[Closed] Americanisms - who wins?

I'd have to concede cellphone is better than mobile phone.

Do what? Do ****ing what??? 'Cellphone'? WTF is that??

'Mobile' 'phone is far, far better. It's a 'phone, that is mobile. WTF is a 'cell', other than something I've sat in on far too many occasions?

THREAD CREATION FAIL STRAIGHT AWAY WITH ORIGINAL POST/ER.

WTF is a 'cell'

it's the region serviced by a mast...

Winningest!

I don't know how to start this reply to be honest...

Americanisms boil my blood to be honest, they really do.

My children watch those American children programmes like Hannah Montana, Sonny with a Chance (some of those girls are quite fit!), those two wee ****s who used to be in a hotel and are now on a ****ing boat, plus many more

Get America out of our lives, please!

My 4 year old daughter asked me what 'toadally' means the other day! Too much nikelodeon methinks...

Cell sounds terrible but cellphone's OK by me.

it's the region serviced by a mast...

IE, a region then? So it's a 'regionphone'.

Region indeed. Serviced by a mast? You've been grotting far too much.

A 'cell' is something you spend the night in if you've been naughty. At worst it's a singular thingy you use to power an electrical device.

In France a mobile is called a 'portable'.

Or is that a laptop?

IE, a region then? So it's a 'regionphone'.

no, it's called a 'cell'

You've been grotting far too much.

I'm not familiar with that verb

A 'cell' is something you spend the night in if you've been naughty

a small room
a component of an electrical battery
a part of an organism
a group of people working together in secret
a section of a thunderstorm
that's all the others I can bring to mind now

Elf - cellphone makes a lot of sense when you consider that each mast centres a 'cell'. As opposed to a satellite phone. Which is also mobile.

"Sidewalk" beaks "pavement" (function vs. construction)
"Boot" beats "trunk"

no, it's called a 'cell'

Who by, Americans?

So, it could quite easily be called a sector, a compartment, a pod, a space, etc.

No bollocks to that once again I am right it's a telephone what can be mobile there for it is a mobile telephone, a mobile 'phone, a mobile.

DISCUSSION CLOSED

Elfinsafety = failed attempt at humour 🙄

Anyone who thinks Americanisms rock is a douche-bag!

'I could care less what you think' 🙁

ARGH!

Also burgled vs buglarized. Don't know which is technically correct, but I find the latter doth boil my widdle.

Aloominum: Americans correct.

Momentarilty: I love their useage (In a moment) as it winds brits up.

Garden: It is not a back yard.

Car Park: Not a parking lot.

Cellphone: a mobile phone you carry around your house and it uses a base station. I have a Mobile cellular Telephone.

simonfbarnes - Member

WTF is a 'cell'

it's the region serviced by a mast...

It's also another name for a battery, which is why I think you'll find the seppos call them cellphones

Could be worse Germans call them Handis, Handyphone FFS

Sidewalk!!! Oh come on, by extension the road should be called the middledrive.

Inconsistency, that's the problem with the colonials.

Dint the first UK mobile company call itself 'Cellnet'? In some places in the Far East they are called 'Hand Phones' which makes sense to me.

Gotten? Can I get? OMG? For Crying out loud, **** off and pollute somewhere else.....

Cerran wrap is much better than cling film

Reading some of these posts, it's no wonder American culture tends to ignore the rest of the world. There's a reason why the founders went there to escape in the first place.

Little Britain indeed.

It wont be long now until everybody in the world speaks English. That's good for us, less good for the French, Germans, etc. The concession is that it will be American English. Its a shame but that's life. I suspect English English will go the way of Welsh or Gaelic.

Oh, and of course "Elfinsafety" is trying to promote Islam elsewhere on this forum. Here, it's anti-Americanism. He claims to have "grown quite distant from the Muslim side of (his) family" from Islam but I'm wondering what his real agenda is... 👿

Sneakers, highway, cellphone.
Did I mention soccer?

I suspect English English will go the way of Welsh or Gaelic.

I don't think it's 'Little England' to try and retain just a little independant culture is it?

The problems with 'Americanisms' is they are all pervading, just look at the Nicholodian comment above. Our own media buy in the bulk of their stuff from the US these days and this means UK kids grow up thinking they are from the 51st state.

