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Now You're Speakin' My Language (or Dialect)
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Anna, I wish our measuring cups had both! I don't have as ready a conversion for deciliters. And weighing is so much more time than using volumes!
Lol, ED XD
For cups and deciliters, I use 2.5. So 1C = 2.5dl. 1dl = 0.4C. I think the exact number is 2.54? I've never had problems, I think if you're making something super fiddly, you'd use weight anyway?edit: lol, looks like it's closer to 2.4, but I've been using 2.5 since I was a wee babe and haven't had any problems :)
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Oh! That's where the 2.54 came from! :D I was wondering where my brain pulled it from XD
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Hoagie means a submarine sandwich aka a grinder. If you say you'd like a sub though, they'll take you to a sandwich chain called Subway, and if you say grinder, they'll think you're talking about the app and a very different sort of hunger. Jawn means thing, (what's that jawn over there?) but is also a compliment (you see that jawn that just walked by??) and a pejorative (You're always talking that jawn.)
Additional note, the Mid-Atlantic states do not like to use articles. We just wholesale skip "the" and "that" and the like.
that was one of the things I had problems with in French: an article before everything, even in a listI've heard hoagies, gyros (yes, even though they're not the same thing), heroes, subs, etc all over the place (in France, you look for a Sandwich Grec if you're looking for a gyro)
Allison wrote: "I'll introduce some Phillyisms. Over the years we've dropped a few (water is no longer really pronounced wooder here) but the two that have remained are hoagies and jawn.Hoagie means a submarine ..."
Ahh, Philadelphia and the jawn. "Boul" also stands out.
Allison wrote: "...Additional note, the Mid-Atlantic states do not like to use articles. We just wholesale skip "the" and "that" and the like."Interesting, this note. I recall reading that dropping articles (a/an/the) was also a distinct feature in 'Yooper English' around the areas by the lakes inhabited by Finnish immigrants. Because Finnish.
But I'm curious what its story might be around Philly.
The only regionalism that comes to mind for my home town St. Louis (that isn't related to food) is "hoosier." There it's a derogatory word that means hillbilly or white trash.
There are several similarities in Wisconsin speech to Yooper English, even though we are a bit farther south. Ya, eh, and some of the other pronunciations. “Grodge” definitely!!
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DivaDiane wrote: "There are several similarities in Wisconsin speech to Yooper English, even though we are a bit farther south. Ya, eh, and some of the other pronunciations. “Grodge” definitely!!"Yeah :D I gathered it connects to certain 'famous' accented features around Wisconsin/Michigan/Minnesota, which is why it was wild to learn of the Finnish influence <:D
The home away from home, clearly *ha*
ETA: I just learned 'Mid-Atlantic accent' is the same as the famed 'Transatlantic accent'.
Allison wrote: "i have not heard boul, Emmett! I wonder what part of the area that comes with"That boul over there= that guy over there. I thought it was just "bull" (it sounds the same), but the internet is saying it's spelled boul *shrug*
I only lived in Philly for a year, but that is the one I remember in addition to jawn
The metric 'v' Imperial is further confused by the fact that the US uses a different version to the UK.A US Gallon is not the same as a UK Gallon, it's quite a bit less. Same with pints. So if your from the UK and order a pint in a US bar and think it looks a bit small, your right!
I wouldn't be at all surprised if auto manufacturers somehow used this to calculate mpg and mislead consumers:)
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*ha*(Cue "tomato" pronunciation debate).
E.D. wrote: "I'm with the drunken lobsters!"And...five tomatoes...sounds like 5 tom ah toes....if you're Australian...🤣🤣🤣
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Step 1. Intoxicate the smartest lobsters I can find.
Step 2. Watch as they invent a math system.
Step 3. Profit.
Melissa, you wanna elaborate on the Japanese counting system? <:D How the increments fall a bit different from the 'international counting':10 十 (jū)
100 百 (hyaku)
300 三百 (san byaku)
600 六百 (roppyaku)
1000 千 (sen)
10,000 一万 (ichi man)
20,000 二万 (ni man)
100,000 十万 (jū man) ('Ten ten thousands')
1 million 百万 (hyaku man) ('Hundred ten thousands')
10 million 千万 (sen man) ('Thousand ten thousands')
100 million 一億 (ichi oku)
1 trillion 一兆 (icchou)
10 trillion 十兆 (jū chou)
(I believe India has similarly their own counting system apart from the international; in increments of 'times ten'?)
