I'm not usually a nit-picker but this is bugging the hell out of me.

POSTED BY: ebonezer
UPDATED: Monday, April 18, 2005 23:22
VIEWED: 36713
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EBONEZER

Monday, February 7, 2005 5:44 AM

I love how this thread that i started refuses to die. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

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Four out of five gynecologists recommend calling Ebo a girl.

OLDFAN45

Monday, February 7, 2005 10:05 PM

Ebo, where else can we discuss the whole "coke/soda/pop" and mayo-vs-ketchup-vs-godknowswhat on fries?

When I was a kid (American sense, I have never been a goat unless you're the first of my ex-wives) my Texan mother called them "devil water" and her response to my pleadings to have a root beer or whatever was always, "You can't have devil water!" But she was weird in so many ways.

As to fried potato toppings, the correct answer is half mayo/half ketchup stirred until almost combined, then as much Tabasco as your lily-livered non-Texan tongue will endure but a minimum of a teaspoon, insert fried food and chew.

The Outback Steak House things are more like baked potatoes than fries with all that glop all over them.

DEBBIEBUK

Monday, February 7, 2005 10:55 PM

Thanks for bouncing this one folks.

My contribution: "Put wood in 't hole" which seemed to be near the start is actually Yorkshire, not UK-wide, and lot of (soft) Southerners wouldn't know what you meant. I can say that 'cos I was born in Dover (Kent) which is pretty much South for the UK.

Mayo on chips - definitely a north German, Netherlands and Belgian thing. They have this special stuff in Netherlands which is called mayo but is more like a sauce and has a lot of other stuff in it besides just eggs, oil and mustard.

My kids speak a strange kind of Suffolk/ US hybrid from growing up here in Suffolk UK and watching too much US tv. "Doodie" seems to mean cute/ small/ really neat, that's certainly Suffolk though may have travelled a bit, but they use "pissed" in the US way, i.e. cross, not "pissed" in the UK way - intoxicated.

I fell foul of the "fag" thing once many years ago, it was what we always called cigarettes. One day, hanging around outside a gig waiting for the band, the US bass player, a hero of mine, asked if anyone had a cigarette, we passed the message on, translating it to "fag". He got a bit narked (is that a UK-only word?).

Last bit - even more years ago, my grandmother was a secretary for a large pharmaceutical firm and it was part of her job to actually re-type documents from English into American and vice versa. Apparently executives in those days were less globally aware and found them hard to read in the "wrong" language, a lot of the chemicals gained letters or lost them, e.g. sulphur to sulfur etc.

Weird

Debbie

INDIGO

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 1:59 AM

Hee, fun thread! I adore regional language differences.
Responding to dietcoke: I'm a Montanan too ('though I've traveled around quite a bit and now live in Washington State) -- I pretty much remember referring to them carbonated beverages as pop, unless you were ordering a "phosphate" from a real old fashioned soda shop, or yes, having a scotch and soda. I was astounded in Texas to find that folks enjoyed throwing a handful of salted peanuts into thier warm, flat coke. I thought that it mirrored the humidity too much.
Now for a shake, I remember calling them malts -- fraps (or rather frappes) are whipped coffee, milk and ice as we use here in WA. I heard them called frappes in Greece too -- where I got in a rather (several weeks) long mis-understanding over the term "instant coffee" with one of my Greek co-workers. *I* thought that the term referred to the rather nasty reconstituted free-dried coffee called Nescafe, but my friend was referring to filter coffee. To a Greek, if it isn't boiled up on the flame in a certain small pot and served in little cups, it just isn't coffee.
But then again, I niether like sodas, fries (the only way that I would touch them is if they are done thick cut with the skin on and with vinagre), or shakes anymore at all. Still, put my brews in a bag so I can take them up the crick and slog them down.
I joke with my non-MT friends that Montanans have no long vowels -- from a combination of Scandinavians, Native Americans, Germans, Poles, British Islanders, and an odd influx of Confederates we forgot our long vowels. The northern part of the state blurs phonetically with Canada as well.
My stepmother came to Montana from "back east": from NY's the Bronx and upstate. I used to be shocked when she assured me that we had accents, a *drawl* none-the-less. It took getting away to realize that she was right. Everybody does and we all think that we are normal -- and we are all right in that!
I felt completely idiotic one time when I left my train in New Jersey, looking for Newark and couldn't communicate past our accents with the train steward as to whether or not I was in Newark or New York. This was a long day.
Having travelled more since then and made many more faux pax's and mental twists I'm happy to note that my spelling habits and lingua are more nicely intertwined with other parts of the globe. I would really, really recommend to fellow Americans (because I have noticed our overwhelming tendency to be insular) to travel, to spell your words differently, to adopt new phrases!
It's cool to have PinYin interspersed in the (basically) English universe of Firefly.

