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American and British Vocabularies | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 76 08 August 2008 at 1:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't think I've ever had anyone say pitcher in normal English here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6085 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 34 of 76 08 August 2008 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is very interesting for Americans! BE uses "have" a lot more, correct? I'd say, "I gotta go now", "I already read that book", or "I lost my wallet". I'm sure that's very American! I also had to learn "got" as opposed to "gotten" (AE-- "have you gotten it yet?"). What would you say for "Autobahn"? Would you say "motorway"? If so, would you say "motorcar" as well? I'm sure there's tons of "car terms" that we could get into.. What would you say for somebody who's mad, angry cheap up-tight slow-thinking Thanks in advance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6085 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 35 of 76 08 August 2008 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
BTW, I'd be interested in hearing from Canadians (Volte?) about this (the use of have + verb) --- do Canadians sway more towards British or are both acceptable like the the US? (For those students wanting to learn English, Canada is very popular choice for an exchange program in Germany.) Edited by Sunja on 08 August 2008 at 2:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ham Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5989 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 36 of 76 08 August 2008 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello, I second Sunja when saying that all food, including soup, comes in tins and for drinks it's cans. I would use motorway, but I don't think anyone would use motorcar apart from to refer to very old fahsioned racing cars.
I would always say rubber, to me an eraser is the little pen that you use to remove ink. If someone was angry I'd usualy say (informally) they were pissed off. If someone was cheap I'd usualy say tight or thrifty. With regard to toilet, some houses may have the bath and toilet in seperate rooms, so I wouldn't say bathroom if it was just a toilet, I'd usualy just say loo or toilet, though I've heard people using bog. Hope that helps. Edited by Ham on 08 August 2008 at 3:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6085 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 37 of 76 08 August 2008 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hi Ham, and welcome! If you use "pissed" to mean angry, then what about "drunk"? (I'm referring to JW's list here, where "pissed" means "drunk".) I've heard of "piss-drunk" before.... Any particular expressions for "slow-witted", or anally retentive? I have to say it's been a while and the German expressions are coming to me quicker than the English ones! -- "pingelig" and "begriffsstutzig". Just curious. It makes for good conversation in my classes.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 38 of 76 08 August 2008 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'd say "I've got to go now", "I've already read that book", and "I lost my wallet". I'd use "have" in formal writing, but the contracted form in speech. "gotta" sounds ok to me, but I pretty much don't use it; "I already read" sounds terrible to me. "I have lost" sounds odd; I can't think of a context where I'd naturally use it, other than perhaps in response to a speaker of another style of English who asked a question like "Have you lost your wallet?", especially during a fairly long interaction. "gotta" is something I hear but don't use; at this point, I spend so little time in North America that hearing it used in actual live speech (as opposed to in movies/books/etc) by Americans makes me goggle a bit. I use both got and gotten; which one I use depends on the phrase, and switching them arbitrarily feels wrong to me. I'd say "Have you got it yet?" if I had to choose between got and gotten, but "Did you get it yet?" seems much more natural to me, and is something I'm much more likely to actually say. In general, I seem to highly prefer did + get to got/gotten.
I'd say highway for Autobahn. For motorway, I'd have to look up the definition - I know it has something to do with roads, but I don't know the nuances. For 'motorcar', I say car almost unfailingly, though I could use automobile in writing, and would accept 'auto' without real surprise.
Mad/angry/pissed [off] (low register, but common); I'd accept other forms like "chapped off" but not use them. Cheap/stingy/flint/scrooge Stick in the mud; someone who needs to chill out (most phrases/terms revolve around the latter) For slow-thinking, it depends on if the person thinks slowly but deeply, or lacks intelligence in general. The former doesn't really have a term; the latter has dozens with various nuances. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| thebard Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6043 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 39 of 76 08 August 2008 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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We don't used "pissed" to mean angry, Sunja, we use "pissed off". At least not normally, anyway. Pissed means drunk, as you say. We'd very rarely say mad in the sense of angry, but only in the sense of insane.
For "slow-witted" we might say stupid, or here in the north "daft", though that probably more often means silly, in the sense of not serious or sensible. Someone who doesn't want to spend much would be "tight", as Ham mentions, or "stingy". The omission of "have" strikes me as very American eg. "I just arrived" for "I've just arrived" but I think it's becoming more and more common over here, and I catch myself saying it from time to time, hehe. "Got" is the standard past participle of get in the UK, but you sometimes hear "gotten". I went through a phase of using it, in fact, and I'm not entirely sure why. Also, we tend to use "have got" and not just "have" to indicate possession, so that the question form is "have you got?" more often than "do you have?" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 40 of 76 08 August 2008 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I use pissed to mean angry. I've had enough exposure to speakers of other variants of English to understand when drunk is meant (usually - with second-language speakers, it can be ambiguous, since I don't know which term they mean unless I have context). I can imagine using 'pissed' to mean drunk when talking to people who use it that way, but it's certainly not my native use of the word.
"A few fries short of a happy meal", "not firing on all cylinders", and many others. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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