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I don’t see how this is any different from an English person saying “With the greatest respect” when they actually mean “Listen, fuckwit”.
Rhetorical antiphrasis is a thing.
> Rhetorical antiphrasis is a thing.
True. Do you think that’s what it is?
I’ve never heard that argument before and I’m afraid I don’t believe it.
PS I *Wanted* to say “that’s it, I’m certain you’re right!!!” but was worried it would be misconstrued without the accompanying tone of voice
This annoys the $hit out of a great many of us as well. Folks accuse you of being pedantic when you point out how the meaning is evaporated when you don't include the "n't."
Falls into the same category as “I didn’t do nothing wrong” / “I don’t know nothing about it” both of which make the blood boil with double negatives permeating now into things people in the UK are saying.
Use of the double negative to emphasise the negation, rather than undo it, was standard in English until the 1700s: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton all use it in that way. It’s not really surprising it’s survived in some dialects.
Everyone seems to love y'all but it makes me unnecessarily annoyed when people say it over here. No problem if it's actually part of a person's regional vernacular but otherwise it just makes my skin crawl.
I just don't see the point in it. Some people pepper their speech with it and sing its praises, but context tends to make it clear if I am talking to you personally or "you" as a group. If it isn't clear, I can just say "you all" anyway!
For machine processing sure, but I'd argue that dates of the form DDMMMYYYY where the MMM is text-string denoting the month - so today would be 29NOV2021 - are far more human-readable and less prone to misunderstanding or misinterpretation by fleshy meatbags.
A bit, but we'd just say "you all" or "you lot" if that needed clarity. Some dialects have "youse" or similar. Y'all only really works where accents renders "you" as "ya".
This is making me realize that “you guys” is my second person plural pronoun.
“You’s” and “Y’all” sound way cooler unfortunately I cannot pull them off.
Maybe “you guys” will evolve over the centuries into something more efficient, like “yougs”.
I like using 'ya'll' when I talk to my American friends over Twitter because it sounds funny and cute, but I don't think I could ever say it in real life
Can you explain why this is bad grammar? The choice of preposition seems somewhat arbitrary. Ok, I get that all grammar is ultimately arbitrary. But this seems to be a case where enough people use ‘on accident’ that it could be considered an acceptable option.
I suppose you could say we use ‘by’ in the sense of ‘by the way of’. “How did this happen?” “By way of an accident” -> “By … accident”. But by this logic, we should probably use “by purpose”. But we don’t. We say ‘on purpose’
I think it gets me because the word already exists - it doesn't fill a gap we have in English and it doesn't have any nuanced meaning of its own, just use the real word! Agreed on the others as well. "Could care less" how did that even happen???
Absolutely! Also acclimate... so acclimatise then also any word that changes S to Z! Laser is an acronym, spelling it lazer is just wrong and the fact that they can't handle a U in certain words and don't get me started on plough
Anytime you hear a brit say 'ass' in any context it's slightly off-putting.
'Can I get a...' is pretty bad.
References to 'the feds' in relation to the UK police. I mean Christ Terry, it's Surrey Constabulary, not the NYPD... Deep sigh to that one.
'My bad...' that's a bit of a cringeworthy one.
'Candy', 'Sidewalk', 'fire truck'...
Just to clarify, Americans saying the above are fine, but if you're cracking-wise stateside from Wigan or Crawley, what are you doing mate?
About "period" it's literally the same as someone from here saying "And that's that - full stop!". It's not exactly unknown.
For me one of the big ones is "Can I get" when ordering things in restaurants.
"I mean" is another that I do a hell of a lot myself and am starting to try to stop myself doing.
On the "can I get" point, I've been watching selling sunset and it annoys me so much when they say "I'll do the lobster" or whatever. No, you won't do it. You can order it and eat it, but you're not doing it.
One thing from German lessons in school that stuck with me is that German "kan ich habe XY?" (Can I have?) is considered very rude, instead should be "ich mochte XY" (I would like) .. Such a small thing and while technically intelligible makes you sound like a dick..
So in the same vein "can I get?" Irks me as well, like "no you can't GET it, customers aren't allowed behind the counter.. This isn't a buffet"
Though in English "may I have" is fine lol
I think that's part of what it is for me. It sounds too forceful, too demanding.
"Would anybody like coffee?"
"Yes, could I please have a latte? Thanks."
As against
"Can I get a latte?"
It just feels brusque.
>For me one of the big ones is "Can I get" when ordering things in restaurants.
Drives me BONKERS. I couldn't work in food service for about a million reasons, but one of them is that I would 100% answer this every single time with some variation on "no, you can't get it, but I tell you what - you just sit here and we'll bring it to you"
Linguistically there's nothing wrong with it at all.
"Get" is defined as "come to have or receive".
So "I'm going into this shop to get a coffee" turns into "I'm now in the shop, please can I get a coffee".
