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Post by tintin on Sept 18, 2012 15:42:50 GMT 1
"scrunchies are seen here as a kind of symbol of the female chav"
No, please say it ain't so
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 18, 2012 16:52:58 GMT 1
I don't _think_ scrunchies would be a sign of chav-ness here, though might depend on how they're worn plus the overall look. I think scrunchies came about here with the '80's look of leggings with oversize tops, possibly plus leg warmers for casual wear (or for truly going to an exercise class, for example). I think of scrunchies as maybe a little air-heady or bubbly but not unheard of even for some professional women. For example, I had a psychology colleague who would put her long straight hair in a low pony tail with a black scrunchie, hair very smoothed down all over, even for professional wear. But scrunchie on top of the head, say, or with wildly frizzed hair -- again more of an ditzy thing or maybe a touch of chav.
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Post by kunuma on Sept 18, 2012 17:19:37 GMT 1
Thinking about scrunchies and hair - how about plaits and braids, over the water they seem to talk about braiding a mane instead of plaiting it. I've seen headstall used as well, I imagine it means head collar. Oh and cooler versus sweat rug.
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Post by Claire on Sept 18, 2012 18:53:21 GMT 1
"scrunchies are seen here as a kind of symbol of the female chav" No, please say it ain't so Hehe haven't you heard the one about female chavs having fights with other chavs and bagging their defeated rivals' scrunchies to wear them as trophies....? ;D Yeah rallycairn its mainly the pulling the hair up and wearing it on top with scrunchies thats considered chavvy. Lots of totally normal people wear them on the nape of their neck although if I tie mine back its just with one of those plain black elastic band looking things as i find scrunchies always seem to drop off.
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 18, 2012 23:49:16 GMT 1
kunuma, you're right we don't say "plait" much, probably older generations would've used it more, I think most people would know what it means, but we definitely say "braiding" almost exclusively.
Headstall refers to the crownpiece of a bridle or, I suppose, a halter.
Claire, I think scrunchies only really actually hold hair when used over a plain elastic band!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2012 6:35:18 GMT 1
Agree they are useless things!
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Post by kunuma on Sept 19, 2012 19:29:27 GMT 1
Scrunchies!! I can remember when one wore an Alice Band!!
btw, still on hair - what do you call the different clips over there? Are they the same as ours, blanket, trace full etc?? Do you hog manes?
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 20, 2012 4:50:43 GMT 1
Clips as far as I know are termed the same. I know/have heard "hogged," but "roached" is far, far more commonly used, at least where I've lived.
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Post by susanb on Sept 20, 2012 16:56:28 GMT 1
Alice band....headband? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadbandStill common here....I'm wearing one right now! BTW, the Alice reference was itself common here at one time, but not so much any longer....one of my grandmother's favorite songs was (Sweet Little) "Alice-blue Gown" www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7424Hopefully that will play....it's one of the new features on the Library of Congress website, historic recordings in what they call the "National Jukebox".
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Post by Claire on Sept 20, 2012 20:16:30 GMT 1
They are actually usually called headbands here too. Its only the really ancient or posh who call them Alice bands. I'll let everyone guess which category kunuma falls into ;D ;D ;D
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Post by haffyfan on Sept 20, 2012 20:27:17 GMT 1
The only song with an Alice in i can think off would probably have offended your grandmother susan. Who remembers that one...and the hats and t-shirts found in the British hotspots of blackpool and skeg-vegas and other such seaside delights! Do Americans use the word Arse btw? I like this thread, i'm from yorkshire so we have our own little language that the rest of country doesn't understand let alone those from overseas ;D cack handed - like my OH - left handed gawp - to stare (catching flies!) bairn - baby ligg about - being lazy, laying about doing nowt (nothing) dee or dee'd - to die owt - anything Manky - something thats not nice/unpleasant - dirty/mouldy etc - dollop - large amount of something Loppy - dirty/scruffy kegs - underwear to flit - move house and or move quickly in general (like skittish) hey up - (but if from South yorkshire you drop your h's so it's ey up [me duck]) - hello = also all reight means same nay [laddie]- no aye - yes siling it down - to 'piss' it down nesh - to feel the cold badly - ill/poorly be reight - it's okay sithee and tarra- bye roo-er-ing - crying Varmint - someone naughty may be referred to as one!
