then claiming that he drank that beer.

But we are getting into a whole other topic now

Let's not get hung up on world wars...we BOTH won those.

What's that quote again? Something like - the English language doesn't borrow from other languages. It mugs them in a dark alley then rifles through their pockets for loose grammar...

Trying to make sense of thr language as a whole quickly ends in headaches...the best you can hope for is tracing back the origins of individual words. With that said - you Americans are still wrong dammit.

 notprop wrote:
I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

The Revolution, of course.

 Krellnus wrote:
Was really only that recently?
That's surprising.

I mean if you think about it, English itself as a language really only started to become standardized to an extent with the production of the King James bible. And even that, as it was pointed out by another poster (through use of someone else's more standard work) had discrepancies. I believe King James said, "At any price Herr Doktor!"* when referring to the production quality of the King James bible.


* - This is actually a quote from Hitler about the volkswagon, or at least the book I have on the car's history says this, but ya know us yanks, always misquoting folks


Edit:

 Seaward wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

The Revolution, of course.

Yeah, we really got hung up on that whole tea party thing, almost missed our first birthday!

 Seaward wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

The Revolution, of course.

French?
Industrial?
Sexual?

Oh you mean the Amurikan Revolutionary War, anyone can win a home fixture.

 notprop wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 notprop wrote:
I wonder which one of the wars they turned up late for he means?

The Revolution, of course.

French?
Industrial?
Sexual?

Oh you mean the Amurikan Revolutionary War, anyone can win a home fixture.

Win at home, tie on the road.

That's how you win a championship!

orkdestroyer1 wrote:

SOCCER=FOOTBALL

Because if you look at the history of the game, the actual, proper name for soccer is soccer football. Just like you then have Rugby Football, Gaelic football, Canadian Football, American Football etc. They are all derived from the same root game (which sadly, because the rules were never written down, hence so many variants have popped up, has disappeared in the mists of time), and eventually codified into their respective sports.

Fun Fact: the first ever FA cup (which is now one of the larger soccer tourneys right?), was actually played under Rugby School rules

 notprop wrote:
French?
Industrial?
Sexual?

We won all of those, too.

The problems with the countries that use English as their first language probably come from a huge amount of their populations coming from elsewhere.
The English (and other Brits) are made up of people from all over. The Angles, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, all the way through to the British Empire.
America had all sorts of Europeans, with the French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, and British, with lots of others.

It appears as though, ignoring the attempts to standardise spelling, the way the language was taught changed after certain points.
Trousers vs pants. It was probably Pantaloons to begin with, but trousers became a popular term somewhere. It gets taken up in the media, maybe, and there you go.

Just yesterday, we were counting up terms for a bacon roll. Around Britain, we had:
Bun,
Bap (our favourite)
Barn,
Batch,
Cob,
Stotty
It goes on...

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:


Because if you look at the history of the game, the actual, proper name for soccer is soccer football. Just like you then have Rugby Football, Gaelic football, Canadian Football, American Football etc.

Not quite.

It's actual full/original name was Association Football -- to duly differentiate it from Rugby Football et al -- soccer being an abbreviation or shorthand for Association.

That's why some of the older football clubs have A.F.C as part of their name.

 Skinnereal wrote:
The problems with the countries that use English as their first language probably come from a huge amount of their populations coming from elsewhere.
The English (and other Brits) are made up of people from all over. The Angles, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, all the way through to the British Empire.
America had all sorts of Europeans, with the French, Germans, Dutch, Spanish, and British, with lots of others.

It appears as though, ignoring the attempts to standardise spelling, the way the language was taught changed after certain points.
Trousers vs pants. It was probably Pantaloons to begin with, but trousers became a popular term somewhere. It gets taken up in the media, maybe, and there you go.

Just yesterday, we were counting up terms for a bacon roll. Around Britain, we had:
Bun,
Bap (our favourite)
Barn,
Batch,
Cob,
Stotty
It goes on...