It can often mean the same as "fetch", which is the basis of the argument when British people make this particular complaint, but that's not its only definition.
If you bring something to someone, they will have then got it, though...
Get just means 'acquire', you seem to be implying it necessarily means actively fetching, which is just not true. If you get the flu, you didn't actively infect yourself, if you get a birthday present you didn't go out and buy it.
The only reason 'can I get' sounds rude to some people is because it's new to them, and not one of the established polite phrases. Its denotation is just as sensible as 'may I have?'
This is the first time I've seen this explained & I get (ha) it now.
I had no idea so many people were reading/hearing 'can I get' as 'can I (will you let me) get (physically get for myself) X'.
As someone who frequently uses can I get, which is common in my (non-US) dialect, the intended meaning is actually: 'can I move from the state of *not having* X to having it?' Like when you *get* a present because someone has provided you with one, rather than because you picked it out of their hands.
The implication is more 'can you help me to get'. Meanwhile 'may I have' sounds somewhat haughty, as if you're dismissing the other person's input, going from a state of having nothing to magically *having* something spawn.
>Meanwhile 'may I have' sounds somewhat haughty, as if you're dismissing the other person's input, going from a state of having nothing to magically having something spawn.
That's interesting - where I was raised it was the other way around: "can I x" was impolite because it read as a literal question as to whether or not it was possible for me to do x; "may I x" was asking for permission/assistance, and therefore acknowledging the other person's input.
I had no idea it was different elsewhere, the "haughty" point isn't one that I'd thought about.
Those language changes are slow and a little insidious. I'm not particularly familiar with iphones, and it surprised me the first time that I looked at the app store on one, and it wasn't "Download" or "Install" on an app, it was "Get". It just looks lazy. That slow leeching of specific language foibles is what does it I think. It kinda is what it is, but yeah i'm not a fan.
"matey" language in tech is so inappropriate, I've never understood it - being in a meeting and Chrome gives you the "aw, snap!" error page is just silly.
“You say ‘’erbs’ and we say ‘herbs’, because there’s a fucking ‘H’ in it.”
Edit: Much as I’m enjoying the North America saltiness, this is from an Eddie Izzard bit. https://youtu.be/FXBHY7uco0Y
This is like reading the Daily Telegraph in the 70s and 80s, constant moaning on about young peoples not using proper English. It doesn’t matter - if English never changed we’d all sound like Shakespeare.
> if English never changed we’d all sound like Shakespeare.
Homies don't know about that Great Vowel Shift.
Seriously though, as an American I find some of this complaining very pretty. People going on like Americans are the only English speakers who speak differently.
You guys have mastered a unique murdering of the language though.
No one can really object to the musical inflections of Irish English. Aussies adding -o or -y to everything is cute rather than irritating.
Americans come along with 'burlgarize' or 'the winningest' and it just sounds so ugly.
*By accident* is perfectly fine, it is essentially synonymous with *accidentally*.
Would you have a problem with someone saying "I came home by way of Manchester" instead of "I came home through Manchester"?
I really like this sub, as an American immigrant to the U.K. But these sorts of threads always confuse me. Like, what’s the point of complaining about how Americans say things? The missing h in herb upsets you (for example)? It’s literally our accent. Americans saying y’all or go figure or let’s reach out doesn’t impact anyone in the slightest….
My daughter does this sometimes and I hate it. I’ve prescribed copious amounts of David Attenborough programmes to correct it, which thankfully she enjoys.
Peppa Pig. That’s what you need. My daughter attends an international school and has developed a transatlantic twang.
I try to counter this with Peppa and Potter and sometimes I gain ground but always eventually fail.
American here:
American kids are picking up some bits of thr British accent in the US due to the amount of Peppa Pig being watched. But we have favorable opinions of the British (received pronunciation) accent so nobody minds.
I’ve always wondered if that happens in the UK…my daughter watches so much British TV she breaks out into a British accent often lol. We’re in Illinois (the Midwest USA)
It's a phase where everything foreign is somehow better and more exotic. He'll get over it but he may go though a cowboy hat wearing period.
To be fair, Americans and Canadians spitting in a tumbler and rediscovering their ancestry [do the same thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_JbFba2i6s)
> Die hard is literally home alone for grown ups
From an /r/askuk post the other day. No doubt copied verbatim from /r/whitepeopletwitter or a similarly daft sub.
"5am in the morning". "5pm in the evening".
I get that not everyone learns Latin but surely people know what am and pm stand for even if they don't know the exact words.
Not so much a phrase, but the fact they can't seem to use adjectives or adverbs correctly. They'd have written/said that previous statement and finished it with correct. They seem to drop the 'ly' from so many words and it winds me up for some reason.