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Post by Claire on Sept 20, 2012 21:20:58 GMT 1
I remember that Alice song haffy!!!
Looking at your list, its shows how even in different parts of the same area the language is different. I also live in Yorkshire (a bit further north) and a few of those expressions aren't used here. But we do also use some of them in the North East of England and some like bairn also extend to Scotland. Do you use the word 'clarts' for mud/muck - one of my favourite words its so descriptive! ;D We may have to start a thread for regional variations of UK words next!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 6:40:11 GMT 1
We use some of them words down here!
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Post by Claire on Sept 21, 2012 11:05:56 GMT 1
Keep meaning to ask - do Americans use the word pretty as in the sense of 'quite' as in 'pretty good' to mean 'quite good?' Its really a weird expression when you think about it. Must look up the origins of that some time. On a similar note what about 'awfully good' another weird expression beloved of the 1950s British pony & school books. Not something I have ever heard used round here tho!
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Post by kunuma on Sept 21, 2012 13:57:55 GMT 1
They are actually usually called headbands here too. Its only the really ancient or posh who call them Alice bands. I'll let everyone guess which category kunuma falls into ;D ;D ;D Both???
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 21, 2012 15:19:45 GMT 1
Keep meaning to ask - do Americans use the word pretty as in the sense of 'quite' as in 'pretty good' to mean 'quite good?' Its really a weird expression when you think about it. Must look up the origins of that some time. On a similar note what about 'awfully good' another weird expression beloved of the 1950s British pony & school books. Not something I have ever heard used round here tho! Definitely "pretty" as in "quite" is used all the time with different adjectives -- pretty good, pretty bad, whatever. "Awfully" prolly not as much, but I don't think you'd give anyone pause if you used it. However, I _think_ we might be a little more consistent with the meaning of "awfully" in that I think we'd be more apt to use "awfully" with a negative word -- such as that was "awfully bad" rather than saying something "awfully good." But I think it is taken to mean "quite" or "very" to avoid the oxymoron.
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Post by maggie on Sept 22, 2012 2:31:41 GMT 1
Claire and I have been emailing about this and she invited me to drop by and add to the confusion. I'm a Brit, but have lived in the US for many years. I also write pony books for kids (some of you may have read them).
At the moment, I'm reading a series of kids' horse books by a British author. First pub'd in the UK, the series has just been released in the US (by a major publisher). Here's my issue with the books: the stories are set in a private boarding school in the US, yet the kids (Americans as well as British) use British words that no American kid will understand.
Numnah, for instance, is used both as a saddle pad and as a pejorative.
Pinafore. American readers will be scratching their heads over this one.
Teens wearing jods. Kids in the US ride in breeches and tall boots. Only little kids wear jods.
Also ... American schools have two semesters (not terms) per year, not four. Yet the story shows this very American school having four terms/year.
There are many other anomalies, including the main character (an English girl) who's supposed to be an experienced horse person, looking at a paddock full of Arabian horses and saying, to herself, that one of them was even a gray "the most rare Arabian color of all."
Delving into this issue of British/American stuff ... the Harry Potter stories were set firmly in a British boarding school. American kids (and adults) read the books and learned new words, which is great. I'm all over that. Maybe Americans will even learn to love Marmite. But when a story is set in the US, but the American children are tossing out words like 'numnah' and 'pinafore' and going on holiday (Americans go on vacation) and having 'half-term' (American kids have a semester break), then I think a bunch of editors have fallen flat on their faces.