Woman at reception desk of snooty LA art gallery to artist (said with a seductive sneer): "You make me hangry."
Artist guy, not sure that he's hearing her right: "What? You're angry at me, for what?"
"No, you make me hangry!"
"I don't understand."
She stands up, now frustrated and definately looking angry, but then again rather sultry too: "Stupid! You are beautiful, and I am hangry for you."
"Oh. Oh, OK."
--imperfectly remembered lines from dumb 80's movie. Eurotrash meets LA art crowd.

Indigo

MONTANAGIRL

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 2:14 AM

Yeah, another Montana browncoat! (Although I seem to be the only one still living here.)

I agree, it's pop.

Packer fans welcome.
All others tolerated.

THATWEIRDGIRL

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 2:45 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ebonezer:
I love how this thread that i started refuses to die. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

I think we can keep up for a year...don't ya?

let's see, I've talked about pop, fries, and thongs, what next...

I've heard PepsiMilk is a fantastic drink. A must!

www.thatweirdgirl.com

DIETCOKE

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 3:10 AM

Interesting take on things. Where in Montana were you from? I'm from Glasgow but now live in Englewood, NJ just 25 mins. from midtown.

The more you travel, the more you understand that we simply don't understand....

INDIGO

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 3:34 AM

Heya dietcoke;
I was born in Missoula and raised up in the frick'n backwoods of western MT -- uhm, with a liberal schooling in the big towns of Helena, Kalispell, Bozeman, and Deer Lodge among the many and tawdry. I don't know New Jersey much but spent a nicely hellish winter in Cape May for USCG bootcamp.

MontanaGirl, where'you at?

Indigo

MONTANAGIRL

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 4:00 AM

I'm originally from central Montana (Hobson), but I've been in Bozeman since college.

Packer fans welcome.
All others tolerated.

SASJA

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 3:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AKS:
Re: the Swedish/Norwegian discussion.

I'm Swedish, so perhaps I can bring some insight into this.

Everyone's been pretty much right this far. Swedish and Norwegian are different languages. However, not very long ago (we're talking hundreds of years of course) they were indeed as closely "related" as dialects. I have almost no trouble whatsoever understanding spoken Norwegian (unless they're speaking a very strange dialect). However, and this is perhaps interesting for people who're not from Scandinavia, when it comes to *reading*... give me a novel in Danish any day!! Yep, it's easier to read Danish, but I don't understand a word of what they're saying. Odd, perhaps.

There are studies done about this from time to time and the resluts show that Norwegians understand spoken Swedish and Danish very well. Most Danes don't understand spoken Swedish, though, and most Swedes don't understand spoken Danish. However, Danes understand spoken Norwegian rather well, as do Swedes.

The explanation for this is (apparently) that Danes have pretty much the same words for things as Norwegians do and we Swedes have pretty much the same pronunciation (to a certain degree).

I'm betting everyone is *more* confused now. :D

I'm Danish and don't usually have trouble communicating with Swedes and Norwegians. I rarely have trouble understanding them (some regional dialects are impossible, though), but occasionally, I come across someone (usually a Swede) who has real troubles following what I'm saying, but I think it's a question of trying it a few times - it's like when you move from Northern England to Australia: People speak a little funny and some words are different, so on your first day you can have some problems when people speak too fast but you'll get used to it in a few weeks. I think both Danes and Swedes understand Norwegian best, and Norwegians understand Swedish best.

On the whole fries issue - Danes used to eat them with 'remoulade', a bright yellow conditioner which is sort of pickles blended with mayo. But these days most places are more internationally minded and serve them with a choice of ketchup or mayo.

One thing that kept being funny after I moved from London to New York was the word 'pissed' (hope I'm not offending anyone) - in American it means angry, in British English it means drunk (or angry). That always made for some nice misunderstandings. I'd think it could be even more fun going the other way: telling your friends about some outrageous wrong that was done to you and having them believe you were drunk at the time, heh.

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