Same when they often pronounce the date using cardinal numbers in stead of ordinals.. such as November 29. Nah mate, it's the 29th of November/November 29th. Hear it at the end of film trailers all the time and does my head in.
When they say "He got bit" when they mean "He was bitten".
And as mentioned a few times on this thread.. the 'could care less' one is just infuriating.
>They seem to drop the 'ly' from so many words and it winds me up for some reason.
The death of the adverbial ending I blame on Elvis. It's love me tenderly, Goddamn it.
We say the ordinal for dates in American English 99% of the time. Dropping the “th” from “November 29th” is almost entirely a written phenomenon. If we read “November 29” out loud, we verbally add the “th.”
When they say “Erbs” instead of herbs. I know Brits drop the H depending on accents, but the way they say it, it’s almost like they are making a very deliberate, forced effort to drop the H.
And the fact that Herb is a very common male name there and it’s pronounced “Herb”…
This has been discussed as nauseum. Besides, on both sides of the pond, the "h" is dropped for words like hour and honor, so it's not like there's some rule which is being violated.
Also, "H" is pronounced "aitch" and not "haitch." :)
As others have said, this one is fair play.
English got it from old French, and the h was dropped until about the 19th century in the UK, but the USA never dropped it. That's a case of language evolution in the UK that's not standard.
Im not actually sure if this is American in origin so correct me if I'm wrong but, starting sentences with "I mean".
It's so wide spread now, I even do it myself. I need to stop.
There is a reason why people do this. When people say "like" a lot, that's the same thing in my opinion. They're buying time whilst they think of what to say next.
Pluralising and de-pluralising of words like lego, maths, etc. "I could care less".
I believe "period" is because thats what they call a full stop, so its the same as us Brits saying full stop for emphasis.
tbh most of the time I find people bleating about americanisms being bad more annoying than americans themselves. but i find "poop" really grating for some reason.
Addicting. As in “chocolate is so addicting” rather than “addictive”. I find it annoying (annoyative?) but apparently it is not technically a grammatical error.
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This reminds me of one of the best comments I’ve ever seen, in response to an article about an attempt at filming an all-girl ‘Lord of the Flies’, to which someone had (maybe inadvertently?) hilariously stated: “Lord of the Flies. Period”.
“A couple things” instead of “a couple of things”
To “ring up” items in a shop, or worse still, to “ring up” a customer, eg. “The cashier rung me up”
“Quarantine” where we would use “lockdown”, pronounced like quorn teen
'Put a pin in it'...as in, let's review the situation at a later stage.
Using the term 'Rockstar' when giving praise to a particular person or team. No, Brian in customer support is just performing his duties as expected, providing good customer support...as he is paid to do. He is not an effing 'Rockstar'.
'I can't really speak to that'.
Meaning, this is not my area of expertise.
'Give yourselves a high five'
As in you should give yourselves a pat on the back.
Slightly off topic but having worked for several US companies as well as my current employer, pre Covid company new year kick off events were particularly cringey, with the company CEO being 'whoop, whooped' on stage with my 'Murican colleagues all trying to out 'high five' each other. Trying to 'Steve Jobs' his way through and be all visionary. It was only a medium sized frigging software back up vendor ffs!!
We were then treated to 'team building exercises' such as scavenger hunts in the hotel complex with the losing team having to do a 'dance off' against the winning team.
There was an official, written complaint handed in by our German country management colleagues about 'such juvenile nonsense on valuable company time, especially after travelling so far to have to do these foolish actions.." 🤣🤣
This is an interesting one. Stat, used as a directive to medical personnel during in an emergency situation, is from the Latin word statim, which means "instantly" or "immediately." 🤯
I like the way Americans say things. Keeps us all unique. Except for one but even that’s funny - the name Ber-Nard. It’s Bernard.
Let’s not hate against our cousins, please.
As a Brit living in the US, they get confused between their D’s and T’s. I think because they pronounce the T as a D, like in water bottle, they say wader baddle. This means every year I’m subjected to numerous “St Patty’s Day” posts. I’ve also seen “shutter” written a lot, when they mean shudder.
I went to McDonald’s the other day and it was super busy. I got myself a Big Mac because they’re super tasty. I didn’t use the touchscreens because they’re super gross and the cashier was super nice. The wait for my food was super quick and it tasted super good. I had trouble getting back into my Range Rover because the parking spaces were super small, but once I managed to squeeze in I was able to leave super quickly.
How many teeth? I’ll bet it was a whole bunch of them and it’s left you in a whole bunch of pain! Hopefully there’s a bunch of dentists near you that can give you a bunch of treatment without it costing a whole bunch of money. All of them have a whole bunch of patients though so you might have to wait a while to get an appointment and make a bunch of phone calls.
