Two countries divided by a common language

Since my last post I’ve been home and back. I finally made it home the Tuesday before Christmas and have enjoyed a nice holiday with the family. Over the past three weeks I have eaten my weight in food due to the excessive eating does not stop after Christmas. Instead we go to Vermont to ski the day after Christmas and stay with my grandparents who feed us a ridiculous amount of delicious food all week (this year my Nana even made full Thanksgiving dinner because she felt bad that I’d missed the real thing). I’ve also seen about 5 different doctors for various things, enjoyed some lovely skiing on real snow, caught up with friends from home and college, did some necessary post Christmas shopping, and seen a number of great movies (Black Swan, True Grit, and King's Speech are all epic and should be seen by everyone).

As I am now across the pond again and busy revising for exams, I figured it would be a good idea to assess what I learned in my first term abroad at York. But let’s be honest, no one actually wants to hear about my academics (don’t worry I have learned things, but a blog about Inorganic Chemistry or the British colonies in India in the 19th century wouldn’t really be all that interesting). Instead I thought it might be a good time to discuss the differences between the UK and US, mainly the language. I have compiled a very incomplete list of some terms and phrases that are used in the UK that are either not used in the US at all or used very differently. I will attempt to define/describe them as best I can, but even after three months some of these still have me a bit confused.

1. Fancy dress: If someone were to invite you to an event that is fancy dress, as an America one might assume that this meant a jacket and tie occasion or something of the sort. That person would be gravely mistaken, fancy dress means costume party! And they are a frequent occurrence. It isn’t like American college life where there is the standard Halloween party and occasional theme party, but here almost every time people go out they seem to have a theme. Fun, but unless you are creative this hobby can get a little expensive.

2. Pulling: This term has nothing to do with the act of applying force to an object causing it to move towards you. Instead it is a synonym for the American term ‘hook up’ and contains the same ambiguity. Easy enough once you are actually informed of this, very confusing otherwise.

3. Press ups: same things as the American ‘push ups’. This one was learned very shortly after joining YUsnow, since whenever you say M.I.N.E. you are forced to do them.

4. Banter: This was harder concept to grasp since, from what I can understand, it seems to have multiple meanings. It can either be used to refer to witty exchanges of playful (usually) abuse as seen when referring to ‘friendly banter’. It can also be used as a standalone exclamation of sorts that denotes the previous occurrence of a witty comment or socially awkward and unacceptable occurrence.

5. Chunder: same as ‘being sick’ or ‘throwing up’, seems to be only used in jest or in reference to the youtube video “Gap Yah”, a necessary watch in order to understand many things...it was very educational. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFjWR7X5dU

6. Take away: same as ‘take out’ food, easy enough.

7. Z: Yes you did read that correctly, I did include the letter ‘Z’ in my list. This is because they pronounce it very differently, which is funny because it’s a letter and the pronunciation is so different that it cannot be blamed on accent alone. We pronounce it /zi/, they pronounce it /zɛd/.

8. Fair dues: some people use this phrase very frequently, means ‘fair enough’.

9. Cheeky: you might think that this is a word used mostly by old people when referring to crazy young folk when they are acting out. Nope, in the UK it a very frequently used word that seems to be used in reference to various different things that normally wouldn’t seem all that cheeky. It here is used with the connotation of being sly and mischievous but can be used to describe what seems like anything. People are cheeky, alcoholic drinks are ‘cheeky beverages’, the phrase cheeky monkey seems to be used to describe people, and a bunch of other thing that are completely random seem to be cheeky but I’m having trouble recalling them at the moment.

10. Lad: another tough one to define. The closest you get in the US is the stereotype of a bro, but they are definitely not the same thing. According to www.truelad.com defined as ‘beer chugging, banter loving, footie watching, womanizing man -a LAD’. In real life these can be the guys that look out for their friends, enjoy their lad’s nights out, act like idiots occasionally, and can sometimes be jerks but it’s all just friendly banter. Lad can also be used as an exclamation (like hahaha…LAD!) directed at someone, and is more of an acknowledgement of good banter.

So there it is, a compilation of what I have learned so far at York in regards to linguistics. Hopefully next blog post will actually be about my new and exciting adventures because as of right now the extent of my excitement has been studying in the library with Steph, and aggravating Laura.