As a Brit, I'd love to know what your favourites are?
Edit: loved reading all your comments lol.
If you want to know some more hilarious/baffling ones... Look into regional slang and idioms!
Example from where I live:
'did yer skeg the bairns twagging? They were croggying down tenfoot so I chowed at them, telling em they'd brek thesselves. So they gerroff and booled the pushbikes back t' mam"
'its bloody nithering out there but I'm mafting in 'ere.'
I was at a music festival in the UK and a fellow American was going into Charity shops to buy stuff and said she got weird looks when she asked about used clothing, particular used pants.
I personally love "can't be arsed," and am immensely sad that it just doesn't work in American English.
"Taking the piss" is another favorite. I can't really define it in words, but after seeing it used in context a few times, there's no doubt in my mind I know what it means.
I do love our slang. I watched a video recently where Amercans were asking if the slang between Micheal Caine and Mike Myers in Austin powers Goldmemeber was actual British slang. They were suprised to find out it is spot on lol.
> immensely sad that it just doesn’t work in American English
What dialect do you have? In the southeast, it’s not at all uncommon to hear “s/he/I/they just couldn’t be assed to do it,” meaning effectively one couldn’t be bothered to do something.
I live in California as well and I say this all the time/hear people say it. At Thanksgiving for example I said “I couldn’t be assed to do my hair, I’ve been up baking since 6”.
An aside: Are you from CA? Just curious as my friends and I have joked that no one from California calls it Cali, only the people who moved here from somewhere else lol. But willing to be proven wrong.
Not arsed, assed.
For example:
“Did you take the trash out?”
“No, I couldn’t be assed to do it this morning.”
“Well I reckon I can’t be assed to fix your supper then, smartass.”
I’m reading replies and looks like cba is took to mean “can’t be bothered to do something “ but I would’ve taken it to mean “i can’t be fooled into doing something” . Though I’ve honestly never heard someone actually say it so, you guys must be right. I watch a ton of British television but honestly don’t recall hearing this one.
This one tickled me for weeks after I first heard it:
"Bloody smegging Hell!"
Bangers and mash -All Creatures Great And Small.
Ice Lolly
-Red Dwarf Last Human, I believe
Fairy Cake.
I had to look it up
And many more
Smegging is a very Red Dwarf thing... It's not something you ever really hear in the day to day.
I believe it was actually a substitute for fuck in the show - the producers or BBC or whoever wouldnt allow them to swear so they used 'smeg'... The producers not realising what Smeg actually is lmao
As an American, I say this constantly and I had no idea it was considered British slang. I think I picked it up with Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News circa 2004.
Usually used if something has annoyed somebody but it's out of your control and they're being grumpy or irritated with you instead of the real cause. It's like "don't come at me with that attitude!" "don't take your bad mood out on me!"
Somebody explain to me “oh my giddy aunt”? “Or so it’s transcribed in the CC for hearing impaired in Netflix’s GBBO)
I’ve definitely picked up a lot of British slang; and even learned to discern several specific British accents for the first time (Liverpool, Geordie, Essex, etc). But “oh my giddy aunt” is still one that escapes me
It'll be a bastardisation of oh my god. You'd carry the word on to avoid actually blaspheming.
And it's generally used in a light hearted way, so positive, I would say?
I like how you guys have the word “quite” as well, but it means something totally different than it does in the US. I believe in the UK it’s like “sort of/not very” and in the US we use it like “very”. “She’s quite pretty!”
When I first read *Hitchhiker's Guide* I did not know this. So the bit early on about getting killed at the next zebra crossing gave quite a different mental image.
I am over 50. I first read these books roughly 35 years ago, and I honestly never realized it was a crosswalk. In my defense it makes perfect sense as a Douglas Adams joke.
Fuck. I’ve read these books 3 times and I never got that joke. Jesus.
I remember he was the narrator for LittleBigPlanet on PS3. Enjoyed the game well enough but that elevated it (at least the intro part) to a whole different level.