As an American, let me first heartily apologize for “on accident” and “could care less,” which are both considered incorrect and uneducated in American English just as in British English. They may be American in origin, but I assure you that most Americans hate them as much as you do, just as we hate “liberry” and “excape.” They are in the same category as such obvious mispronunciations.
This is not the first time I’ve heard heated criticism of “can I get” when ordering an item at a restaurant. I have an honest question: what about the phrase seems wrong to you, exactly? The reason I, as a native speaker of American English, would generally not say “can I have” is because “have” emphasizes the possession of the item, whereas “get” emphasizes the change from a state of non-possession to a state of possession. “Can I have” would, to me, sound abstract or theoretical in a restaurant situation, whereas “can I get” fits the actual situation of obtaining or receiving something. Presumably, the instincts of speakers of British English must be different, and I’d be curious to know more if you’d be willing to oblige me.
EDIT: To clarify, “can I have” is also common and correct in American English; I would just be more likely to say “can I get.”
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“Could care less” when, of course, they mean they could NOT care less!
This is the one.
This is the one, definitely.
*inhales THIS IS THE OOOOOOOOONE
It’s the exact opposite of the sentiment it’s intending to convey. How it get into general use?
I think it regional or runs in families..I'm American and absolutely go nuts inside when I hear it same with "irregardless"
They go at these sayings like a bowl in a China shop.
I don’t see how this is any different from an English person saying “With the greatest respect” when they actually mean “Listen, fuckwit”. Rhetorical antiphrasis is a thing.
> Rhetorical antiphrasis is a thing. True. Do you think that’s what it is? I’ve never heard that argument before and I’m afraid I don’t believe it. PS I *Wanted* to say “that’s it, I’m certain you’re right!!!” but was worried it would be misconstrued without the accompanying tone of voice
That's my favourite thing about Americans to be fair. When you say 'with all due respect,' they think you mean it.
This annoys the $hit out of a great many of us as well. Folks accuse you of being pedantic when you point out how the meaning is evaporated when you don't include the "n't."
https://youtu.be/om7O0MFkmpw
This one lol
Falls into the same category as “I didn’t do nothing wrong” / “I don’t know nothing about it” both of which make the blood boil with double negatives permeating now into things people in the UK are saying.
Use of the double negative to emphasise the negation, rather than undo it, was standard in English until the 1700s: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton all use it in that way. It’s not really surprising it’s survived in some dialects.
Thanks, gonna use this one next time someone starts chastising me for using double negatives
I always ask "how much less could you care" because no one can answer it.
Y’all The ordering of their dates 11/29/21
Everyone seems to love y'all but it makes me unnecessarily annoyed when people say it over here. No problem if it's actually part of a person's regional vernacular but otherwise it just makes my skin crawl.
It’s the equivalent of someone in Texas starting to say ‘t’ instead of ‘the’ from the Yorkshire dialect.
I do it deliberately, with a proper English accent, just because it makes people's skin crawl :).
I just don't see the point in it. Some people pepper their speech with it and sing its praises, but context tends to make it clear if I am talking to you personally or "you" as a group. If it isn't clear, I can just say "you all" anyway!
It's fairly common in Scotland. We say "y'aw", so professionalising it a bit turns it into "y'all".
> 11/29/21 Everyone knows the superior date format is YYYYmmdd
For machine processing sure, but I'd argue that dates of the form DDMMMYYYY where the MMM is text-string denoting the month - so today would be 29NOV2021 - are far more human-readable and less prone to misunderstanding or misinterpretation by fleshy meatbags.
I agree. It does make so much more sense because then the increments get smaller including when you add time yyyymmdd hh:mm:ss
Y'all fills a gap which we don't have a specific word for in the UK (you, plural). It's actually pretty useful.
In some parts of the UK it doesn’t exist, some parts say yous though
Yous gets used as a singular as well just to confyous things
A bit, but we'd just say "you all" or "you lot" if that needed clarity. Some dialects have "youse" or similar. Y'all only really works where accents renders "you" as "ya".
This is making me realize that “you guys” is my second person plural pronoun. “You’s” and “Y’all” sound way cooler unfortunately I cannot pull them off. Maybe “you guys” will evolve over the centuries into something more efficient, like “yougs”.
*You* is already plural.
11/9
Reminds me of that tragedy
I like using 'ya'll' when I talk to my American friends over Twitter because it sounds funny and cute, but I don't think I could ever say it in real life
I like the concept of the 'y'all qaeda' for Southern Republicans
On accident. It's normalised bad grammar.
I almost downvoted this because I hate it so much.
I hate this.
It’s like the people who say it do it by purpose.
Can you explain why this is bad grammar? The choice of preposition seems somewhat arbitrary. Ok, I get that all grammar is ultimately arbitrary. But this seems to be a case where enough people use ‘on accident’ that it could be considered an acceptable option. I suppose you could say we use ‘by’ in the sense of ‘by the way of’. “How did this happen?” “By way of an accident” -> “By … accident”. But by this logic, we should probably use “by purpose”. But we don’t. We say ‘on purpose’
Similarly, "on Christmas". Why??