Jemppu wrote: "Melissa, you wanna elaborate on the Japanese counting system? <:D How the increments fall a bit different from the 'international counting':10 十 (jū)
100 百 (hyaku)
300 三百 (san byaku)
600 六百 (ropp..."
That reminds me of the fun of a French counting system. I remember it was a nightmare to learn it, as they have some mad shenanigans once you reach 70. You count pretty normally until 60 and then you have to do math in your head on the fly:
70: soixante-dix (60 + 10)
71: soixante-onze (60 + 11)
80: quatre-vingts (4 x 20)
90: quatre-vingt-dix (4 x 20 + 10).
Getting back to narrators mispronouncing words (a pet peeve) and infrequent variations of pronunciations: I heard Robin Miles mispronounce another word (in 4 instances) in The Best of All Possible Worlds: quay/quayside. Looking it up in my dictionary, the only acceptable pronunciation is [ki:] like “key/kee”. One online dictionary says an infrequent but approved American pronunciation is [kwei] “Kwai”, which I’ve never heard, but ok. However, Miles pronounces it [kei] “kay”. Which is understandable, but just wrong.
I think quay was on the list of often mispronounced words with primer 😄
Hmm or not, but MW says kay is an acceptable pronunciation and comes from Middle French. Again, I’d love to know what the typical French based Caribbean creole pronunciation is!edit: Forgot to add link
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
That link made me chuckle... it has 3 different acceptable pronunciations. Seems like you can say it however you want
I kind of dislike the way public use of French in France is going: they keep using and mixing English expressions and words, but out of snobbery, not out of necessity or practical reason. Examples: le 'jogging', le 'partying', le 'trekking'. In Quebec, we call that le 'ing' fashion. In contrast, here in Quebec, we mix French with some English words because we have been surrounded by Anglophones for centuries. However, we still use a lot of old French words and expression dating back from the 17th Century, like 'un char' (a car), 'garrocher' (throw away') or 'une pitoune' (nice-looking girl). 'Une méchante pitoune' means a really nice-looking girl. The use of old French words and expressions, mixed with English words, results in people from France having a hard time understanding us (but we understand everything they say).
we subscribed to TV5Monde for a while and most of the Canadian Programs in French were subtitled for that reason and
in French Quay = Quai which is pronounced like Kay the name. We used to go to the musée du quai Branly a lot (indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas) because it was free to us (my company supported it so we had free membership)
I’ve lived most of my life on the border (between Us and Mexico); I see language as fluid. Here someone might say parquear instead of estacionar to mean to park, mixing the English with Spanish. I mix Spanish and English on a daily basis, my first language was Spanish but my primary language is English (American). And Spanglish (the mixing of Spanish and English) can vary greatly depending on what part of the border you are on, from different parts of Texas to New Mexico to California and Arizona. I love the mixing of language. I also find it so interesting how a word can be pronounced so many different ways depending on location or time (and I guess I wouldn’t see it as wrong just different from how I pronounce or have heard things pronounced if that makes sense) Or how one word will have completely different meanings depending on where you are or when you are - I am nurse and when I am triaging my Spanish speaking patients I may use up to 4-5 different words for the same thing depending on whether they’re from the border, Caribbean or Central or South America. How we use and pronounce words in our language; is itself a story or history of our ancestors, home and life experience; and language definitely has power.
Good point Nicol. It's not just fun and games.
we called that Spanglish when I lived in Texas and Arizona
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And Chessie, that's what Nicol called it too! Spanglish has a ton of great variants. I have friends that know different regional versions and they have fun trying to figure out what the others are saying, and often having to be told "OMG you can't say that here, that will get your butt kicked!"
Allison wrote: " I have friends that know different regional versions and they have fun trying to figure out what the others are saying, and often having to be told "OMG you can't say that here, that will get your butt kicked!""Like the word Edinson Cavani from Manchester United called a friend of his back in Uruguay (supposedly it's a term of friendly endearment there) that had him fined and banned for a few games
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Thanks, Jemina! I love these types of videos.
This entertaining presentation came up during a map related YouTube spiral, and seemed pertaining to this thread: Why are British place names so hard to pronounce?Here just to post videos, it seems <:D
This is what I've been staring at on local buses lately, delighting in the fine differences in cultural linguistics:
English:
"Föli cards can no longer be loaded on buses as of 1(st of) March 2021".
(Dear customer).
Swedish:
"From and on the 1(st of) March 2021 one can no longer load a Föli-card on the buses".
