Education Questions and Answers
What americanisms annoy you?
Question:Things like Saying Math, instead of maths? That really gets on my nervs! Mathamatics is plural, so Maths should be too! And there are loads
Answers:
Jelly instead of jam
purse instead of handbag
bathroom instead of toilet
and the spelling...omg, dont get me on the spelling!
Enjoy and Have a nice day....
real soon now.
saying real when it should be really
at this moment in time (now)
erb, instead of Herb
bathroom instead of sh*thouse
and the accent
Erb instead of herb. Alumanon instead of aluminium. And, while we're American bashing... why do they have such large gaps around the doors in public toilets - I don't like having a pee and being able to see out into the washroom - it means people can see it at me!
Chips are chips!
Potatoes cooked in chunky strips (not crisps)
I got told on holiday by an American i don't speak proper English, that really annoyed me!
'the holidays' instead of Christmas - what's that about?
I hate it when they say 'i'll write you' instead of 'write TO you'
I never heard of "maths" just call it math dude
Pronouncing schedule as "skedule" instead of "shedule".
The ones that really get to me is saying nucular instead of nuclear and aluminum instead of aluminium.
Putting the word AMERICAN before original title. Like.AMERICAN Football, AMERICAN Cheese, AMERICAN Bulldog, etc, etc.
Saying "off of" something instead of just "off" or "of".
Oooooh it makes my BLOOD BOIL!
Ahem.
Er, all of them!
Over the weekend I was in Oxford, and though I always thought this was a joke when I heard it from other people, an American couple actually asked me where the university was... So I pointed them towards the nearest college, and they said 'Oh we've seen that building, but where's the campus?!' in most aggrieved tones...
If you're visiting one of the greatest collegiate universities in the world, why would you not at least check out the basics in a guidebook before you turned up and made an * of yourself... (and that's another Americanism that annoys me - when you say 'a$s' and mean 'donkey', but the Americans and the US-based language blocker on YA, assume it means 'ar$se'... Grr...)
I give up!
Oh yes, and saying 'pissed' instead of 'pissed off' - don't they know that means 'drunk', not 'annoyed'?
Stop mutilating the English tongue!
;)
Having ranted though, I must defend their use of the word Aluminum - they are correct - it was first coined by Humphrey Davy in the 19th century and they have remained faithful to the original English spelling, whereas the English have actually fiddled with it. Sorry.
"Etymology/nomenclature history
The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina. The citation is from his journal Philosophical Transactions: "Had I been so fortunate as..to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium."[16]
By 1812, Davy had settled on aluminum, which, as other sources note, matches its Latin root. He wrote in the journal Chemical Philosophy: "As yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state."[17] But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[18]
The -ium suffix had the advantage of conforming to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time, as for example platinum, known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, discovered in 1778, and tantalum, discovered in 1802.
Americans adopted -ium for most of the 19th century, with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In 1892, however, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents he filed between 1886 and 1903.[19] It has consequently been suggested that the spelling on the flier was a simple spelling mistake.[citation needed] Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America; the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, though, continued to use the -ium version.
In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications; American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant."
All of them!
Sometimes I find everything about American English so contrary!
... the "twang" gets to me...saying "ant" instead of "aunt", instead of "route" (pronounced 'root') saying "r-out"
Where did the accent come from? Aren't most of them descended from Europe anyway?
And why are they so lazy to add a "u" to most spellings - example "favour" and "favor" ?
Never mind... I could rattle on and on about this!
Seriously, you really think that Mathematics should be shortened to maths? You lot are a gaggle of bloody wankers. That sounds so damn sophisticated.
it annoys me when they are visiting Ireland to search out their roots and they say there name is some way, like Mahoney is not mah-houneee..there is loads of Irish name mispronounced, like if they were really bothered about their roots they would not mispronounce their name.
But whilst here looking for their ancestors they ask questions like , they are the Reilly's from Athboy , like as if !, there are only one family with the name Reilly and 2, I'm from Dublin, I don't know anyone in Athboy..
but have a nice day!!!!
being asked by an American a few years ago if we had dishwashers in Australia.
I almost wanted to say "Yes, and they work very hard doing all the other housework too", but I bit my tongue in case they believed me.