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Post by Claire on Sept 22, 2012 10:56:36 GMT 1
We have had a few moans about editing on here maggie. In fact we started a thread up to complain about it! (Will see if I can find the link as you may be interested in it) In general I think the author/editor should conform to the country which the book is taking place in. So American words in USA and Brit in the UK. Its just as annoying when they seem to assume kids are too stupid or lazy to work out words used in another country. After all surely a book set in historical times wouldn't use modern currency in case the kids couldn't work out what the old money was (or maybe it would with such hopeless editors around!) Talking of school terms and such can one of you Americans please explain the mysteries of the American school system to me. I still haven't worked out what age are freshman, juniors, seniors, when does high school start, etc? Also what is junior college? Is that like our sixth form? EDIT Found the link for the thread on heavy handed editors (tho in the above case its more light-handed!) in case maggie or anyone else is interested: ponybooks.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ponybooks&action=display&thread=1183
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Post by kunuma on Sept 22, 2012 14:45:34 GMT 1
That's very interesting Maggie. I would have to say as an Arab fanatic, that if a character in a book said that grey Arabs were rare, I'd stop reading it then and there! ( I mean, it's bad enough that Americans can't spell grey! ;D ;D )
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Post by maggie on Sept 22, 2012 17:04:11 GMT 1
Claire: thanks for the link. Interesting to see that Ms. Gregg is from NZ, yet sets her latest series in the US, along with mistakes that make me howl. Magnolias blooming in Kentucky in November, for instance (they bloom in the Spring). There is no mention of Thanksgiving (the biggest American holiday) when the kids are on their 'half-term' in November. Of course, it's not called half-term; it's called the Thanksgiving break, or merely "Thanksgiving," as in: 'where are you going for Thanksgiving?'
I wholeheartedly agree that dumbing down books for readers of another country is absurd. BUT ... if a story is set in the US (as the PC Rivals series is) and there are precisely three British kids along with lots of Americans, then why do the AMERICAN kids talk about numnahs and pinafores and maths (in the US it's math), and why, oh why, are the jumps set in metres?
This is reverse dumbing down. The books were originally written for the UK market, so the publisher/author decided that never mind the story is set in the US, let's just use British terms so the British kids will understand them, never mind they're coming out of the mouths of American children and are flat-out wrong.
Back to the metres. The US is not metric. Tell anyone here that a jump is 'one metre eighty' and they won't have a clue how high it is. I had to resort to my calculator to figure out that this child prodigy was actually jumping five feet ten inches on a Connemara pony!
An American jumping coach would NOT set a jump in metres. The jump uprights are measured in feet/inches.
OK ... kids in the UK won't understand feet and inches, so what the publisher should do is leave it in metres for the UK market, but bloody well change it to feet and inches for the American market. This is one place where it makes sense to have two versions of the same story. OR .. have the Brit and American kids discuss the difference and one could tell the other, 'when you jump X metres it's X feet' and that way readers on both sides of the pond might actually learn something!
BUT ... I'm sorry ... I get the cringies when I see an American child say 'numnah.' It really frosts me.
Claire: to answer your question about schools: American public (state) schools begin at K (kindergarten) and then go from grades 1 through 12. Generally speaking, grades 1-3 are elementary school; grades 4 to 6 are called middle school, grades 7 and 8 used to be called junior high but are now mostly included in the middle school building.
High school (most kids enter high school aged 14 or 15)
Freshman: grade 9 Sophomore: grade 10 Junior: grade 11 Senior: grade 12 (most kids are 18 by this time)
Also, these grades are usually not referred to as 'grade 9', it would be ninth grade, and someone in it would be called a ninth grader.
A 'junior' college is a two-year program (academic or vocational) that kids can attend after they've graduated high school, which means they will be aged 18-20 when they go there. The word 'junior' has been pretty much replaced by 'community' now, though. The two year colleges often serve to launch a student into a four-year program at another school.
The words university and college are interchangeable even though some schools are colleges while others are universities and I think it has to do with size or the way they're set up/funded, etc.
When someone asks in the US 'where did you go to college' the answer might be anything from Harvard to Clinton Community College.
College in Britain means (I think ... terms have changed a lot since I lived there) where you study for A levels, at the age of 16 to 18. From there, you would attend Uni ... a term that would puzzle most Yanks. To them it's 'college'. Rarely does someone ask, "where did you attend University." In the US, college is a generic term for higher education.
Does this help or further obfuscate!
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Post by Claire on Sept 22, 2012 20:37:21 GMT 1
Wow thanks for the detailed school info maggie. Never again will I be confused by the American school system again! (Well not much anyhow ) I used to equate high school with our (what used to be called) senior school so I always wondered how the freshman kids seemed to be a lot older than our first year seniors who are about 11! Now British schools are more similar to the Americans in that they go by year numbers whereas before it was 1st year junior, 2nd year junior, 1st year senior, etc, etc. In the UK we have FE colleges which include kids 16 plus studying for A levels as well as a whole lot of other things such as vocational courses and adult courses, but not degrees. I actually used to work in one for many years! Then we have Universities for degree courses, post grad, masters, teacher training etc. BTW I totally agree with you Maggie that stories should use words and culture pertinent to the place they are set in. I just mentioned Americanising English-set books as I think its done more often than the other way round. I wonder if the PC Rivals series was originally meant to be set in England or NZ but they decided to change it later to America as this could be conceived as more 'glam' and would tie in with similar American books such as the Chestnut Hill series by Lauren Brooke.