(Valued customer).
Finnish:
"Loading of travel cards on buses ends 1.3.2021".
(Hey, you).
Continuing from another thread in which Anna was mentioning her trepidation about how to properly sound friendly when speaking with mostly Americans:Me: "Jumping on the "I've never seen you be anything but nice" train!
But seriously: the struggle to sound friendly to Americans is real! I find myself phrasing things in a way that would sound sarcastic to Germans so that it will come out sounding right. E.g. if my brother ever asked me something like "could you please help me with this?" I would immediately apologize, assuming he was sarcastically using "please" to point out that I *should* have helped *ages* ago. If he added a "kindly" it would be particularly cutting! But my American friends say *not* using those words when asking for something is rude and demanding - the very opposite to how it would be here. Really odd!"
Anna: "Eva, exactly that! I can produce American politeness, but it sounds extremely passive aggressive to me 😄 And of course I then go into loops of but will they know it sounds that way to me and thus assume I mean it like that?! And no, I don’t assume Americans are being passive aggressive, but American customer service people are exhausting! This is my main reason for not wanting to contact Amazon support, it takes 15 minutes to get past all the ”I am here to serve you” bs. Finnish customer service, you’re lucky if you get a greeting or a thanks or a smile, never all three!
That is all I wanted to say. I feel like I’m being neutral and informative, but people apologize, so naturally I assume they thought I was rude or unfriendly. But it just occurred to me that excess apologizing is also a form of politeness, and although I’m not British, I do it very well, but clearly can’t recognize when others are doing it.
This should probably be in the language thread, language is part culture and this is kind of both. I know you’re all tired of hearing about my laptop being in the shop, but it is, and I’m not gonna move this to another thread and link here, SORRY! If anyone else wants to continue this there, link above, please do, and I’ll thank you profusely (once I have my laptop) 😊"
Haha, Jemppu’s post above kinda proves my point 😄(Very many thank yous here also! 😊)
So people were talking about how some people say wala when they mean voilà. I used to know someone online who always said viola, and it took me a fair while to figure out what they were trying to say. I never asked if it was intentional or a mistake, but it bothered me very much.(Oh, this is the same person who thought Finland was part of the Netherlands, as in those foreign lands yonder 😂 I guess that kinda answers the question about intent/mistake.)
Yes, exactly this! It sounds so passive aggressive in my ears that it always makes me cringe a bit when I use it myself.Same with being "excited": e.g. an American colleague recently gave a presentation to European staff about new data entry conventions, enthusing endlessly about how excited she was to be talking about these new data entry rules, and people just sort of looked at her quizzically, and she asked us if we weren't excited about them. "Why in the world would we be?" was the (apparently very rude, but to us merely self-evident) reply. We use them every day, of course we need to learn about how they're going to change so that we can implement the new conventions when entering data. But the thought of psyching ourselves up about it would never have occurred to us. US management then had a talk with EU management about the EU staff's alarming "lack of motivation", which puzzled us even more. We had all attended, we'd taken notes, learned the new rules and were applying them. What was missing? Were we supposed to write sonnets about how the new 32a was so much superior to the old 32a?
Or another language/culture clash with ordering coffee: when I order a cappuccino, I want the waiter to just say "right away" and serve me their default version, whatever that happens to be. I don't want to be interrogated on espresso or filter based? which coffee brand? dark roast? medium roast? low fat milk? soy milk? rice milk? do I want the full-fat milk lactose-free? which sweetener? Just... leave me in peace so I can read my book/talk to my friend, please! If I have any special wish I'll say so, otherwise feel free to just plunk the default beverage before me. Especially if it's early morning, because then all that choice is just extra stressful and overwhelming. I pay the cafe to make those choices for me! If I wanted to figure it all out myself, I'd have simply stayed at home. 😄
P. S. Yes! Jemppu's post above demonstrates this beautifully!
:D This reminds me of the intern notice how to communicate with our US branch back in my office days. They told us that we should phrase everything so polite and overwhelming that we feel it was brownnosing (hope that's the correct word) - then we would have the basic friendliness level.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language (other topics)A Clockwork Orange (other topics)
On the Road (other topics)
Villains in Venice (other topics)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (other topics)
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We "learned" it in the '70s. I don't know if it was a national push at the time, or if the principal was convinced to buy metric system educational materials from a traveling salesman. Either way, we got the drill in 6th grade or so, and it was never reinforced, so quickly forgotten.