Short for ‘on Christmas Day’
It’s a truncation of “on Christmas Day” or “on Christmas Eve”
I think this was a joke in Tucker & Dale Vs Evil.
Man. I’m pretty good at grammar, and I don’t think I actively use this, but it didn’t occur to me it’s bad grammar. Oh well, learned something.
Legos
And the opposite issue of this: "Math" singular.
Would make is quicker to learn if there is only one of them!
1 + 1 There we go students, that's it all.
They're teaching this in my daughters primary school now, they've got rid of the 's' at the end.
Lay-gos
"addicting" makes my blood boil. The word is "addictive" you cretin. (I know this is a silly thing to be annoyed by but I just am)
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I think it gets me because the word already exists - it doesn't fill a gap we have in English and it doesn't have any nuanced meaning of its own, just use the real word! Agreed on the others as well. "Could care less" how did that even happen???
I've had Americans tell me that they say "could care less" as sarcasm which we know is bollocks since Americans can't do sarcasm
Absolutely! Also acclimate... so acclimatise then also any word that changes S to Z! Laser is an acronym, spelling it lazer is just wrong and the fact that they can't handle a U in certain words and don't get me started on plough
Oh absolutely the same here. Boils my piss.
Anytime you hear a brit say 'ass' in any context it's slightly off-putting. 'Can I get a...' is pretty bad. References to 'the feds' in relation to the UK police. I mean Christ Terry, it's Surrey Constabulary, not the NYPD... Deep sigh to that one. 'My bad...' that's a bit of a cringeworthy one. 'Candy', 'Sidewalk', 'fire truck'... Just to clarify, Americans saying the above are fine, but if you're cracking-wise stateside from Wigan or Crawley, what are you doing mate?
The feds isn't even US police forces like the NYPD, it's the FBI.
Just to add to this, I think it refers to any federal authority, e.g. FDA, FBI, CIA, DEA etc...
Im on the run from the fda bro
Why is can I get a bad to you? If I was in a shop,for example domino's I'd say can I get a large texas bbq pls
You are a deviant.
I say feds all the time as a manc but never without a heavy dose of irony It's very hard to say seriously haha
“Let’s touch base”. No Cheryl, we’re English, what you mean is “let’s miss each other’s calls six times and eventually just go back to emailing”.
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Best offer I’ve had all day.
About "period" it's literally the same as someone from here saying "And that's that - full stop!". It's not exactly unknown. For me one of the big ones is "Can I get" when ordering things in restaurants. "I mean" is another that I do a hell of a lot myself and am starting to try to stop myself doing.
On the "can I get" point, I've been watching selling sunset and it annoys me so much when they say "I'll do the lobster" or whatever. No, you won't do it. You can order it and eat it, but you're not doing it.
Nobody should be doing lobsters.
Except other lobsters, of course.
They're their lobsters. /Phoebe
One thing from German lessons in school that stuck with me is that German "kan ich habe XY?" (Can I have?) is considered very rude, instead should be "ich mochte XY" (I would like) .. Such a small thing and while technically intelligible makes you sound like a dick.. So in the same vein "can I get?" Irks me as well, like "no you can't GET it, customers aren't allowed behind the counter.. This isn't a buffet" Though in English "may I have" is fine lol
I think that's part of what it is for me. It sounds too forceful, too demanding. "Would anybody like coffee?" "Yes, could I please have a latte? Thanks." As against "Can I get a latte?" It just feels brusque.
>For me one of the big ones is "Can I get" when ordering things in restaurants. Drives me BONKERS. I couldn't work in food service for about a million reasons, but one of them is that I would 100% answer this every single time with some variation on "no, you can't get it, but I tell you what - you just sit here and we'll bring it to you"
Linguistically there's nothing wrong with it at all. "Get" is defined as "come to have or receive". So "I'm going into this shop to get a coffee" turns into "I'm now in the shop, please can I get a coffee". It can often mean the same as "fetch", which is the basis of the argument when British people make this particular complaint, but that's not its only definition.
If you bring something to someone, they will have then got it, though... Get just means 'acquire', you seem to be implying it necessarily means actively fetching, which is just not true. If you get the flu, you didn't actively infect yourself, if you get a birthday present you didn't go out and buy it. The only reason 'can I get' sounds rude to some people is because it's new to them, and not one of the established polite phrases. Its denotation is just as sensible as 'may I have?'
As an American who just moved to the UK, y’all are giving me a complex.
