Subtle differences between the US and the UK that baffle me/you/us.

SubJeff on 30/11/2012 at 13:44

So I was reading this:

(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/29/lotr_timeline/) The Lord of the Rings saga lies hidden deep in your Mac

or at least I started to. Then I read the actual timeline and I can't make head nor tail of it. I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (and I'm doing an extended edition run through in the run up to The Hobbit in 5 days) but what is going on there? What is the deal with the dates? They don't seem to be in order but then there are multiple calendars (Elvish, Human, Hobbit) in the books.

Must be the real world calendar then. Oh? Still baffled. Then I remembered that in the USA the order is month, day, year and my brain switched off.

Let us not talk of words for trousers, pants, underwear and bums. The derivation of names and differences thereof is natural and expected and I have no qualms with it.

But this date thing is... ridiculous to me. One doesn't say "Its 6 o'clock and 20 minutes past" does one? No, you start with the smallest unit, or the largest (like when describing ones height) and continue in an orderly fashion. 25th of December 2012 is logical. December, the 25th of, in the year 2012 is, to me, not.

It is a problem for data storage too - date fields in a spreadsheet made in the USA do not mesh well with ones made here.

I've come around to the idea that driving on the right hand side is ok (I guess) since a Spaniard pointed out to me that you then use your right hand, which is dominant in 90% of people, to change gear. I suppose in the US this makes even less sense since automatics are more popular (automatic Porsches, an automatic GTR, what are you doing?. NB; this is a matter of opinion but it still means that the average UK driver is going to kick your ass in a race).

But the date?

:rolleyes:

Is there anything else you've noticed about the USA or UK that is totally different for no (discernible) reason?

faetal on 30/11/2012 at 13:54

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw) BAM

I never got the need to excessively mechanise words either.

E.g.

Burgled vs. burglarised
Obliged vs. obligated

Etc...

BUT, it should be noted that many Americansisms are actually the same as older English and we are the ones who have changed, e.g.

Zebra, always used to be pronounced ZEE-bra and still is by some elderly people, likewise Vitamin being VITE-amin, likely due to being a contraction of "vital mineral". Also, aluminium used to be called aluminum, until the international chemical standard changed it to be more consistent with the rest of the periodic table (barring anomalies with ancient names like antimony, potassium etc).

The date thing is perplexing. The only exception I've found is that if you are sorting dates in order (e.g. in a file system or database), then using the month first allows for better chronology.

Swings and roundabouts really.

demagogue on 30/11/2012 at 14:03

I suppose normally for dates you don't put the year for day-to-day use, so on first blush it's a choice between "25 December", which sounds linguistically odd and arbitrarily forced, and "December 25th", which just sounds and looks natural. Then once they've painted themselves into that corner, adding the year gets the result you see. I don't have any illusions that one way is as arbitrary as another though. You may as well start bitching about keyboards being arranged QWERTY-style. It happened over a century ago and most people just accept it and move on.

When I've traveled to the UK, I didn't think things were baffling so much as people talked like my grandmother & things seemed bigger and more unwieldy or awkward, like the electric sockets or adding an extra "u" to words. It's no big deal though. I can't think of anything that's ever actually bothered me.

edit: Lol at Brits thinking Americanisms sound like old fashioned British English, since British English sounds like old fashioned American English. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere about how languages evolve from each other, and perceptions of it.

faetal on 30/11/2012 at 14:12

Irregardless - there's another oddity.

nickie on 30/11/2012 at 14:27

Floors - ground floor v 1st floor. This constantly confuses me but on the other hand, once I've worked out what the real floor is, I know if I'm 'talking' to an American or not.

SubJeff on 30/11/2012 at 14:32

Yes, the over mechanisation of words, as you call it, baffles me to. I suspect this comes from people not understanding the words they're using in the first place. Reminds of the awful "worser".

dema - you see 25th December and December 25th sound equally comfortable to me. And, dare I say, our 3 pin sockets are safer than 2 pin since they have an earth pin. Or so I understand. Well, they do have an earth pin but how do you earth things in the US?

Quote:

The only exception I've found is that if you are sorting dates in order (e.g. in a file system or database), then using the month first allows for better chronology.

Not at all - it depends on the data type you've chosen. If it's date in the dd-mm-yy format then your software will order it chronologically anyway.