You missed out barmcake

The only true bread product for bacon is cob. Which is also the best word in the english language.

Cob = Bread roll
Cob = Small Horse
Cob = Male swan
To Cob = Throw
To have a cob on - To sulk

We make our words do some work.

My other favourite word is disgruntled. To Gruntle means to moan in the old english - so dis (being a negative prefix) should mean disgrunlted = happy. But no, we just made the word longer and kept the meaning the same...

And what are silent 'P's for?

 reds8n wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:


Because if you look at the history of the game, the actual, proper name for soccer is soccer football. Just like you then have Rugby Football, Gaelic football, Canadian Football, American Football etc.

Not quite.

It's actual full/original name was Association Football -- to duly differentiate it from Rugby Football et al -- soccer being an abbreviation or shorthand for Association.

That's why some of the older football clubs have A.F.C as part of their name.

I work near the town of Rugby, where Rugby Football supposedly started.
It's confusing to see the Rugby Golf Club, Rugby Tennis Club, etc

We split when we decided spotted dick shouldn't be the name of a food, and that you were insane for allowing it to be.

Soccer is derived from Association Football, and the US isn't the only one who says it. In fact, the only English speaking country who doesn't say Soccer is Britain iirc.

 Ahtman wrote:
We split when we decided spotted dick shouldn't be the name of a food, and that you were insane for allowing it to be.

http://stinkingbishopcheese.com/

Because when I want a good hearty cheese, I only think of that stinking bishop!

 Goliath wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
We won the war.

you say 'war', I say 'troubles in the colonies'.

Yes you seem to have a terrible track record with those "troubles" of any sort.

In addition to using different words there are your various accents as well, so that spoken "english" can lead to some confusion. A few years back I was in London for a bit and we had some hilarity regarding the word 'khaki" (as in the light tan colored cloth) and "cocky" (as in arrogant).

My mistake- it was going to be legislation but Congress rejected it. Nonetheless, most of the changes caught on, like color, defense, mold, and (my personal hate) sulfate. Others which never caught on were the spellings profest, mixt, and altho (professed, mixed, and although).

I like some UK expressions.

"Taking the piss" instead of "Making fun"
"Mind the gap" instead of "Don't fall off the fething ledge onto the train tracks, dumbass"
"Keep calm and carry on" instead of "STFU!"

We steal shamelessly too.

My current favourite is "Alamo".

As in

" Heavens.. have you met Sebastians' new paramour ? One really doesn't know what he sees in her."
" Quite, mind you saying that bear in mind rumour has it that she's well Alamo."

 Hordini wrote:

Eldercaveman wrote:
Our language, you ruined it.

It's not your language, you just use it. It doesn't belong to anybody.

Thats ok. We've decided to give it up for the King's Spanish.

If you guys would have minded your own business then everybody in Europe could be speaking the Fuehrer's German and the US could have laid sole claim to English!

Well Alamo? ....she's a desperate last resort?

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Yes you seem to have a terrible track record with those "troubles" of any sort.

When you say that it reminded me of this

 kronk wrote:
I like some UK expressions.

"Taking the piss" instead of "Making fun"
"Mind the gap" instead of "Don't fall off the fething ledge onto the train tracks, dumbass"
"Keep calm and carry on" instead of "STFU!"

Those, and the never ending selection of words to say how drunk you were





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Well Alamo? ....she's a desperate last resort?

I thought it was that she's had a lot of guys "garrisoned" in her

 d-usa wrote:
If you guys would have minded your own business then everybody in Europe could be speaking the Fuehrer's German and the US could have laid sole claim to English!

It's little gems like this that make me love Dakka all the more

 reds8n wrote:

" Heavens.. have you met Sebastians' new paramour ? One really doesn't know what he sees in her."
" Quite, mind you saying that bear in mind rumour has it that she's well Alamo."

I don't understand.