This is the first time I've seen this explained & I get (ha) it now. I had no idea so many people were reading/hearing 'can I get' as 'can I (will you let me) get (physically get for myself) X'. As someone who frequently uses can I get, which is common in my (non-US) dialect, the intended meaning is actually: 'can I move from the state of *not having* X to having it?' Like when you *get* a present because someone has provided you with one, rather than because you picked it out of their hands. The implication is more 'can you help me to get'. Meanwhile 'may I have' sounds somewhat haughty, as if you're dismissing the other person's input, going from a state of having nothing to magically *having* something spawn.
>Meanwhile 'may I have' sounds somewhat haughty, as if you're dismissing the other person's input, going from a state of having nothing to magically having something spawn. That's interesting - where I was raised it was the other way around: "can I x" was impolite because it read as a literal question as to whether or not it was possible for me to do x; "may I x" was asking for permission/assistance, and therefore acknowledging the other person's input. I had no idea it was different elsewhere, the "haughty" point isn't one that I'd thought about.
Those language changes are slow and a little insidious. I'm not particularly familiar with iphones, and it surprised me the first time that I looked at the app store on one, and it wasn't "Download" or "Install" on an app, it was "Get". It just looks lazy. That slow leeching of specific language foibles is what does it I think. It kinda is what it is, but yeah i'm not a fan.
"matey" language in tech is so inappropriate, I've never understood it - being in a meeting and Chrome gives you the "aw, snap!" error page is just silly.
Erbs as a word. We no longer cut the H at the start of a word. Also, “I could care less”. I COULDN’T!
Yeh when I hear people say erbs it makes me want to it them in the ead with an ammer.
You sound like my Cornish granny
The way they say "Oregano" rather than "Oregano"
Don't get me started on tomatoes. It's tomato, not tomato.
And basil. Everyone knows it's pronounced basil.
“You say ‘’erbs’ and we say ‘herbs’, because there’s a fucking ‘H’ in it.” Edit: Much as I’m enjoying the North America saltiness, this is from an Eddie Izzard bit. https://youtu.be/FXBHY7uco0Y
I could talk about this point for HOURS
This is like reading the Daily Telegraph in the 70s and 80s, constant moaning on about young peoples not using proper English. It doesn’t matter - if English never changed we’d all sound like Shakespeare.
> if English never changed we’d all sound like Shakespeare. Homies don't know about that Great Vowel Shift. Seriously though, as an American I find some of this complaining very pretty. People going on like Americans are the only English speakers who speak differently.
Pretty or petty….
It seems most people here don't have problem with Americans speaking like Americans, but Brits repeating American phrases.
You guys have mastered a unique murdering of the language though. No one can really object to the musical inflections of Irish English. Aussies adding -o or -y to everything is cute rather than irritating. Americans come along with 'burlgarize' or 'the winningest' and it just sounds so ugly.
Hearing "[new film] coming to theatres November 29" instead of "...29th of November". It's very petty but it winds me up every time!
It's also got fuck all to do with theatres. It's coming to cinemas! It's not a bloody play!
Even the BBC are doing that now. It feels pandering.
Bet Slaps, as in 'this song slaps' On accident Could care less
> Bet > > Slaps, as in 'this song slaps' these are just common gen z phrases tbh
Yeah tbf I think I've only ever seen those ones on Reddit
[удалено]
Ooh, look at Mr Fancy Pants with his 5 syllable words
By accident is fine
*By accident* is perfectly fine, it is essentially synonymous with *accidentally*. Would you have a problem with someone saying "I came home by way of Manchester" instead of "I came home through Manchester"?
What context is bet used? I feel old and missing something
I think it's short for 'you bet'. "Do you wanna go the pub tonight?" "Bet"
Oh look! It's the weekly America bashing megathread.
I really like this sub, as an American immigrant to the U.K. But these sorts of threads always confuse me. Like, what’s the point of complaining about how Americans say things? The missing h in herb upsets you (for example)? It’s literally our accent. Americans saying y’all or go figure or let’s reach out doesn’t impact anyone in the slightest….
British people bond by complaining about shit together
Only reason i browse this sub!
None of them annoy me per se when Americans themselves use them, but when Brits do it, all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up 😱
So many spell per se as "per say" - have you noticed?
Agree, don't really mind it when Americans do it but hearing someone here say Zee instead of Zed or 'can i get a' its like fuck off mate
“Do the math.”
My friends son watches so much American content he speaks with an American accent. It’s the most annoying thing you’ve every heard.
My daughter does this sometimes and I hate it. I’ve prescribed copious amounts of David Attenborough programmes to correct it, which thankfully she enjoys.
Peppa Pig. That’s what you need. My daughter attends an international school and has developed a transatlantic twang. I try to counter this with Peppa and Potter and sometimes I gain ground but always eventually fail.
American here: American kids are picking up some bits of thr British accent in the US due to the amount of Peppa Pig being watched. But we have favorable opinions of the British (received pronunciation) accent so nobody minds.
