• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Weird Americanisms (UK vs USA thread)

Status
Not open for further replies.
How can I live more like the British?

I need a crash course.
  • Don't acknowledge strangers, if you really have to talk to someone, talk about the weather, and nothing else.
  • Drink Tea constantly.
  • Whenever you do something, start taking it for granted that it'll probably fail, or go badly, but get used to not caring as much.
  • Use more irony in everyday conversation
  • Learn to take the piss out of yourself, and others (but know where to draw the line)
  • Spend most of your social time in pubs
  • Eat slightly less fast food, binge drink more (every night out should end up with you throwing up on the street, shouting abuse at strangers, and/or singing football anthems)
  • Act more reserved (when sober), you don't want to do anything that will draw attention to yourself.
  • If something, or someone infuriates you then complain about it to your close friends, but do nothing about it, try to never criticise anyone about anything.
  • Males need to stop watching American Football, and start watching nothing but "Soccer", also call "Soccer" "Football"
  • Females need to start obsessively watching dreary, depressing soap opera's such as "Eastenders"
  • Instead of thinking your country is obviously the best, take it for granted that its probably always the worst (except where it comes to Soccer, where you need to continue thinking its the best regardless of how much contradictory evidence piles up).

I'm only talking of the south of England, the north, Scotland, and Hobbit Land may very well be different (I doubt the Scottish have any problems with telling people what they think of them)
 
How to be Welsh.

Don't bother learning how to speak Welsh.
Be very patriotic even though you know your country is rubbish.
Buy a house the next street down from your parents.
Standard Welsh breakfast is coffee and a cigarette.
Never leave Wales, not even to go on holiday. Tenby is just as good as Newquay.
Get a job in a call centre.
If you're a single woman in your forties, dress like you're auditioning for The Valleys.

That's all I can think of for now.
 
We (Americans) also say "restroom" for the bathroom, which is what I generally call it. If I hear someone say "I need to go to the toilet" I cringe a little. You are just announcing you need to expel body waste. Might as well say "excuse me, I am going to take a steamy dump in the ceramic chair behind that door." Maybe that's our Puritan origins or something. I would just say "excuse me I'm just going to the restroom." Then nobody knows for sure what I'm doing. I might just be resting.

Also we do have distinct regional accents. They might be getting a little more blurred as people become more mobile, but they are there for sure. There are even different accents within one city, and variations on regional accents. There's the Mid-Atlantic, for example, which is Philadelphia to Baltimore and includes South Jersey, but I can hear someone with a Baltimore accent and instantly tell its Baltimore not Philadelphia. Those differences are more distinct on the east coast though for sure. And there's a South Carolina accent which is completely different from a Texas accent, although people who didnt know better would call them both "southern." Louisiana has like 40 different accents.
 
We (Americans) also say "restroom" for the bathroom, which is what I generally call it. If I hear someone say "I need to go to the toilet" I cringe a little. You are just announcing you need to expel body waste. Might as well say "excuse me, I am going to take a steamy dump in the ceramic chair behind that door." Maybe that's our Puritan origins or something. I would just say "excuse me I'm just going to the restroom." Then nobody knows for sure what I'm doing. I might just be resting.

Precious little resting goes on in that room, and everyone still knows what you mean.



Personally, I still just use bog, so I'm not really one to talk.
 
It doesn't sound half as bad if you realise it comes from this meaning of the word;

[toilet]
the process of washing oneself, dressing, and attending to one’s appearance

e.g. Sam woke up and attended to his toilet
 
It doesn't sound half as bad if you realise it comes form this meaning of the word;

[toilet]
the process of washing oneself, dressing, and attending to one’s appearance

e.g. Sam woke up and attended to his toilet
I read The Complete Sherlock Holmes recently and "making a toilet" was used often (and I'm positive it's used in Great Expectations as well).
 
We (Americans) also say "restroom" for the bathroom, which is what I generally call it. If I hear someone say "I need to go to the toilet" I cringe a little. You are just announcing you need to expel body waste. Might as well say "excuse me, I am going to take a steamy dump in the ceramic chair behind that door." Maybe that's our Puritan origins or something. I would just say "excuse me I'm just going to the restroom." Then nobody knows for sure what I'm doing. I might just be resting.

What?

Do american "restrooms" have beds in or something?

