Thread: Illogical American expressions?

Originally Posted by jx2mad

We were in England 9 years ago. Cor Blimy! What a mix of languages. I related this to a young English couple on our cruise ship. They said if they drive to the next village 10 miles from where they live they cannot understand them. Is this the start of the decline of the British nation? The announcer on the train from London to Southport was completely unintelligable.

I doubt it is the 'start'. In 1973 I stayed at a farmstay in Devon. All communication had to be in writing with our hosts - spoken English (Devon vs Australian) was mutually unintelligible.

Originally Posted by jx2mad

We were in England 9 years ago. Cor Blimy! What a mix of languages. I related this to a young English couple on our cruise ship. They said if they drive to the next village 10 miles from where they live they cannot understand them. Is this the start of the decline of the British nation? The announcer on the train from London to Southport was completely unintelligable.

It's been that way forever. The amount of different dialects there is huge and even I as a pure bred Pom struggle to understand some of them.

Originally Posted by jx2mad

We were in England 9 years ago. Cor Blimy! What a mix of languages. I related this to a young English couple on our cruise ship. They said if they drive to the next village 10 miles from where they live they cannot understand them. Is this the start of the decline of the British nation? The announcer on the train from London to Southport was completely unintelligable.

I guess you have not been on a train in Sydney in recent years!

Originally Posted by Homestar

It's been that way forever. The amount of different dialects there is huge and even I as a pure bred Pom struggle to understand some of them.

Ha, yeah!
I used to be able to tell the difference in accent/dialect in the next town, about 15km away from where I lived as a child.
I'd struggle to get the general area right these days when trying to pick an accent.

Some of the stronger accents are really easy to pick though - Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle)!
I remember going to the football (not soccer!) to an FA Cup game between my home team Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United sometime in the late 90s.
We met some Newcastle lads in the local Maccas before the game and had a chat. We each spent more time going "eh? what?" and asking each other to repeat what they were saying because we could barely understand what the others were saying!

There's still a difference between accents/dialects/slang etc. and just being plain lazy with language though.

I still remember when I first moved to Melbourne was in the run up to the AFL grand final and I was listening to the radio on my way to work when the newsreader uttered the words:

"Coming up - all the deets on the comp to win tix to the granny!"

I finally realised she was talking about the "details of the competition to win tickets to the grand final"

I'm not phased by some american sayings, what gets me is how do you get Sodder from the word SOLDER, esp. when it is spelt the same as English, do they (yanks) pronounce OLDER as Odder, then there's Fitty for Fifty, spelt the same as English.
The Willys car or Jeep is Pronounced Willis, where the **** does that come from, then Noos for News, does a cow Moo or do they Mew. Dook for Duke, they might spell Aluminium wrong, but most all in the "Table of Elements" end with an "ium", guess the Yank that named it didn't notice.
Mispronouncing a word in American that is spelt the same in english is just stoopid, Regards Frank.

Gee whizz, Frank, get "Off Of " it

Steve

So why don't the Yanks just go metric?

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

So why don't the Yanks just go metric?

It's been proposed a few times before in my lifetime. I think the Imperial System has too big of a foothold.....