Why is it that the majority of teenage girls these days have voices that sound like they've a 40 a day Capstan full strength habit and litter their dialogue with 'OMG' and 'like' etc? It's telly innit.

Trouble is, we're losing a little bit of our independant identity in the same way that you can go anywhere in the world now and see largely the same stuff....

what's mobile about a mobile phone? Mine just lies there, it hasn't got legs or wheels.

It's not a line it's a queue!

The use of the word 'like' at every inopportune moment. It was, like, totally, like, awsome, like and, like, awsome. like. Eff off!

Oh, and my old line manager used to call everyone 'guys'. Tosser.

Meh to most differences - there's very little right and wrong, just branches of evolution - potato, potato, let's call the whole thing off because it's just not very interesting unless your aim in life is to appear on Grumpy Old Men/Women, which would make you a bigoted, stupid, misguidedly pedantic reactionary arse of the highest order.

The one I don't get, however, is "I could care less", which is American for "I couldn't care less" and is clearly, like, [i]so[/i] duh.

mikertroid - Member

Aloominum: Americans correct.

Only if you can't read. They seem to have missed out a letter.

AluminIum

The only thing that really annoys me is that many of the teenage girls round here literally speak with a mid-Atlantic accent and every other word is 'like'. 😡

"Must have forgotten it at home"

👿

No bollocks to that once again I am right

Fred in shocking self-righteous-inaccurate trolling thread shock

🙄

Gotten?

Ah, the small minded English speaker who forgets that this was once a regularly used word in spoken and written English. Only, they also forget that, when various English speakers escaped various iniquities and domestic tyranny, they took with them words they found had a continued use and value.

Indeed, Americans also developed a simpler relationship between spelling and pronunciation, viz Hertford became Hartford. Same pronunciation, but rationalized spelling.

Oh, and before you try to pick me up on the use of "z" in "rationalized", might I refer you to the standard English usage prior to the "s" becoming the preferred spelling in Britain in the 20th Century.

Thick people. Boils my piss, so to speak.

Deeeeeecal
what happened to sticker or transfer?

Oh, and of course "Elfinsafety" is trying to promote Islam elsewhere on this forum. Here, it's anti-Americanism. He claims to have "grown quite distant from the Muslim side of (his) family" from Islam but I'm wondering what his real agenda is...

Well, obviously, as I'm Brown, my real agenda is about bringing down the decadent Western civilisation and replacing it with Sharia Law.

Come and discuss it with me over a pint.

"Solutioneering" is a current buzzword at our work & i'd wager it's floated across the pond from the States...

Elevator / lift, freeway / motorway, skyscraper/ high-rise, yanks win

"and my old line manager used to call everyone 'guys'. Tosser."

I prefer "chaps" or "gentlemen".

Whilst I'm not anti-French, I slightly prefer the original spellings that came across from Latin: color, flavor. It's all inconsistent though: Brits don't complain about honor. And the yanks named their space shuttle "Endeavour".

Not worth worrying about.

If someone said solutioneering out loud where I work they'd be in for a world of ridicule (or pain depending on various people's mood) and we're a North American owned IT consultancy.

solutioneering

Brilliant 😀

I'm going to see if I can slip that gem in at work

Back on Topic...

A "burglar" "burgles" your house.

In America a "burglarizer" "burglarizes" your house. twits.

So what about a Fanny? 😯

Ho hum - Member

My children watch those American children programmes like Hannah Montana, Sonny with a Chance (some of those girls are quite fit!), those two wee ****s who used to be in a hotel and are now on a ****ing boat, plus many more

loddrik - Member

My 4 year old daughter asked me what 'toadally' means the other day! Too much nikelodeon methinks..

Turn the telly off perhaps?

BoardinBob - Member

Cerran wrap is much better than cling film

Saran wrap... it's a brand name that's become generic, like hoover. 😉

There are only three syllables in Worcestershire.

we have Postmortems in this country not autopsy's..
So stop saying it on the bloody news.

IIRC Aluminum was the original spelling; some bright spark decided to put an extra 'i' in it to make it more like sodium, calcium, helium etc. Like cricket, it didn't catch on everywhere...