Someone saying toilet, bog, shitter, loo, restroom, bathroom, toilet, drop the kids off at the pool etc all says the same thing to me, "where your facilities at?. I don't think about what they might get up to, I couldn't care less. It's just a name for a room where secret things happen. That could be picking your nose, rearranging your junk, getting at a spot, or the traditional 1s and 2s.
 
I read The Complete Sherlock Holmes recently and "making a toilet" was used often (and I'm positive it's used in Great Expectations as well).

I listened to the audiobooks semi-recently, and there's an hilarious bit where Holmes a man rushes into his office and they have this exchange (the voice acting just made me crack up as well):

"It is a quarter-past two," he said. "Your telegram was dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking."

Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.

"You are right, Mr. Holmes. I never gave a thought to my toilet."
 
What?

Do american "restrooms" have beds in or something?

Someone saying toilet, bog, shitter, loo, restroom, bathroom, toilet, drop the kids off at the pool etc all says the same thing to me, "where your facilities at?. I don't think about what they might get up to, I couldn't care less. It's just a name for a room where secret things happen. That could be picking your nose, rearranging your junk, getting at a spot, or the traditional 1s and 2s.

Not at all. But my wife has said that she's been in some restrooms with a sofa in them and some chairs. But women are more sociable and like to go to the restroom together to talk or whatever they do in there. Men don't tend to want to spend a lot of time in there.
 
Not at all. But my wife has said that she's been in some restrooms with a sofa in them and some chairs. But women are more sociable and like to go to the restroom together to talk or whatever they do in there. Men don't tend to want to spend a lot of time in there.

Really? wow.

Never seen anything but stalls/urinals/blowers/basins in a restroom.

I don't go to the bog to talk. I even have a personal rule. I never talk to anyone while I'm doing any business in there. Once finished I'll only talk to others if they too have finished.
 
My old office used to have a sofa in the women's washroom. Why, I have no idea (it was after hours and I was curious, I had to peek).

I have no issue with talking to people in there, either. If I'm taking a shit and my boss is taking a shit we'll talk about the state of our reports and data releases and see who can fart louder while expelling detritus.
 
Really? wow.

Never seen anything but stalls/urinals/blowers/basins in a restroom.

I don't go to the bog to talk. I even have a personal rule. I never talk to anyone while I'm doing any business in there. Once finished I'll only talk to others if they too have finished.

Of course, it's the same way here. You look straight ahead and do your business. The most you're supposed to do is nod at someone as you're going out the door and they're coming in. I've never seen those things I mentioned in a men's restroom.

DJ_Lae said:
I have no issue with talking to people in there, either. If I'm taking a shit and my boss is taking a shit we'll talk about the state of our reports and data releases and see who can fart louder while expelling detritus.

It kills me when people come in and do that while they're at the urinal. Also, the random old men that are at a urinal and feel the need to drop their pants completely and just have their underwear on. That's weird and not socially acceptable.
 
E05A13D0-0F09-43D8-B368-9F7F6A559941-29357-0000083F057D52CB_zpsac7bd131.jpg


It has arrived.


It's too late to test it out tonight but ill give it a try in the morning.
 
Ooh, nice. A metal one. Mine's just a cheap plastic one from Sainsbury's.

And what's with the dalek? Is that some sort of condiment dispenser?

I have TARDIS and Dalek salt and pepper shakers and. TARDIS cookie jar.

I did use it this morning-first, because I'm American to make grits. Then I made a spot of tea.

"Spot" of tea??? Oh God....what's happened to me??

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I need to use it some more. My first inclination was to fill the whole thing up with water, so of course it took longer than expected to boil. I'll try with a more reasonable amount of water for a cuppa or two.
 
I have TARDIS and Dalek salt and pepper shakers and. TARDIS cookie jar.

I did use it this morning-first, because I'm American to make grits. Then I made a spot of tea.

"Spot" of tea??? Oh God....what's happened to me??

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I need to use it some more. My first inclination was to fill the whole thing up with water, so of course it took longer than expected to boil. I'll try with a more reasonable amount of water for a cuppa or two.

Now you need to get hold of some biscuits we call Hob Nobs.
 
IT Crowd alone is enough to make me love Britain for ever and ever. British comedies are usually so much better than American ones.
 
I don't even want to think about Squidy's cups of Tea.

I bet 4 times out of 5 when he gets to the halfway point his cup is just full of the gunky remains of multiple biscuits that have repeatedly fallen in :(

I'll just tell myself that maybe he's ultra skilled at dunking.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom