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

I've been asking around at work, and the concensus seems to be that a freeway is not a toll road, so motorway = freeway doesn't work.

Let's just ditch the roads altogether then ... Our problem is that the names just aren't consistent ...

Ditch ... road ... heehee!

I think that's needlessly picky, since there are no toll motorways as yet.

UK mince(meat) = US ground meat

And maybe loose meat? Was that what Rosanne used to sell at her loose meat shop? I just remamber her selling loose meat sandwiches, but I never found out exactly what they were. Is it like Sloppy Joes?

In the UK mince and mincemeat are not the same. Obviously mince is the one that's meat, whereas mincemeat is what you get in mince pies.

Yeah, mostly, but again, it can be regional. My mother used to send me to the local (London) butcher to buy 1lb of best mincemeat. She might have been saying "minced meat", because the tag in the stuff just said 'mince'; or 'mincemeat' might be a northern thing from where she grew up. That's why I put the 'meat' in brackets (instead of in my sandwich ). They have the other mincemeat over here too, I'm glad to say

I just had mincemeat cookies for the very first time a couple of months ago. They were wonderful! Then my mother made mincemeat pie when I mentioned it!

"Minced meat" would be right, though personally I like to know which meat has been minced, so I go for "minced beef" or "minced lamb". Not sure what the point of that last sentence was, but I'm sure it had one when I started.

The issue of mince, mincemeat, mincedmeat, minced meat opens a whole new can of worms in the English dialect. Interpreting these words is entirely down to the context in which they are used. If you went into a butchers and asked for any of these you would get a bag of ground up cow. Go to a baker or grocer and ask, you will get a compote of fruits and spices to go into pies served at Christmas.

True. I have noticed that minced meat pies tend to go by the name mince and onion pies.

*wonders why it's all go so complicated on this thread recently*

Its worse than that When I go to the chippie down here in Southern England and ask for a fishcake, they give me something involving mashed potato

I reckon it's because we got all the easy ones out of the way early on, and now we're down to the more contentious, or open-to-discussion-words.

It's gotten so complicated because we've exhausted all the easy stuff!

Jinx!

i don't like mincemeat. or minced meat.
^. .^
= ' =

What about Clelba?

sounds like 'minced meat' = 'ground beef'

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/oldelt/language/americanspell.shtml

Cookies and biscuits!
Kerosene and Parrafin!

And also, a note on pronounciation, Americans accent the last syllable of a word, whereas the rest of the English speaking world accents the first syllable. Consider saying perfume the American way and then the English/Australian etc. etc. (ie normal) way.

thanks gosho
altho i personally use the "american" spellings 'cuz i'm lazy (same reason i don't hit the shift key )
if i remember correctly, in school we spelled 'through' and 'goodnight' and such the same way as in the article.... i've always considered the alternate spellings sort of like 'slang' for some reason. come to think of it, that's a bit silly. whoever heard of 'slang spelling'?