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# English language/talk

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Hmm. There's not a lot of those that I for one didn't recognise (in fact, only one, the usage of the Dutch loan word kill). But then I'm Cornish and have a pretty extensive vocabulary. Most of the yiddish terms would be in relatively common usage in London, including a plethora which didn't get included. Most British people know sauerkraut (it's the root of the WWII nickname for Germans: Krauts). The Spanish loan words usually turn up in movies, and I think we all know the words of the Eagles' song. sjc

Let's hear it for good old American "cultural imperialism". You didn't think the English had a monopoly on that, did you? The question should be, not whether you recognize the word, but whether an ordinary speaker of British English ever uses the words. Americans find cole slaw or sauerkraut at every picnic and at any restaurant billed as American or family cuisine. Many Americans would think that a donkey is an extinct or maybe European farm animal quite different from our native wild burros. Those of us who watch British television programming (common on American public broadcasting and Canadian commercial broadcasting) are familiar with many Britisicms but we don't use them as part of our own everyday language.

The Yiddish words came into American English mainly through vaudeville and early Hollywood. How they got to British I can't say. I took these words from academic sources on American English and don't claim to speak British English, either high or low. Do the British ever use "run" to mean crick, I mean, creek?

I feel compelled to point out that I eat fresh homemade sauerkraut here in Russia all the time, a lot more than I did in the U.S. They just don't call it "sauerkraut" here. :-) --LMS

On the American cultural imperialism front, I suspect that the British have picked up the use of "sauerkraut" from the Germans. I could of course be wrong, but I suspect that we imported in along with the food.

Sauerkraut is not uncommon in the UK, although its not that common either Coleslaw is extremely common, both at picnics, and in many curry houses.

This is to my mind a separate point from dialectic differences between American and British. We don't use the word sauerkraut that much because we don't eat that much sauerkraut. On the other hand we never eat zucchinis although we do eat quite a few courgettes. Likewise celentero(sp?) and eggplant for instance. We take our chips back to the shop if they are cold, give our school children rubbers to take to school, and would never ever admit to having fallen on our fannies, particularly not if we are male.

PL

We have a list of words on British English that are common in Britain but not America. What we need is a list that are common in America but not Britain. Any good ideas? -rmhermen

The best reference that I know of is at http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html. I don't know what the copyright is though. Other than that there are at least four Americanisms in my last paragraph. Feel free to use them.

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Last edited June 19, 2001 8:46 am (diff)
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