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

Super, UH! And it'll all be official-like!

Just as I hit "Post Message" I remembered that they call the townhouses in Brooklyn brownstones ...

Is a townhouse necessarily adjoined to its neighbours?

I'm not sure which I use, probably either.

Anyone with a townhouse in the UK probably pronounces it 'tinehice' and uses it when he's 'up' from his country seat...

you cynic yiou

'E lives in a house, a very big 'ouse in the cantray...

Oh, and I say 'eye-ther' and 'nigh-ther', except if I were to lapse into broad De'mshur, in which case it comes out with a sort of 'uy' sound (not quite 'oi' as comedians and bad actors would have you believe, it's a slightly more strangulated sound than that).

i say eye-ther/neye-ther as well.

i always wondered exactly what a 'brownstone' was.

and when i mentioned the 'yard'/'garden' thing, i was thinking with grass and flowers. i've never lived anywhere that didn't have grass and flowers, and i've always played 'in the yard', and i tell my kid to 'stay in the yard'. on the weekends, hubby and i do 'yardwork' (which i would call gardening if i had a vegetable garden) i don't have 'flower garden', i have 'flower beds'.

have i succeeded in adding even more confusion to the mix?

Nope, that all makes perfect sense to me broe. Thanks for the info about townhouses Shea. Any house in Britain which is joined to other houses on both sides is called a terraced house, and a row of those is called a terrace. Does that equate to a townhouse? I was under the impression that a brownstone was just a particular style of building, terraced or not. Here's another one
UK semi-detached = US duplex
That one's not strictly true, because two semi detached houses are usually mirror images of each other, with their own front and back gardens, whereas from what I've seen, a duplex is more like a single building on one plot of land which has been designed as two dwellings.

Do you have 'bungalows' in the US? I wonder, because the word came to Britain from Imperial India...

Yeah, there are lots of them. In many neighbourhoods it's unusual to see a two storey house, especially once you get out of the city centre, even in NYC. They don't have a specific name for them though AFAIK. As far as I can tell, most of the family houses in Austin are bungalows. Comes from India you say? I thought it was just because the builder said "Let's bung a low roof on it" Ah, the old ones are the best.

*groan*

Yes, I meant the word, rather than the buildings themselves, Goshers.

How about 'maisonettes'? 'Bedsits'? 'Tenements'?

Maisonettes I'm not sure about. A bedsit I think would just be 'a room'. Round these parts, a studio flat is called an efficiency apartment. And I've never been exactly sure of what a tenement is....

On a particularly timely note...
UK Midsummer's Day = US First Day of Summer
The same goes for the winter solstice I guess.

i've heard of tenements, i've never been sure of exactly what they are, tho. taken in the context i've heard the term used i've usually assumed it meant some kind of low-income, poverty level housing.

i've heard bungalow, too, never was exactly sure about that one, either. sounds exotic (didn't know origin), i assumed it was some kind of small, one or two bedroom 'starter' type house. is it something similar to a 'ranch' type house?

ranch (if you don't know) doesn't refer to a house on a ranch, it is a one story house with a standard layout. most will have a primary entryway to a 'family room' or 'living room', with a small 'dining room' and kitchen (or sometimes just a kitchen) behind that. off to one side will be a hallway which will lead to a bathroom and two or three standard bedrooms, one front and one back with the bathroom on the front side for a two bedroom, or two front and one back with the bathroom on the back side for a three bedroom.

Bungalows are called cottages on Long Island. They're usually summer homes by the beach or in towns near a beach. We've got lots of cottages in Blue Point. In fact, at the time that I was deluded enough to think I could afford my own place, I was considering a cottage.

And a one-room apartment is called a studio apartment here. It's usually a large room with a pull-out sofa bed as the sleeping arrangements ...

A cottage here is usually a small country dwelling. I think it formerly had a very specific meaning, but nowadays seems to be any rural house not big enough to be a mansion!
A bungalow here is any single storey house; sounds very similar to broe's ranch house.

There's summer homes, and there's summer homes. These cottages are very small, usually only one or two bedrooms.

Tenement is a Scottish word. It describes a terrace of large buildings divided into small low rent flats, usually of Victorian age, where the Scottish working class poor lived in the city. In the past these would often have shared bathrooms and toilets with all other families in the same block.
Nowadays, where they still stand, they would have been converted so that all have their own internal plumbing.

*wonders if he should mention that "cottage" is also a verb*

A verb *and* a noun, in a particular sense of the word