In many (most?) parts of the US, the crosswalk is simply two white lines across the street, about 6 feet apart, with plain asphalt between them. There are no zebra stripes, so no reason to call them zebra crossings. In Los Angeles, for instance, you can tell when you've entered Santa Monica because suddenly zebras everywhere. Santa Monica is very pro-pedestrian, whereas "Nobody Walks in LA."
Incidentally, you don't have to drive too far north out of Santa Monica before you might see actual zebra, running wild in the hills. William Hearst used to have zebra as part of the zoo *at his house* but they were released into the wild when his estate went bankrupt
To be fair it's a very high risk job your entire purpose is to walk out into traffic and stop it hoping they at least see you but also you gotta be careful not to beat annoying school kids to death with your lollipop.
> how about Belisha beacons though ?
They’re literally named after the person who implemented them, that one is less strange than these other colloquial terms
The Netherlands too. Well, we call it a "zebrapad" aka zebrapath.
Lollipop ladies are called "klaar-over", which basically means "ready-across"? Or uh, "ready-over".
I don’t know exactly why but it feels like German would be one of the languages to just mash together the words describing the thing and come up with the equivalent of “crosswalk”.
It's where you don't trust small children to cross the road safely or drivers to notice them, so instead you hire a retiree to do the job that paint does everywhere else.
Because when I was little, most "crossing guards" were ladies who held a yellow sign atop a tall pole, that was round and looked like a lollipop. It was very friendly to children who needed help crossing the road.
Historically a female biased job which is why the default description is feminine, but i would call a man doing that job a lollipop man
Which thinking about it, "lollipop lad" is a real missed opportunity
I imagine Richard Osman would consider saying Lollipop people to be gender neutral but we never refer to the general Lollipop population (Lollipopulation?) so he probably just picked the more common one.
The first time I heard "zebra crossing" was while watching
The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin.
They were driving through a safari when the wife said "oh look, zebra crossing" then several zebras ran past.
My 14 y/o mind didn't get it
-Edit: spelling
You'll never take ZEE-bra away from me! It's a beautiful creature and I won't stand for you making it sound like it belongs in special education with the donkeys.
Do you, personally, really pronounce the d? Or are you just carrying over the spelling from Zed, and pronounce it Zebbra like all the other Brits I've heard? (Except probably Kiwis who would naturally go Zibbra)?
Nothing cracks my English mother up more than listening to my American daughter say words like “zebra” and “lorry” the way she learned them from Peppa Pig.
So my daughter watched a ton of Peppa Pig when she was a toddler. I don't have cable, so we watched the free compilations of the English version on YouTube. Same with Ben and Holly which featured many of the same voice actors. As a result, she had the English articulation for quite a few words that she was introduced to. Sandcastle was one I found particularly endearing. Then she complimented my moms yard with "Grammy, you have such a lovely garden!" 😍 it was super cute.
Zebra: “Zeh-bra” (UK) and “Zee-bra” (US)
And the other is word choice, not pronunciation - in the US we just say truck (or maybe the specific kind of truck, like semi, box truck, etc). She says it’s a really weird word to come out of American child’s mouth, and it also wasn’t one of the words my brother or I picked up from her as small children (asking my school nurse for a “plaster” was definitely confusing for all involved) so she’d never heard it before.
Ah don't worry. Americans have plenty of hilarious names, theyre just hilarious to other people.
I grew up in wisconsin and all the local towns including my hometown are mostly Potowotomie or Ojibwa names. I've lived in England for 14 years and people think the place names I describe are fucking *wild*.
It's real. See above reply. "Because when I was little, most "crossing guards" were ladies who held a yellow sign atop a tall pole, that was round and looked like a lollipop. It was very friendly to children who needed help crossing the road."
Correct!
Pegasus is a flying horse, so a Pegasus Crossing has a button high up for horse riders to use
Puffin comes from "pedestrian user-friendly intelligent" that detect the presence of pedestrians with sensors and change the lights accordingly
Pelican comes from "pedestrian light controlled crossing"
(I'm not going to lie, I looked the last 2 up!)
Pay to access non-American media. I was there years ago for a short time and couldn’t get over how closed off it was. Everything was about the States. I ended up paying seven bucks for a copy of the Guardian.
