7 Myths British People Believe About America - Part 2
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- čas přidán 22. 11. 2022
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Here are seven more myths some British people believe about the United States of America.
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I worked with a guy from London whose mother called because she had heard about the wildfires in California and was worried that he might not be able to evacuate in time. We were in Vermont.
That's funny. I guess if there's a big earthquake in CA, some Brits with friends on the east coast might be needlessly concerned.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
That is priceless!
Even people in this country can be ignorant lol. My aunt told me once that they were planning a winter trip somewhere near me so if I wanted to join them I could. They live in Florida. Their trip plan was to Leavenworth, Washington. I live in Minnesota... Not sure what she means by "near" lmao
What a sweet lady. I'm still cackling though 😂
I think the thing about Americans not getting sarcasm, is we get sarcasm, it just the way Brits go about it that confuses us. Typically, when an American makes a sarcastic comment, we'll add a smirk, a raised eyebrow, change the tone of our voice, just something so the recipient knows we are being sarcastic. Brits just tend to do sarcasm totally deadpan, no verbal or facial cues at all, so we are never sure if they are being sarcastic or just rude.
The deadpan delivery is what I LOVE about British sarcasm.
Cue = hint
Queue = line (for waiting)
I'll say the most outrageous nonsense, but with a completely straight face and deadpan delivery, and my mom will flip out, thinking I'm being serious. I've confused quite a few friends as well. I feel like saying, "Do you honestly think so little of me that you believe me when I tell you I can't make it to dinner because I'm meeting my guy to pick up a kilo of cheeba?!" Hahaha.
@@MikeP2055 that isn't as uncommon in the US as one would think! 🤣🤣🤣💀
This is very true. As a British person, on a couple of occasions on meeting an American I have made a comment in just that way and got the impression that they thought I was just being rude.
Brits love to make fun of us for calling car fuel "gas" even though it's a liquid. But I always thought it made more sense than "petrol" because it's short for gasoline, which is what the fuel actually is. Petrol is short for petroleum, which is unrefined crude oil and not what actually goes into the cars.
I'm not sure what you meant by "what the fuel actually is", but if you are a word nerd, look up the etymology of gasoline. It's interesting.
Calling gasoline ‘petrol’ is like calling cake ‘eggs’
@@AintNobodyAtAll Just for anybody who might read this and want to know the back story. Gas is short for gasoline which is a ripoff of Cazeline/Gazeline. Cazeline (named after John Cassell) was an early oil product and was trademarked so some businesses thought to get around the trademark while still getting people to think it’s the same product by calling their product gasoline. The words Cazeline/Gazeline fell out of favor by the public but gasoline stuck as the name for the product within the US. This is kind of like the terms Q-tips and cotton swabs where the trademarked name (Q-tip) became the common term for similar products (cotton swabs) in some parts of the US. The difference for gasoline is that the generic name won out over the trademarked name and became the common term in the US for this product.
What you’re calling petroleum, we call “oil”.
@@1978rharris don't know what you're talking, it's freedom juice
Fun fact, the guy who discovered aluminum actually used the american version in his academic writings and it only became aluminium after the brits decided that it didn't fit with the spelling/pronunciations of other elements, so in a way the brits *are* pronouncing aluminum wrong
No, the guy who discovered it called it 'Alumium'. With your reasoning, both Brits and Americans say it wrong.
@@bubbletea695 "Davy originally called it alumium (1808), then amended this to aluminum, which remains the U.S. word. British editors in 1812 further amended it to aluminium, the modern preferred British form, to better harmonize with other metallic element names."
@@bubbletea695 No
@@JadedJet Well they're not wrong, he did call it alumium when he discovered. But afterwards he called it aluminum.
@@saoirseislive Sir Davy amended his spelling from "alumium" to "aluminum". So how are Americans saying it wrong by using the spelling that was corrected by the man who discovered it?
Being native to Texas, who studied abroad in England, I remember my English friends looking at me like I was insane for describing a trip as "well its only 4 hours by car" which led to a conversation about relative distances.
When they found out that the nearest grocery store to my home in the US was an hour away by car at 70mph... they suddenly understood why a lot of Americans can't just walk places.