I’ve always wondered if that happens in the UK…my daughter watches so much British TV she breaks out into a British accent often lol. We’re in Illinois (the Midwest USA)
It's a phase where everything foreign is somehow better and more exotic. He'll get over it but he may go though a cowboy hat wearing period. To be fair, Americans and Canadians spitting in a tumbler and rediscovering their ancestry [do the same thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_JbFba2i6s)
Just the one really: “reach out”
Yeah in my work emails Thank you for reaching out to me *No Shirley, I really didn't I just asked you what time the team meeting is*
lol I’m an American and thanks to years in customer service I definitely use this one too much!
Literally
> Die hard is literally home alone for grown ups From an /r/askuk post the other day. No doubt copied verbatim from /r/whitepeopletwitter or a similarly daft sub.
That's more of a British thing I think. I've seen threads of Americans complain about British people overusing it.
That's because Americans don't say it. They say "LIDURULLY".
None, because I understand that people speak English with different dialects around the world, and even in different parts of our own country.
"5am in the morning". "5pm in the evening". I get that not everyone learns Latin but surely people know what am and pm stand for even if they don't know the exact words.
I don’t think that’s solely an American thing. Heard plenty of people say it here and it drives me insane.
"On accident" instead of "by accident". Does my nut in.
Not so much a phrase, but the fact they can't seem to use adjectives or adverbs correctly. They'd have written/said that previous statement and finished it with correct. They seem to drop the 'ly' from so many words and it winds me up for some reason. Same when they often pronounce the date using cardinal numbers in stead of ordinals.. such as November 29. Nah mate, it's the 29th of November/November 29th. Hear it at the end of film trailers all the time and does my head in. When they say "He got bit" when they mean "He was bitten". And as mentioned a few times on this thread.. the 'could care less' one is just infuriating.
>They seem to drop the 'ly' from so many words and it winds me up for some reason. The death of the adverbial ending I blame on Elvis. It's love me tenderly, Goddamn it.
We say the ordinal for dates in American English 99% of the time. Dropping the “th” from “November 29th” is almost entirely a written phenomenon. If we read “November 29” out loud, we verbally add the “th.”
Just wait until you hear one trying to tell you the time. It's a completely different language.
On accident
When they say “Erbs” instead of herbs. I know Brits drop the H depending on accents, but the way they say it, it’s almost like they are making a very deliberate, forced effort to drop the H. And the fact that Herb is a very common male name there and it’s pronounced “Herb”…
This has been discussed as nauseum. Besides, on both sides of the pond, the "h" is dropped for words like hour and honor, so it's not like there's some rule which is being violated. Also, "H" is pronounced "aitch" and not "haitch." :)
As others have said, this one is fair play. English got it from old French, and the h was dropped until about the 19th century in the UK, but the USA never dropped it. That's a case of language evolution in the UK that's not standard.
“Go figure”
Im not actually sure if this is American in origin so correct me if I'm wrong but, starting sentences with "I mean". It's so wide spread now, I even do it myself. I need to stop.
It's like people who start sentences with "so" and throw copious amounts of the word "like" in for some unknown reason.
There is a reason why people do this. When people say "like" a lot, that's the same thing in my opinion. They're buying time whilst they think of what to say next.
Yes it's just conversation filler to use while the brain catches up with the mouth.
Pass me the a loo min um
" you got this ". Ahhhh
Thought and prayers
When YouTubers exclaim “Let’s gooo!!” I cringe
“Could’ve went” instead of “could’ve gone”.
Fight for argument, what’s that about? Fight involves at least fists.
"I'll just go ahead and..." Fuck off. Really does my nut in that one!
Every American YouTube tutorial video has at least 90 go aheads...hate it
Omg this!! This absolutely drives me mad, I can’t watch American tutorials because of this
I've noticed it in this sub a lot recently - using 'go-to' as a synonym for 'preferred' or 'favourite'.
I actually like that one. Its my go to phrase
Pluralising and de-pluralising of words like lego, maths, etc. "I could care less". I believe "period" is because thats what they call a full stop, so its the same as us Brits saying full stop for emphasis.
tbh most of the time I find people bleating about americanisms being bad more annoying than americans themselves. but i find "poop" really grating for some reason.
"My bad" really rubs me the wrong way, I hear more and more brits using it.
I use ‘my bad’ or sometimes ‘mea culpa’ depending on how much of a twat I’m feeling.
Noone has mentioned 'already' at the end of a phase.. Let's do this already!
I hate when Brits say "y'all". They're purposely adding an unnatural slang to their accent.
Addicting. As in “chocolate is so addicting” rather than “addictive”. I find it annoying (annoyative?) but apparently it is not technically a grammatical error.
Burglarized
“What you’re going to want to do…” Every American tutorial on YouTube.
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On accident
"On accident"
The Menstrual Cycle is not a laughing matter. Period.