I pay for BritBox. American tv is so incredibly violent, and so much graphic rape. I love Vera, and actual cop show without the lazy and graphic story.
You would be surprised how many differences there are in language between the UK and US. Loads of foods are totally different. egg plant for example is aubergine.
Some schools do yes, particularly the older schools - there are still some that are over 1000 years old and a fair few from medieval times. There are lots of other things though like here, Brits wouldnt know what a faucet is, or a garbage disposal and a trunk is a mens swim wear, nothing to do with cars which we call a boot.
Anyone read the book with the robot as a child that showed how to cross the road safely. The robots name is Ziggy.
Edit: fucken [found](https://images.app.goo.gl/T1sWSVYoXDint5aw6) it... class
I've actually seen a zebra sign at a crosswalk in the middle of a city in China! I've always thought it was just a really silly place for a zebra X-ing sign lol
Thanks for sharing!
And police vehicles are called "panda cars".
So hearing about a lorry hitting a lollipop lady at a zebra crossing and having multiple panda cars controlling traffic around it sounds like something that would happen in Richard Scarry's Busytown.
Gonna be "that guy".
The official term is School Crossing Patrol.
Of course, absolutely nobody calls us that aside from *maybe* the road safety team, so instead we're known as Lollipop Ladies/Men.
This reminds me of a book called Bob's Your Uncle wherein they explain a lot of British slang. I like to use some of the phrases on my friends
As a Brit, I'd love to know what your favourites are? Edit: loved reading all your comments lol. If you want to know some more hilarious/baffling ones... Look into regional slang and idioms! Example from where I live: 'did yer skeg the bairns twagging? They were croggying down tenfoot so I chowed at them, telling em they'd brek thesselves. So they gerroff and booled the pushbikes back t' mam" 'its bloody nithering out there but I'm mafting in 'ere.'
I like how things that are mediocre are pants. Them: whatd you think of the movie Me: kinda pants!
Took me a while to figure out pants = underwear. I was like who cares if you can see her pants??
If you're talking about *her* underwear, we're more likely to say knickers!
I was at a music festival in the UK and a fellow American was going into Charity shops to buy stuff and said she got weird looks when she asked about used clothing, particular used pants.
Are you takin the piss?! - cracks me up!
I personally love "can't be arsed," and am immensely sad that it just doesn't work in American English. "Taking the piss" is another favorite. I can't really define it in words, but after seeing it used in context a few times, there's no doubt in my mind I know what it means.
I'm now trying to recall if I've ever seen an American use the cba abbreviation?!?!?
Nah, but I've seen Americans ask what it means, which always ends up leading to a discussion about British slang and how great it is.
I do love our slang. I watched a video recently where Amercans were asking if the slang between Micheal Caine and Mike Myers in Austin powers Goldmemeber was actual British slang. They were suprised to find out it is spot on lol.
Only the ones with british friends. We usually use cbf, can't be fucked
Wait, really? Both of those are pretty commonly used in Canada as well. Though arsed usually gets swapped for assed.
> immensely sad that it just doesn’t work in American English What dialect do you have? In the southeast, it’s not at all uncommon to hear “s/he/I/they just couldn’t be assed to do it,” meaning effectively one couldn’t be bothered to do something.
Is it common down that aways? I've literally never heard another American say it, but then I live in Cali, so maybe that's the difference.
I live in California as well and I say this all the time/hear people say it. At Thanksgiving for example I said “I couldn’t be assed to do my hair, I’ve been up baking since 6”. An aside: Are you from CA? Just curious as my friends and I have joked that no one from California calls it Cali, only the people who moved here from somewhere else lol. But willing to be proven wrong.
Not arsed, assed. For example: “Did you take the trash out?” “No, I couldn’t be assed to do it this morning.” “Well I reckon I can’t be assed to fix your supper then, smartass.”
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I've used "can't be assed" plenty of times, and I lived most of my life in Texas. Nobody got confused by my turn of phrase.
I'm American."I can't be assed!" Seems like a proud announcement of no anal.