One of my favorite things I've heard about the differences between Americans and Europeans is that Americans think a hundred years is a long time, but europeans think a hundred miles is a long way
When I lived in Dallas, I'd drive an hour to pick up my girlfriend, an hour to where we were going on a date, and then I'd do it all over again in reverse. And on top of that, there's the idea of mountain miles. Something in Colorado might only be 60 miles away, but might still take you two hours because you're going over passes and around winding valleys.
I also live in Texas and it’s about an 7 hour drive just to leave the state so if I want to go anywhere it’s at least three days lol
@@mr.cancer7270 shoot, you could drive 11 hours in Texas and still be in Texas. From Orange to El Paso it is something like 900 miles, over 500 of which is just empty nothingness of West Texas.
I love how it can take me 1.5 hours to get across Houston.
Regarding accents: I once saw a man in a car with Texas license plates ask a Massachusetts traffic cop for directions. They were both speaking English but they had no idea what the other one was saying.
🤣🤣so funny!
😄😄
To be fair everyone in Massachusetts takes a solemn oath to never help anyone find their way anywhere
I had the same problem in Boston. Asked a guy for directions, and took me three tries to make out "Concord Road". Sounded like "cahncud" road.
my ex husband used to have to turn on close captioning if we watched something British on tv
I am from Oklahoma and still remember the first time I met someone from NYC. A family moved to our town and one of their kids was in my older sister's class. I couldn't understand anything she said. It seemed kind of like English - but not.
Years later I realized just how much language differed, even among different towns in Oklahoma.
“You can drive across the USA in a day, right?”
Me: *laughs in native Texan*
I drove from Central Texas to Savannah Ga in 2 days, half of the first trip was just Texas. There was so much Texas.
I've done this trip 8 times this year alone man. One more time for Christmas and back and then I'm done until next Christmas
You can do it in juuuuuust over a day if you cannonball run
You can fly over it in a fraction of the time, but uhh, no, you cant do that in a day by car, why do ppl think our country is so small?
Yeah, England is roughly the size of Alabama, and yet they think they'll get through the (technically 2nd) largest state in less than a day?
I mean, there is the cannonball run challenge.... They almost did it.
I heard a story where someone had an English friend who lamented that he could only visit his Father twice a year because of how far away he lived. Apparently a mere 45 minute drive away. For many Americans this was like a commute to work every day. They summarized this by saying:
“Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance, while Americans think 100 years is a long time.”
This seems true, but that also doesn’t mean that he isn’t a shitty son as well
Driving 45 minutes to visit friends or family is perfectly normal in Britain. He just sounds like a awful son.
45 minutes? That’s how long it took to get to school in the morning during my middle school years. Err, “secondary” school I guess?
It took me 1 hour each way to go to High School on the bus every day from age 11 to 18 years. I lived in a village and my school was in the city. The idea that people don't travel in the UK is just plain silly!
@@Bliffenstimmers That is interesting to me because I never had to attend middle school. When I started school, middle school didn't even exist. I did attend Junior High School, but later on, some egg-headed educators thought that could stigmatize students and abolished it.
The point about surprising distance works in the opposite way too. As an American it blows my mind that you could cross an entire country in less than a day.
Or take a day trip to another country that's only a few hour drive away! I live in northern Indiana and it would take 6 hours by car to get to Toronto, Canada and that's short to me!
I found that when I was backpacking around the UK. It was incredible how short every trip was. I was in Cardiff, Wales within a few short hours from London!!
Lol 😂 I can’t even cross my state in a day!
@@bandotaku I live right next to the border, so a day trip is theoretically possible based off of distance, but everything I've heard says that the border crossing takes hours at minimum. In the EU, at least, border crossings are much faster.
Honestly, living in California, it's crazy to me how much people in the north east commute across state lines.
Fun Fact: According to linguists, North Carolina alone has over 200 documented dialects, and I remember moving only according county lines and being openly confused around certain people.
I can tell you that driving 15 mins from just one county to the neighboring one here in eastern NC you will hear a very different dialect. It's pretty easy to tell which county you are from just by your pronunciation of "Ice"...LOL.
