h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This just about sums it up. It's very - has made lots of people laugh so far.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/british-food-explained-for-americans?bffbuk=undefined&utm_term=.nqxpXL6N4#.tbPeobAvk

Ripley version: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/british-food-explained-for-americans?bffbuk=undefined&utm_term=.nqxpXL6N4#.tbPeobAvk

Thanks for that

We now need one on clothing - or car parts. I could write something similar involving pants, vests and suspenders, not to mention boots and trunks.

First draft of 'pants' ...

First things first: British folks don’t hold up their pants with suspenders. In fact our pants are invariably elasticated, so we don’t need anything to hold them up. What you call pants, we call trousers. Now, trousers aren’t generally elasticated and often need holding up, but not with suspenders. Suspenders hold up ladies’ stockings in the UK. The ‘suspenders’ you refer to to are what we call braces. As well as correcting our wonky teeth, this versatile contraption slings over our shoulders and holds up our trousers. But not our pants. Our pants are what you might call jockey shorts. Our jockeys don’t wear shorts, but breeches. Footballers wear shorts, though; you may have heard of David Beckham. We think he’s a footballer, but he doesn’t play soccer. Not in the UK he doesn’t. In fact he spends much of his time these days modelling pants. That’s jockey shorts to you.

Blood pudding and Yorkshire Pudding are well-known terms in the U.S. And as for the potatoes that go with the Sunday roast, where do you think they originated?

When is an American not an American? When they are a native of any part of North or South America except the US of A. While technically true that we Canadians are American, call us one and you risk an impact of some body part with your face.

When it comes to "chips", in Canada, a meal serve with chips will have french fries. I learned quickly that a meal in the US served with chips will deliver a package of crisps . . .

Peru.

PP.

I'm looking forward to trying poutine someday.

Chips, cheese curds, & gravy!? What's not to like?

Good article!

When I was a kid, we lived in a different country loosely called 'The South'. When I was 11, we moved to 'The North'. (Chicago) We kids actually thought we were leaving the country. One benchmark of foreign travel was food.

One fine summer morning, we left Memphis in the family car at the crack of dawn. A few hours later, we stopped for breakfast in a restaurant. My dad, who had been there before, explained solemnly that we were now in 'The North', and warned us that instead of the sacred grits necessary to a 'real' restaurant breakfast, we would get *potatoes* with our bacon and eggs, because that's how it happened in 'The North'. We felt like immigrants in a strange new land.

We were in Missouri...

PS. BG, everything goes better with gravy. I'm not sure about the cheese curds, though.

Chips and crisps are not as unrelated as you might think http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2016/03/14/surprising-history-potato-chips.html

It was an older diner, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt*, sent his food back to the kitchen, complaining that the fried potatoes were not sliced thin enough and were too soggy.

Read more at: http://www.thenibble.com/REVIEWS/main/snacks/chip-history2.asp

(I'm having poutine as part of supper . . . )

Missouri loves company.

Talking about American food, I'm surprised how well I did in this quiz. It appears to be tailored to New Englanders.

http://blog.dictionary.com/put-down-that-fork-and-take-this-quiz/?param=DcomHP

I got 2 out of 10. It was mostly written in foreign.

PP.

I got 7 out of 10

I got 2 out of 10. It is in foreign.

The UK and USA 2 countries divided by a single language

5/10. USA and USA divided by a single language.


Every once in a while I come across one of these dialect quizzes where you answer multiple choice questions about what you typically call certain things. For example: coke, soda, pop, soda water, soft drink, etc...

The first thorough one of these I found was US specific and kinda picked on people from my area. It pointed out that only people from the greater Houston area call the road that runs along major highways the "feeder road". But what really upset me is the question about that small little black or brown crustacean (bug) that rolls up in a ball when you touch it. People in the Galveston Bay area called it a doodle bug. Most people call it a pill bug, sow bug, or roly poly. But this quiz specifically stated that if you call it a doodle bug you were WRONG!

What the hell!? You're asking for my dialect. That is what I call it.

Anyway, here's the latest, most thorough, broadest and official Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes. You will learn there are some really strange words and phrases people around the world use for rain falling in the sun and that crusty stuff in the corner of your eyes.

http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/

(and they let me choose doodle bug and didn't insult me for doing so. But I do notice that there are no colored dots on the map for us.)

Good survey, BG. That reminds me of a German colleague from when I taught languages in Cologne. His hobby was US dialects. He was forever asking me how I said things, and then telling me I was 'doing it wrong'.

That's what being raised bi-dialectal (Appalachian and Gulf Southern) and then moved around will get you.

I noticed this survey asks you to note where else you might have got the word or phrase. This makes sense for those of us who frequently relocate on different sides of the bag/sack/poke or soda/pop/soft drink lines.

Oh, Elektra calls that thing a sow bug - she's from Philly. My family called it an armadillo bug - but I think we just made that up.

I would just call it a bug.