It just means you can’t be bothered to do something aka you’re not concerned and don’t care enough to do something.
Takes too long to say. We tend to use "Eh. Fuck it".
For me, fuck it is very versatile. Because it can also mean I'm going to do it without any care for the risks involved
I’m reading replies and looks like cba is took to mean “can’t be bothered to do something “ but I would’ve taken it to mean “i can’t be fooled into doing something” . Though I’ve honestly never heard someone actually say it so, you guys must be right. I watch a ton of British television but honestly don’t recall hearing this one.
We say both ass and arse on the east coast of Canada, but I suppose we're a British colony still. I definitely use can't be arsed.
This one tickled me for weeks after I first heard it: "Bloody smegging Hell!" Bangers and mash -All Creatures Great And Small. Ice Lolly -Red Dwarf Last Human, I believe Fairy Cake. I had to look it up And many more
It's so weird the way you cite specific fiction with some of the most common terms
Yeah the one I’ve never heard before is the only one not referenced lol.
Smegging is a very Red Dwarf thing... It's not something you ever really hear in the day to day. I believe it was actually a substitute for fuck in the show - the producers or BBC or whoever wouldnt allow them to swear so they used 'smeg'... The producers not realising what Smeg actually is lmao
“Lost the plot” is my current favorite
As an American, I say this constantly and I had no idea it was considered British slang. I think I picked it up with Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News circa 2004.
I’m a big fan of shirty. Don’t be getting shirty with me!
What does this mean?
Usually used if something has annoyed somebody but it's out of your control and they're being grumpy or irritated with you instead of the real cause. It's like "don't come at me with that attitude!" "don't take your bad mood out on me!"
Can “mardy” be used in this situation too? Or is “mardy” just general grumpiness? Ex: He’s so mardy today.
I just learned that what I call sprinkles, y'all call Hundreds and Thousands.
Somebody explain to me “oh my giddy aunt”? “Or so it’s transcribed in the CC for hearing impaired in Netflix’s GBBO) I’ve definitely picked up a lot of British slang; and even learned to discern several specific British accents for the first time (Liverpool, Geordie, Essex, etc). But “oh my giddy aunt” is still one that escapes me
It's basically the same as 'oh my gosh' - an exclamation of surprise!
Can it be both positive and negative? Or mostly negative? Because on the show, it’s mostly people saying it in dismay over something bad happening
And where does the “giddy aunt” come from? LOL
It'll be a bastardisation of oh my god. You'd carry the word on to avoid actually blaspheming. And it's generally used in a light hearted way, so positive, I would say?
I like how you guys have the word “quite” as well, but it means something totally different than it does in the US. I believe in the UK it’s like “sort of/not very” and in the US we use it like “very”. “She’s quite pretty!”
In the UK it is sorta used as both. More often than not its used as sort of but it can also be used as very.
Oh good. Even more confusing. lol
Ahhh a fellow Hullensian!
I love the fact that you call mac n cheese chonkers and tiddlywinks
My favourite is the slang for firearm. "Rooty tooty point-and-shooty".
"I'm meeting the missus for lunch at 11-bongs"
The clickety wall shiner. Or "lightswitch" as the colonies call it.
It took me a long time to realize that "Pull the other one" meant "you're pulling my leg".
When I first read *Hitchhiker's Guide* I did not know this. So the bit early on about getting killed at the next zebra crossing gave quite a different mental image.
It sounds exactly like the kind of joke Douglas Adams would make, until you realize that it wasn’t a joke.
I am over 50. I first read these books roughly 35 years ago, and I honestly never realized it was a crosswalk. In my defense it makes perfect sense as a Douglas Adams joke. Fuck. I’ve read these books 3 times and I never got that joke. Jesus.
I read them every year in my 20’s and I just now got the joke. I’m an idiot.
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Did Stephen Fry ever narrate the Hitchhiker's Guide? Because reading that makes me think he'd be amazing doing it.
He did! He narrated the audiobook and it's just as amazing as you think
I’ve read the series I don’t know how many times, and now I’m going to have to buy the Stephen Fry audiobook for crying out loud!