Moved to NC from KY, and originally I thought we were all "in the south" but yeah accents here are quite different. I even have some difficulty understanding the really deeply NC ones. I didn't realize it before but now I can spot a native central KY speaker after just a few seconds. Maybe it's tied to a little nostalgia?
@@VKZ24 County to county, pff. There's a spot in Lackawanna county, PA, where if youre in Dickson City, Jessup, Archbald, or basically anywhere BUT Eynon, everyone sounds the same. Cross over into Eynon and some people sound like theyre speaking a different language. Eynonians actually usually switch dialect and accent to be able to communicate with everyone else. It's a head trip, cases where it's like, "Every word of what you just said was English, but in a nonsensical order with crazy pronunciations that rendered it unintelligible."
Nc Hoi Toider
Hi, actual linguistics student in the US here, according to who exactly? 200 dialects is waaay too many. Unless they're doing something weird with how they classify dialects, I seriously doubt that there are that many endemic to NC. There's probably a few different varieties of Southern, plus Appalachian, plus AAVE and Hoi Toider. That makes half a dozen. Even if you were to fragment a few of those out to be more specific, that's still only a tenth of the figure you are quoting.
I feel like most Americans imagine the UK as having three accents as well. There’s a “Standard British accent” like James Bond and Star Wars villains have, a cockney accent for whimsical chimney sweeps and Dickensian orphans, and a Scottish accent that’s basically Shrek. And come to think of it, those sort of match similar roles in media as the three American accents you mentioned and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Yep, pretty much true. And it’s common to hear Americans say “British accent” when they mean the standard English accent (e.g., James Bond). I heard an interesting accent from a “companion” in Doctor Who. Character’s name was Amy Pond. I remember she almost sounded American to me. I stumbled across something online years later that made me think she was from northeastern England or southeastern Scotland, but wasn’t ever sure.
@@jacquevanlopeznoroff8827 Probably southwestern England, as that is one of the only places in England that pronounces the 'r' sound after vowels.
@@jacquevanlopeznoroff8827 If you mean the actress who plays her, she's from Inverness, so more northeastern Scotland. Her accent in the show is just her normal accent, if my memory serves me right.
my first thought when I think of the British accent I think of the annoying posh accent
to right governor!
I actually did read a book some years ago whose whole point was addressing the fact that American English is closer to traditional British English than British English is.
Shame about their spelling though.
@@narcoleptic8982 If I recall, a lot of words that are shorter in American English stems from old newspapers that charged advertisements by the letter, so people cut off as many letters as they could from common words to save money, and the changes just stuck.
Believe it or not it is the southern dialect that is closest to British English. If you speed up a recording an southern American you can really hear it. The spelling is because back in the day newspapers charged by the letter.
Nations that are built from colonies tend to retain linguistic patterns that were more common at the time of colonization. (Linguistics factoid for the day.) So yes, American English is closer to more “traditional” English in many ways.
And the shortened form of many American spellings is also due to the efforts of Noah Webster as he was compiling the first American dictionary - he felt that the words should be spelled closer to pronunciation, and deliberately dropped many of the letters that had become silent over the years.
@@lisajohnson4744this is the story I’ve heard about spelling changes, but the newspaper advert explanation makes sense also.
A friend of mine from Germany thought everyone wore cowboy hats in the US. She came to Minnesota, where almost no one does. She was a little let down that it wasn't like the western movies she had grown up watching.
I grew up in Minnesota, my dad was very country but only wore a cowboy hat when he went to WeFest or something. We moved to Texas when I was 16 and first thing he did was buy a new hat and he wears them all the time now haha
All my immediate family is from MN and have been here my whole life. After my parents bought their hobby farm in the 80s, my dad totally went in on the cowboy look. He always wore a nice cowboy hat when he went out and told us that if we lost him to "just look for a cowboy hat and I'll be the guy underneath it." 😊
As a Wisconsinite, I am too ! I always wanted to wear one, but since almost no-one else did and in the 90s cowboy looks/clothes, boots and country music was popular, most of the looks were rather pathetic-seeming ( like in a "putting in airs" way) and in general, you couldn't really "get away with it" unless you were out line-dancing or at a bar, a music fest, etc. , or had horses and went to horse events. As a very busy dairy farming teen with no extra $ and who tended to look dorky anyways, I didn't risk it beyond a couple western-looking shirts ... .