I did like that video though, and that is exactly the type of thing I'm interested in. Of course I know what craziness the Americans come out with because I too find it crazy. I'm less likely to notice British nonsense though and I want to hear about it.

Floors are an interesting one. I'm used to ground floor but I also agree with it being the first floor because it is, technically. I propose using these interchangeably and changing all 1st floors in the UK to 2nd floors and so on. This is one thing the yanks have got right - the floor above the ground floor should be the second floor.

Vasquez on 30/11/2012 at 14:44

Not sure if this is an actual comparison or just an observation, but I find it funny/weird how many British insert a quiet "r" at the end of or between words. Don't know if they actually do, but that's how it sounds, and for me it seems like somewhat new thing. Or maybe I've only recently happened to notice it...

catbarf on 30/11/2012 at 15:07

Quote Posted by faetal

Irregardless - there's another oddity.

To be fair, it's not by any means accepted, and most educated Americans shake their heads at it too.

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

dema - you see 25th December and December 25th sound equally comfortable to me. And, dare I say, our 3 pin sockets are safer than 2 pin since they have an earth pin. Or so I understand. Well, they do have an earth pin but how do you earth things in the US?

The term we use is grounding. Around the house, grounded cables are typically power strips and power supply units for heavy-duty electronics. Simpler things like lamps and small consumer electronics tend not to have the third grounding prong.

I was raised overseas from the United States so I grew up having to deal with cultural idiosyncrasies every time I moved. In my experience the UK and US are really closer in a lot of these respects than many people realize. I think anyone who's spent time in, say, Russia, or an East Asian country, can agree.

demagogue on 30/11/2012 at 15:26

Yeah I've noticed the quiet "r" before. I knew a law professor whose "law" always sounded a little like "lawr".
I would never use irregardless. It sounds very wrong to me too.
Definitely compared to Japan, Burma or Thailand standards the UK and US are rather close.

What else? Tea is a bigger deal in the UK... And it's not like coffee is even the American equivalent. Most Americans prefer coffee and need it in the mornings, but it's not like a culturally vital thing. For that matter, generally Americans are very informal about everything, and nothing is really that culturally vital... Just some things are more convenient than others. Of course Americans are congenitally democratic and sometimes don't get the whole "class" or social hierarchy thing that people (apparently) seem to notice & care about more in the UK (even though there are still things like class at work in the US).

Another perception might be that Brits are more defensive about what they're doing, like they're very worried to explain themselves, or generally less confident in their speech and actions, which is probably also part of the perception that Brit guys are (or Europe generally is) more effeminate. Considering I was always hyper-self-conscious myself that didn't bother me, but it would a lot of Americans generally I think. Sometimes though, an American instinct is to want a straight answer and not a lot of hemming and hawing that they perceive when talking to Brits. Again none of this ever really bothered me though, just what I feel other people feeling.

R Soul on 30/11/2012 at 15:34

The floor thing might have come from the way houses developed in ancient times. The ground floor would have literally been the ground, with no floor to speak of. That would have been for livestock or storage. There would be a raised living area at one end, which I think could have been thought of as the first floor. I don't see anything wrong with the US convention now that people do put floors on the ground.

To me, it makes more sense to say the day before the month, because it means the 25th day of December, but it's not a big deal to say it the other way round. It does make me dislike dates being written in numerical format. If you write the month as letters, even if it's reduced to 3, it makes things perfectly clear. Apr-3-12 or something. I don't know whose idea it is to put he year at the start, but that should stop immediately. The order of each number should have no bearing on how the dates can be sorted on a computer. Just store the date as 3 numbers rather than a string of characters.

I once saw some American TV show where there were two men who'd been lifelong friends. One said to the other 'Who was with you when you shaved your first bum fluff?'. I remember thinking 'He shaved it? And his friend was there? And these were two teenage boys?'. Only some time later did I realize he was taking about facial hair.

Another difference is airplane vs aeroplane. To me, airplane looks like a word for babies. You don't have the National Airnautics and Space Administration, and you don't airate tap water to make it soft and foamy.

And Moscow is not a cow covered in moss. It's Lord Sebastian Coe covered in moss.

And Americans and Britons have different views on what a fanny is, with awkward results on this side of the ocean.

Names! Robin is not a girl's name, got it? And Carroll is not a man's name.