Oumaninthenorth is the only one on here who actually seems to know what he's talking about. I would suggest the rest go and buy Bill Bryson's books on language, Made In America and Mother Tongue. Many so-called Americanisms are originally Elizabethan English, like Fall instead of Autumn, and 18thC Americans were complaining bitterly about the introduction of [i]Englishisms[/i] into [i]their[/i] language! Cellphone is perfectly correct, despite what elphinsafety might want to believe, so stop being deliberately obtuse. It's a telephone that operates via a cellular network, one of the very first networks in the UK was BT Cellnet, their logo included a hexagonal honeycomb background which represented the network of cells with a mast at the centre of each. Anyway, English is a totally mongrel language that has words from all over the world in common everyday usage. To start whining like little girls about Americanisms makes you sound like the bloody French with their rules about non-inclusion of outside words into their language. To do that is to deny the growth of a language; it's that inclusive nature of English to absorb new words that makes it the living thing it is, that people all over the world learn to communicate with others all over the world. If you want to be insular move to France.

"buddy". Argh.

To quote Eddie Izzard, "you say 'erb and we say herb, because there's a f'ckin 'h' in it."

hood and or trunk , no its a bonnet and or a boot.

Thousand points of light.

Line dancing.

It was only invented to give Morris Dancers someone to laugh at.

"Garden: It is not a back yard."

It depends. If you're growing tomatoes in it, it's a garden. If you're growing rusty pickups, it's a back yard.

I have a friend who emigrated to America from the north east of england, she now goes on vacation...

no sorry love, your on HOLIDAY, how quickly people forget thier roots

oh I raq , nope its iraq.

. If you're growing tomatoes in it, it's a garden. If you're growing rusty pickups, it's a back yard.

What it you pickup a girl with a rusty back yard next to her ladygarden?

I guess growing tomatoes is bad form.

'happy holidays' 😐

fred you're not really brown I saw that "babba shucks tables of sun" loyalty card in your wallet! 😀

Al was originally alumium, then aluminum, then aluminium

It's also another name for a battery

Fail. Battery = multiple cells. It's called a cellphone because it operates on a cellular network ie made up of cells. They are called cells in the industry I believe.

And for you people complaining about the spelling, it's worth noting that there were no standardised spellings way back, and we just happened to standardise differently. Lots of spellings (including ize and ise) in use for many many years here.

And whoever it was complaining about soccer - you're making a fool out of yourself. There were many different games called football before the 19th century played all over. One day a group got together and standardised some rules, creating Association Football. Not the only kind of course, we also have Rugby Football and Gaelic Football. In Edwardian England the fashion was amongst young dandies to shorten words and put 'er' on the end, like 'badders' for Badminton and so on. Soc is a well known abbreviation for 'Society' or 'As[b]soc[/b]iation', which is where we get 'soccer' from. In public schools where both games were played, you get rugger for Rugby and soccer for Association football.

The word is as English as cream teas I'm afraid. That's tea from the far East, you understand.

Incidentally, my wife is American and she uses a lot of words that to us seem really old fashioned English. She calls wellies 'galoshes' for instance.

Oh and 'yard' and 'garden' mean different things. Yard is the area surrounding your house; garden is the bit you cultivate for flowers and vegetables. Makes sense, no?

You people need to sit down and think about exactly why you don't like Americanisms in a language full of latinisms, greekisms, frenchisms and everwhere elsisms - not to mention Yorkshireisms, cockneyisms and the rest.

It's because you feel threatened and defensive, isn't it?

On the subject of football btw, all the various codes (American, Aussie etc) were set down at around the same time, from games played in certain schools and colleges. So they're all as old (and as valid) as each other.

It's a language,it evolves, the US is the dominant cultural force in the industrialised West, ergo Americanisms dominate the language. Tough shit. It's exactly the same as Romanisms and Normanisms forced the language to evolve.

If language hadn't been force evolved we would stil only have seven words in our entire vocabulary.

Molgrips beat me to it damn his eyes.

Don't you mean god dammit?

I could If you feel more comfortable with that, but I have a personal prefence for " Damn his eyes" it's been in the family for centuries 🙂

Sure. Whatever 🙂

Totally agree wilh Molgrips and jahwomble, language is a melting pot, always has been and always will be!

Anyone getting all nationalistic and pious about it should consider all the 'new' words they have acumulated in their lives that they have happily adopted?!