While in college I hosted a German exchange student for a semester here in Texas. We had a fantastic time and have remained in contact since. However, one thing we still laugh about was his desire to see the US while he was here. We only had two weeks at the end of the semester before he had to fly home. He wanted to see Florida so we planned a road trip. He then asked if we could hop over to Hawaii while there. I informed him that we would be on the wrong coast to "hop" over to Hawaii for a few days. He absolutely insisted that Hawaii was off the coast of Florida and insinuated that as an American I was geographically unaware; was it a myth or stereotype.
Chicken fried steak has its origins in Wienerschnitzel.
It could have been. Not knowing too much about it, I'd still bet that countries being on a smaller scale in Europe would play a part. That way, the resulting scope of geopolitical knowledge for your average European covers more countries - technically - than a resident of say, Kansas. Even having a grasp of just as much terrain expanse, the American will know fewer countries.
Plus, sort of as its own thing, if you show a map of Europe to an American, they'll plausibly be unable to guess names for "all the little tiny countries". It's simply not relevant to their experience, being across an ocean, which is where bias can enter in: "well we know the relative layout of the countries in North America just as well as we know the ones here, what's your excuse??"
@@techsmechs2485 He probably thought Puerto Rico was Hawaii. Or he was aware that there were lots of islands in the Caribbean and simply assumed Hawaii must be one of them.
It's not surprising that he didn't know where Hawaii is, but it's surprising that he would contradict an American who obviously does know.
@@spankynater4242 The second greatest travesty committed by Germans, then
@@techsmechs2485 A good point. It's also worth remembering that not only is the USA alone geographically almost as large as _all of Europe,_ it actually encompasses 50 states (one of those several tricky related words that differ on small technicalities: Nation, State, Country, Polity, etc), while Europe encompasses only 44 countries (some of which, to be fair, do contain further discrete nations, like the UK and Spain, but at this point after the 20th century most European nations are sovereign; However, some US states _also_ encompass multiple geographically- and culturally-distinct national identities (sociologically speaking; we almost all list our "nationality" as "American"), especially the bigger states like California, Texas and Florida). Most Americans probably can't name all 50 states off the top of their heads or place them all on a map, but I would bet that most Europeans can't name every European country let alone place them on a map, though I'm sure both can manage a respectable number on average.
On top of that most Americans have at least some knowledge of Canadian and/or Mexican geography, because North America as a whole is WAY larger than Europe, and arguably more culturally diverse.
A better metric of European vs American grasp of geography might be, for example, each group's grasp of Asian or African geography.
During the year that I was a cab driver, I picked up a fare at the commuter airport who wanted to go to the local naval base. When he asked - in a Texas accent - how far away the base was, I replied "A long way... about eight or nine miles". He barked "Eight or nine miles!? Shoot, back home eight or nine miles is around the corner!!" Growing up in New England - just as in England itself - had given me a cramped sense of distance.
This is interesting cause I'm also in new England but 30 minutes from EVERYTHING. lol even the crowded places get rural really fast over here.
I'm upstate New York after living mainly in the NY boroughs. I used to be able to walk to shop fairly easily & had places close enough "in an emergency" if need be. Now I can only get to a Post Office & a little bar/store...if the weather & my health are both good.
Telling my Manhattan friend this & things like: there's no sidewalks, I have to close the window at night so the bear isn't attracted, there's ONE taxi, I have a well, I hang my laundry on lines but yes I have a dryer, there's no "hop on a bus" option...etc. can be quite entertaining!
In Texas we measure distance in hours, not miles.
Went to school in the Netherlands but am from the US. My friend told his parents about me who basically wanted nothing to do with me before meeting me or hearing anything about me. Then he told them I'm from Massachusetts and they were like "thank god, we thought he might be from California or something". The thought of judging someone from what state they're from has never crossed my mind and it's crazy to hear people from other countries form opinions of people by what part of the country they're from, especially from the cultural melting pot that is the US.
Even in the USA, many can't stand anyone from California.
