MIT explains American language and customs plus British and American English

[nancylebov]

MIT explains American customs to foreign students.

https://iso.mit.edu/life-at-mit/cultural-adjustment/

Discussion, with efforts to make sense of "I couldn't care less" and bitterness (and some defensiveness) about American date format, and various other things.

https://www.metafilter.com/190806/Americanisms-are-uniquely-American-thoughts-beliefs-or-actions#8079947

A list of words which are more understood in the US or more understood in the UK.

https://britishisms.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/screen-shot-2021-01-23-at-12.04.14-pm.png

Unending possibilities for discussion.... is there really so little Italian food in the UK? Do 80% of Americans know what a tomatillo is? Gazump? Really?

"https://www.google.com/search?q=gazumping"

Comments

[green_knight]

As someone who has been gazumped, I'd say everybody knows that one. It's depressingly common.

[nancylebov]

You're living in the UK-- people get defrauded in the US, but the this is the first I've heard the word gazumped.

[green_knight]

I will freely admit that I boggled when I first heard it, and it's one of these words that feel straight out of the Meaning of Liff (Douglas Adams' least well-known book): once you know there is a term for this specific thing, you wonder how you ever did without it.

[nancylebov]

I thought it sounded like something out of Dr. Seuss.

[calimac]

I'd not heard of gazumping, either the word or the phenomenon it describes.

What happens to home buyers in the US is that they get an e-mail from the broker telling them what account to send the payment to, and only afterwards learn that the e-mail was a scam and all their money has vanished never to return. This happened to the people about to buy a house from my brother. They had to drop out, and my brother had to put the house back on the market.

[madfilkentist]

When Playing Rapunzel released their album "Abseiling for Beginners," I was able to make sense "abseil" only because it had an obvious German cognate that means going down a rope. According to that list, the word is well known in the UK.

I've never heard of a tomatillo either. It sounds like a small tomato. On looking it up, I see that's close.

[nancylebov]

I knew abseiling because of mentions in mountain climbing.

Tomatillos are common around here, but there's a big Hispanic influence.

[drplokta]

There’s plenty of Italian food in the UK. What we don’t have is American food that Americans think is Italian, like manicotti and ziti.

[cmcmck]

Thanks for popping by to subscribe!

My blog is partly f locked for reasons you may already have picked up on, but I've added you so you should be able to see what there is. I don't filter so what you'll see is what there is.

That's me in the picture, as the song has it.

I'm of partly Italian ancestry and yes, we do have Italian food in the UK, but given how I cook (mostly Umbrian) I'd question whether either US or UK outlets really know what Italian food is.