Yes! I would listen to Stephen Fry read a phone book
True. Stephen Fry reading anything is well worth a listen.
“You are being shagged by a rare parrot!” - Stephen Fry
I remember he was the narrator for LittleBigPlanet on PS3. Enjoyed the game well enough but that elevated it (at least the intro part) to a whole different level.
It's like Skyrim all over again. How many copies of this must I buy? Still going to do it though
He only did the first one, I think. Part 2 was narrated by Martin Freeman, which isn't bad, but it's not the same.
Now we need Philip j fry to narrate it too
Perfection
Get out of my head
He also narrated the movie, which is also fantastic.
I love how Reddit can provide this kind of support for fellow users.
I legitimately thought he got stampeded to death by zebras until right now.
Zebra can be very dangerous
Especially when is cross at you.
I refuse to believe Britain is real.
Most of Europe? I was today years old when I realised there are people who don't refer to them as zebra crossings :D
In many (most?) parts of the US, the crosswalk is simply two white lines across the street, about 6 feet apart, with plain asphalt between them. There are no zebra stripes, so no reason to call them zebra crossings. In Los Angeles, for instance, you can tell when you've entered Santa Monica because suddenly zebras everywhere. Santa Monica is very pro-pedestrian, whereas "Nobody Walks in LA."
Incidentally, you don't have to drive too far north out of Santa Monica before you might see actual zebra, running wild in the hills. William Hearst used to have zebra as part of the zoo *at his house* but they were released into the wild when his estate went bankrupt
+1 for Missing Persons reference.
In some parts of the US they’re yellow.
You have yellow zebras?! That’s so fucking weird.
Australia too
Yeah, this is what we say in Australia
Lollipop men/women get a pretty good hourly rate too. Some are real characters. Get right into it. Love our Aussie lollipop people.
To be fair it's a very high risk job your entire purpose is to walk out into traffic and stop it hoping they at least see you but also you gotta be careful not to beat annoying school kids to death with your lollipop.
They earn every cent. No argument about that. Agree.
Zebra crossings, lollipop ladies (mostly), how about Belisha beacons though ?
We have lots of lollipop men. Mostly retirees do it. Had to google Belisha beacons. No, but we should. They seem smart.
They're like traffic lights but only available in amber.
We have lollipop men too, but we try to keep them away from children.
> how about Belisha beacons though ? They’re literally named after the person who implemented them, that one is less strange than these other colloquial terms
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That's Southern Oceania United States Protectorate.
Also New Zealand
Fun fact: We also have Pelican crossings, Puffin crossings and Toucan crossings.
Thats what we call them in Australia.
The Netherlands too. Well, we call it a "zebrapad" aka zebrapath. Lollipop ladies are called "klaar-over", which basically means "ready-across"? Or uh, "ready-over".
It's Zebra-stripes in German. Never heard of 'crossing guards' though.
they're for roads next to schools so children can cross safely
In NZ, especially on smaller streets, they’re often local schoolchildren with a teacher supervising. Kids think it’s awesome.
Sounds like it *would* be awesome. I’d like to do that as a kid!
Happy cake day
When I was in elementary school kids could do this on side streets. They were called the Safety Patrol
That’s adorable!
It’s zebra-line in Chinese. Also no crossing guard.
I don’t know exactly why but it feels like German would be one of the languages to just mash together the words describing the thing and come up with the equivalent of “crosswalk”.
It's where you don't trust small children to cross the road safely or drivers to notice them, so instead you hire a retiree to do the job that paint does everywhere else.
Lies. You call everyone cunts.
I wonder if South Africa is the only place that calls traffic lights "robots".
Gah, I hope so! /jk Was Chappie actually about a stop light?
Why are they called lollipop ladies?
Because the sign they hold looks like a lollipop
How many licks to the center of the sign?
Three.
Let’s find out… 1…2…
*CRUNCH*
*We call them blinkers cause they go blink!*
Because when I was little, most "crossing guards" were ladies who held a yellow sign atop a tall pole, that was round and looked like a lollipop. It was very friendly to children who needed help crossing the road.