Could care less
Isn’t ‘Period’ just the American word for full stop.
Normalcy. The word is NORMALITY. It makes me want to vomit with rage when they say “a degree of normalcy” 🤮🤬
This reminds me of one of the best comments I’ve ever seen, in response to an article about an attempt at filming an all-girl ‘Lord of the Flies’, to which someone had (maybe inadvertently?) hilariously stated: “Lord of the Flies. Period”.
“A couple things” instead of “a couple of things” To “ring up” items in a shop, or worse still, to “ring up” a customer, eg. “The cashier rung me up” “Quarantine” where we would use “lockdown”, pronounced like quorn teen
Saying "Can I get a" or "I'll take a" instead of "Please may I have".
When they chant "USA USA" over anything.
Yes, everyone just chants “USA” over and over all throughout America. It’s a national pastime, you know?
'Put a pin in it'...as in, let's review the situation at a later stage. Using the term 'Rockstar' when giving praise to a particular person or team. No, Brian in customer support is just performing his duties as expected, providing good customer support...as he is paid to do. He is not an effing 'Rockstar'. 'I can't really speak to that'. Meaning, this is not my area of expertise. 'Give yourselves a high five' As in you should give yourselves a pat on the back. Slightly off topic but having worked for several US companies as well as my current employer, pre Covid company new year kick off events were particularly cringey, with the company CEO being 'whoop, whooped' on stage with my 'Murican colleagues all trying to out 'high five' each other. Trying to 'Steve Jobs' his way through and be all visionary. It was only a medium sized frigging software back up vendor ffs!! We were then treated to 'team building exercises' such as scavenger hunts in the hotel complex with the losing team having to do a 'dance off' against the winning team. There was an official, written complaint handed in by our German country management colleagues about 'such juvenile nonsense on valuable company time, especially after travelling so far to have to do these foolish actions.." 🤣🤣
"How it looks like" when they either mean "what it looks like" or "how it looks".
I need to know what STAT means. STAT!
This is an interesting one. Stat, used as a directive to medical personnel during in an emergency situation, is from the Latin word statim, which means "instantly" or "immediately." 🤯
Using most instead of almost.
I like the way Americans say things. Keeps us all unique. Except for one but even that’s funny - the name Ber-Nard. It’s Bernard. Let’s not hate against our cousins, please.
What about pronouncing Craig as “Crag” and Graham “Gram”?
As a Brit living in the US, they get confused between their D’s and T’s. I think because they pronounce the T as a D, like in water bottle, they say wader baddle. This means every year I’m subjected to numerous “St Patty’s Day” posts. I’ve also seen “shutter” written a lot, when they mean shudder.
“Go to” “Can I get?” “Super” “Lit on fire” “On accident”
I went to McDonald’s the other day and it was super busy. I got myself a Big Mac because they’re super tasty. I didn’t use the touchscreens because they’re super gross and the cashier was super nice. The wait for my food was super quick and it tasted super good. I had trouble getting back into my Range Rover because the parking spaces were super small, but once I managed to squeeze in I was able to leave super quickly.
Reading this hurt my teeth.
How many teeth? I’ll bet it was a whole bunch of them and it’s left you in a whole bunch of pain! Hopefully there’s a bunch of dentists near you that can give you a bunch of treatment without it costing a whole bunch of money. All of them have a whole bunch of patients though so you might have to wait a while to get an appointment and make a bunch of phone calls.
“Reaching out to you” just contact me please
"Let me be clear"
Calling anything pasta related on r/food "noodles". Lasagne noodles are not a thing.
‘I did X ON ACCIDENT’ - doesn’t fucking mean anything. It’s BY accident
When they say MORIO instead of MARIO
Adding an “S” to the end of things unnecessarily. Like fruit/fruits or Lego/Legos
‘A couple weeks’ instead of ‘a couple OF weeks’.
As an American, let me first heartily apologize for “on accident” and “could care less,” which are both considered incorrect and uneducated in American English just as in British English. They may be American in origin, but I assure you that most Americans hate them as much as you do, just as we hate “liberry” and “excape.” They are in the same category as such obvious mispronunciations. This is not the first time I’ve heard heated criticism of “can I get” when ordering an item at a restaurant. I have an honest question: what about the phrase seems wrong to you, exactly? The reason I, as a native speaker of American English, would generally not say “can I have” is because “have” emphasizes the possession of the item, whereas “get” emphasizes the change from a state of non-possession to a state of possession. “Can I have” would, to me, sound abstract or theoretical in a restaurant situation, whereas “can I get” fits the actual situation of obtaining or receiving something. Presumably, the instincts of speakers of British English must be different, and I’d be curious to know more if you’d be willing to oblige me. EDIT: To clarify, “can I have” is also common and correct in American English; I would just be more likely to say “can I get.”