I'm sure Shakespear is rolling in his grave over today's "proper British English".
What do you expect to happen to a language when millions of foreigners from around the world converge and attempt to communicate in, what is to many of them, a foreign language. The language evolves into something else.
Get over it already! Or is this a case of the ones being left behind being angry at the ones who left them behind?
I live in Bath which has a structure called "The Circus." It's three crescents of houses arranged to form a circle. It's a major historical landmark of the city and on all the tour routes. You can imagine my mirth at overhearing a pair of tourists (on being informed that the next stop was The Circus) asking their guide if there were elephants.
Silversongster is right on the money about aluminum though (annoying though it is). x
Jesus, what a touchy bunch. What happened to those famous English manners?
Nice talkin' to y'all. Tally ho!
By the way,wanker, do you mean reiterate or alliterate?
Their accent is the most annoying and demeaning thing on this planet. They sound lazy and can't be bothered with their accents and just plain suicidal. OK i get the message. Go and jump. Oh and their past tense. Whats with learned and spelled its learnt and spelt you spaz. And why do they call diesel "gas". Its a liquid any way. At least their diesel's cheap.
Cool and awesome and the word "f---k" used for every part of speech. Also hate the filler, "you know" that many people use in the States--as bad as the Canadians use of the word "eh".
Mom (pronounced maam)and mommy, especially when the kids shout in that horrid whiny nasal way.."Mommy, mommy..".
Dude...I thought that word had gone out with the hippies.
Yo.as in 'yo mamma'
bro...even our young people have picked it up.
All that horrible hip-hop slang they use.
Kate H ..your argument would be stronger if you spelt 'appalling' correctly.
I am American, and I find all of these complaints to be ridiculous and petty. Why do people from England so often think their way is right and the American way is wrong? So we spell favor and color without a u...that's the American spelling, and it's correct here. Who says it's more correct with a u than without?
And the complaints about the American accent are ridiculous. There is no one American accent. There are different regional American accents, so you need to be more specific. Are you objecting to the New York accent? One of many Southern accents? A Midwestern accent? If so, is it a Minnesota accent or an Indiana accent? Southern Indiana or Northern Indiana?
We don't all use the word bathroom the way you think. For example, when I'm in a public place I ask for the ladies' room, not the bathroom. I do, however, have bathrooms in my home -- they are rooms in which we bathe; hence the name. The term "bathroom" is a somewhat lower-class term, and it's more appropriate to refer to it publicly as the restroom or the ladies' or mens' room. As for the complaints that we should call it the "toilet" -- why would we do that? The toilet is only one fixture in the room. We don't say we're going to the sink, do we? We don't refer to the kitchen as the refrigerator, do we? And what about the "loo"...don't you Brits call it that? Where on earth did that word come from? Calling a bathroom a toilet even makes more sense than that.
As for the complaint that we put "American" in front of everything, we don't. Americans don't refer to "American football" unless we're talking to someone from a country that we know uses the word "football" to refer to an entirely different sport. Among ourselves we just call it football. We clarify it for people when we know there will be confusion. It's unfortunate that those who object to it can't take it in the spirit in which it's meant. I would think it would be much more offensive to just use the term "football" in that circumstance, because it implies that the speaker is so arrogant or ignorant that he or she doesn't know or care that "football" means an entirely different sport here than it does anywhere else.
I'm appalled at the intolerance. Americans are not British, but that doesn't mean we're wrong or stupid or ignorant. I recognize that you Brits use different spellings, different words, different pronunciations than we do...but I don't think that makes you wrong. You're just different. What's so awful about that?
Every word they mispronounce it's OUR language!Their spelling is appauling also!
More Related Questions & Answers...
- What is the word, in German, I believe, for laughing at another's expense or pain?
- Please revise this sentence with proper grammar.?
- What do you call a specific plan?
- Give me a word for played the releif picher (word of 7 letters)?
- What does this symbol mean?
- Question about the word minority?
- Where did the term * come from for the word cigarette's IE can i have a packet of fags?
- Day Time Friend? ...please write an interesting short story?
- How do you spell?
- Whats the meaning of the numbers 6277?