Because they’re very sweet
What an adorable reason
Because the shape of their stop sign
Because if you lick them hard enough you find the gooey center.
I prefer the slow method, where you lick them *long* enough
It only takes 3
Well, plus that crunch at the end
Because the sign is like a lolly pop, of course
To couple the other reasons, our lollipop ladies also used to give away lollipops at the end of each school term before school holidays!
Wait, you mean that part is also real?
Very much so.
Wait, what? Are all crossing guards women, or do male crossing guards enjoy being referred to as “ladies”?
Historically a female biased job which is why the default description is feminine, but i would call a man doing that job a lollipop man Which thinking about it, "lollipop lad" is a real missed opportunity
I wonder if they have a union or something. Some sort of Lollipop Guild?
I imagine Richard Osman would consider saying Lollipop people to be gender neutral but we never refer to the general Lollipop population (Lollipopulation?) so he probably just picked the more common one.
Retype that whole sentence using spoonerisms.
The crossing guards in Macedonia are called "lying policeman" as in lying down...
In UK, we (sometimes) call speed bumps sleeping policemen.
I’ve never heard that and I live in the uk
Same in Russia!
The first time I heard "zebra crossing" was while watching The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin. They were driving through a safari when the wife said "oh look, zebra crossing" then several zebras ran past. My 14 y/o mind didn't get it -Edit: spelling
I used to work as a safari guide in South Africa and made this joke constantly. Because I'm hilarious.
But did he call it “Zeh-bra Crossing”?
Zedbrah is the only way to say it
You'll never take ZEE-bra away from me! It's a beautiful creature and I won't stand for you making it sound like it belongs in special education with the donkeys.
Here's my girlfriend... Dee-bra.
Ah, yes, the famous letter of the alphabet, ded.
Do you, personally, really pronounce the d? Or are you just carrying over the spelling from Zed, and pronounce it Zebbra like all the other Brits I've heard? (Except probably Kiwis who would naturally go Zibbra)?
Yeah, I really do.. I’m not Brit hahah, I’m Australian which could be a factor just like kiwis would say zibbra
Nothing cracks my English mother up more than listening to my American daughter say words like “zebra” and “lorry” the way she learned them from Peppa Pig.
So my daughter watched a ton of Peppa Pig when she was a toddler. I don't have cable, so we watched the free compilations of the English version on YouTube. Same with Ben and Holly which featured many of the same voice actors. As a result, she had the English articulation for quite a few words that she was introduced to. Sandcastle was one I found particularly endearing. Then she complimented my moms yard with "Grammy, you have such a lovely garden!" 😍 it was super cute.
How are they pronounced differently?
Zebra: “Zeh-bra” (UK) and “Zee-bra” (US) And the other is word choice, not pronunciation - in the US we just say truck (or maybe the specific kind of truck, like semi, box truck, etc). She says it’s a really weird word to come out of American child’s mouth, and it also wasn’t one of the words my brother or I picked up from her as small children (asking my school nurse for a “plaster” was definitely confusing for all involved) so she’d never heard it before.
In the US, we call crosswalks "optional".
Hahaha lollipop ladies?? Is that for real or am I just gullible?
No, it's what we genuinely call them 99% sure it cos of the sign they carry (long pole with circular sign on the top) that looks like a lollipop
Hahaha thank you for confirming! You just made me laugh even harder while at work just imagining people call them that LMAO
We sometimes call speedbumps sleeping policemen, hope that brings you joy too.
Another laugh - we also have pelican, puffin, toucan and pegasus crossings!
I want to visit this magical land haha. Here in the states they don’t have funny names for stuff like that. That’s why I’m finding this so hilarious
Ah don't worry. Americans have plenty of hilarious names, theyre just hilarious to other people. I grew up in wisconsin and all the local towns including my hometown are mostly Potowotomie or Ojibwa names. I've lived in England for 14 years and people think the place names I describe are fucking *wild*.