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Post by maggie on Sept 23, 2012 0:13:14 GMT 1
Or perhaps the publisher thought they'd tie into the Canterwood Crest series by Jessica Burkhart. These are set in an exclusive boarding school for girls and boys in Connecticut. The kids are 12 and most of the girls seem to be obsessed with lip gloss rather than horses.
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Post by Claire on Sept 28, 2012 12:31:48 GMT 1
Returning (like a homing pigeon ) to the subject of underwear. I believe pantyhose is the American word for what we call tights. A very odd - but extremely literal - word which actually includes the term used for leg coverings here in the Middle Ages! Maybe I need to get out more but I do find the origins of words eternally fascinating! Oh and has anyone mentioned that what Americans call purse we call handbag. A purse to us is just a small money receptacle.
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Post by tintin on Sept 28, 2012 13:34:50 GMT 1
I think Americans refer to them like this as they used to use the word "tights" for the type of close fitting all encompassing garment a trapeze artist or a dancer might wear (there is a reference in the song "Hooray for Hollywood" that might confuse us Brits)
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Post by Claire on Sept 28, 2012 22:43:26 GMT 1
Yeah wasn't there a film called Mother Wore Tights or something similar which was about a showgirl or dancer? So obviously the word tights is used there in a slightly different way. Oh just thought of another clothing related difference - vest as opposed to waistcoat. That one makes me smile as I always imagine people wearing an awful string vest like Rab C Nesbitt
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 29, 2012 1:53:45 GMT 1
FWIW my experience is that we do use tights, but as has already been pointed out, tights are the really thick version of nylons that are opaque and generally worn by dancers. Hose are thinner and worn with regular, non-dance non-athletic skirts or dresses.
What I think is fun about hose is -- we call them "runs" when they get picked and unravel -- isn't the UK word (or is it an older term) getting a "ladder" ?? Oh, and it seems I've read "stockings" for hose used in some older Brit books, too - is that correct or am I off base?
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Post by Claire on Sept 29, 2012 12:35:04 GMT 1
What I think is fun about hose is -- we call them "runs" when they get picked and unravel -- isn't the UK word (or is it an older term) getting a "ladder" ?? Oh, and it seems I've read "stockings" for hose used in some older Brit books, too - is that correct or am I off base? Yes we do still call them ladders. Stockings are what we call the sort that come up to the thigh and are held up by suspender belts (Or I think Americans might call them garter belts? Suspenders being what we call braces I think!) Tights have pretty much replaced stockings although you still can get them. Also stockings used to be called nylons! Oh and just to make it even more confusing stockings could also be used to mean socks in the past. We still have the expression 'in your stockinged feet' to mean without shoes on. Its odd that we seem to have the most differences in the words for clothes.
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Post by rallycairn on Sept 29, 2012 15:24:42 GMT 1
Well I think it is MUCH more colorful to have a ladder in your hose than a run! Claire, you are spot on (there's more of a Brit phrase right there, I think) -- we would say garter belt, not that the average person wears that kind of hose anymore -- whew, what a lot of bother, I would guess. Thankfully I never had to wear a garter belt although I remember my mother having them when I was very, very young. We would just say sock-footed but I think stockingfooted would be recognized. Yep, braces are suspenders; also like you said, waistcoats are vests here and jumpers are sweaters (I think).
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Post by darkhorse on Sept 29, 2012 16:47:11 GMT 1
Oh just thought of another clothing related difference - vest as opposed to waistcoat. That one makes me smile as I always imagine people wearing an awful string vest like Rab C Nesbitt Me too. I smile when I read the phrase "wearing a vest and pants" in American books. It conjures up a completely different picture for UK readers ;D
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Post by garej on Sept 29, 2012 17:12:55 GMT 1
Another thing which made me think of this thread whilst browsing another forum. Us brits would say "I am taking a taxi to the airport", whereas our USA folks would say "I am getting a cab to the airport". A cab is something that horses used to pull in old fashioned books (think Black Beauty!).
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