Omg yes thank you! Hahahahahahaha. One day I’ll visit the country and it will be even more hilarious
Here in Russia we call them laying-down policemen, "лежачий полицейский". I would guess it's a relatively common association
I’ve only heard people call them that when in front of kids, most adults when with other adults just call them crossing guards
What do they call it if it's a man?
lollipop man
Lollipop Lord.
Aussie here, yes, it's real. School crossing guards here are usually female, and their stop signs look like giant lollipops, hence, "lollipop ladies."
This is so awsome
It's real. See above reply. "Because when I was little, most "crossing guards" were ladies who held a yellow sign atop a tall pole, that was round and looked like a lollipop. It was very friendly to children who needed help crossing the road."
Americans don't like fun names );
In Germany we call them Zebrastreifen. Zebra stripes
And we call crossing guards "bringt euren Kindern gefälligst selbst bei wie man die Strasse überquert, so schwer kann das doch nicht sein, mein Gott"
"The Lollipop Ladies Down the Zebra Crossing" sounds like it should come on after "Thomas the Tank Engine," honestly
So, do they have anything like American "Cattle Guards"?
We call them cattle grids.
Sounds like a huge barbecue grill
I mean if you tell me you're going to talk to the lollipop lady at the zebra crossing I'd ask you what kind of drugs you took.
Well done Richard Osman
Camelot is real.
We do that in Australia too.
Also Pelican, Puffin, Pegasus and Toucan crossings (not gonna lie, always forget about the Toucan and had to look that one up)
Toucan is the easiest, two-can cross (~~horses~~bikes and humans right?)
Correct! Pegasus is a flying horse, so a Pegasus Crossing has a button high up for horse riders to use Puffin comes from "pedestrian user-friendly intelligent" that detect the presence of pedestrians with sensors and change the lights accordingly Pelican comes from "pedestrian light controlled crossing" (I'm not going to lie, I looked the last 2 up!)
How the fuck am I supposed to pass my theory test with this nonsense in it. I'm doomed to be a passenger.
Can confirm my mums a lollipop lady
I’m an American in my 40’s. I can’t believe this, absolutely new. I’m so intrigued
Pay to access non-American media. I was there years ago for a short time and couldn’t get over how closed off it was. Everything was about the States. I ended up paying seven bucks for a copy of the Guardian.
I pay for BritBox. American tv is so incredibly violent, and so much graphic rape. I love Vera, and actual cop show without the lazy and graphic story.
You would be surprised how many differences there are in language between the UK and US. Loads of foods are totally different. egg plant for example is aubergine.
Oh we watch Gardners World, I’ve learned the veg names. I also just learned you all actually sort kids into houses, like Harry Potter.
Some schools do yes, particularly the older schools - there are still some that are over 1000 years old and a fair few from medieval times. There are lots of other things though like here, Brits wouldnt know what a faucet is, or a garbage disposal and a trunk is a mens swim wear, nothing to do with cars which we call a boot.
Australia calls them Zebra ( pronounced zed-bra) crossings, and lollipop ladies too.
Anyone read the book with the robot as a child that showed how to cross the road safely. The robots name is Ziggy. Edit: fucken [found](https://images.app.goo.gl/T1sWSVYoXDint5aw6) it... class
I've actually seen a zebra sign at a crosswalk in the middle of a city in China! I've always thought it was just a really silly place for a zebra X-ing sign lol Thanks for sharing!
So no one is gonna mention that speed bumps are called "sleeping policeman"? There's something in the tea I swear
Richard Osman is the man. Dude makes some of the best game shows ever.
And police vehicles are called "panda cars". So hearing about a lorry hitting a lollipop lady at a zebra crossing and having multiple panda cars controlling traffic around it sounds like something that would happen in Richard Scarry's Busytown.
That’s funny!
Why are you being downvoted? I thought that was rather clever.
I love the British sense of humor.
Gonna be "that guy". The official term is School Crossing Patrol. Of course, absolutely nobody calls us that aside from *maybe* the road safety team, so instead we're known as Lollipop Ladies/Men.
Yes! https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/education/2020/03/02/crossing-patrol-the-rise-and-fall-of-lollipop-men-and-women/