No way, state rivalries all the way! Especially considering they're technically seperate countries bound VERY tightly by the Constitution.
Well, TBH Californians do suck, so it's pretty relatable.
@@benjaminsorenson So I see you've never been to California.
I am a California born woman. It has been my experience, both from Americans and foreign born people, the idea that CA women are loose, hedonistic and wildly anti-religious and liberal. (CA women are blonde and surf 24/7 too!) Sometimes true, but not 100 per cent of the time.
I was on a British Airways flight to England once and got in what I figured was the line to the lavatory. I asked the woman standing near the door if she was in line. She very huffily replied, "It's called a queue! Yes, I am in the queue." I was thinking, a simple yes would have been fine.
You should have corrected her.
It was good of her to correct you.
Should have told her you didn't have to care about that since 1776.
@@peterjf7723 correct him on what lmfao.
@@peterjf7723😂 bros still mad about tea in a harbor
"They even spell humor differently, which should have been our first clue" I literally laughed out loud when you said that.
I love Lawrence even more for referring to the onion's humor as "many-layered"!
"Whose comedy doesn't get enough credit for how multi-layered it is."
That was a glorious delivery. Well done, sir.
I do hate being mocked by other countries' citizens because they get their ideas of us off memes and their own perceptions of our culture because culture was a major American export for 50 years or something, so people think they know us, but they don't. Places like this are the only place I feel like it's okay to say it hurts my feelings when people are mean about my home country. We're just different from them, and I wish people were chill about us all having differences.
Yeah, I'm not a proud American by any means but it's still annoying when Europeans make fun of us lol
@@skawesomeone As a brit I suppose it doesn't help we have a tendacy to run into certain americans who think they're better than everyone else, though the americans that I met when I went on holiday in the US were really friendly however if the majority of americans you meet as a european or even see and hear about on american media (we consume a LOT of american media) are the ones that are calling the US the best country in the world and being arrogant then it is going to make europeans feel a bit annoyed and more likely want to make fun.
I don't think its right but I do think its understandable if you see a version of a foreign country a lot whether it be that you meet the wrong people, or/and the media you consume, then your more likely to generalise and make fun of said country.
As a brit, one of the main things that makes me uncomfortable is when I hear US being called the greatest country in the world or something similar in your media, completely seriously and I now again come across americans online who seem to think thats okay, in my view and a lot of other brits as well as other europeans, if we're being serious, there is no "greatest country" being the richest, does not mean greatest as theres just too many factors envolved, education, religion, sports, politics, enviorment, etc, countries are great at different things but the greatest out of 195 countries in the world? We've heard similar sayings a lot in your media, that are completely serious.
We see this opinion a lot through your media, which like I said before, we watch a lot of it. Maybe its not something the majority of americans think but its what we're shown over here and so when you start to generalise and think a certain culture or certain people are this arrogant, then you're more likely to make fun of it more.
@@pipercharms7374 Yeah, a very vocal portion of the American population is like that. And of course, we Americans do (more than?) our fair share of Brit- or Euro-bashing as well. Though I would point out that from my perspective as an American, a lot of British and European people present themselves as being better than Americans at the very least. All countries have their own proportion of unsavory people.
I guess it's kind of like enjoying teasing a sibling but not tolerating people outside the family doing the same.
@@skawesomeone From my perspective from what we see (though not when I visited) it’s the other way around and the majority of Europeans think it’s Americans acting superior 😅
Maybe we just think each other is acting superior and going around in circles without knowing it 😂
@@pipercharms7374 - You make a valid point. It's a bit of multi layer explanation but bear with me. The USA is and isn't the greatest country in the world. Now, by almost all measurable standards, we're most DEFINITELY not the greatest country in the world. Hell, the argument could be made that we're the absolute worst of all the developed countries in the world. By certain standards and measures, that would be completely and utterly true.
The people that say this with the most volume/vitriol are generally conservatives (Republicans). They have a stylized image of what the US should be and want everyone to adhere to it. They relish the idea of rolling back the clock to the "golden years" aka the 1950s. They don't like change in any form and most especially dislike it when it isn't akin to white, Christian ideals. They'll be dragged kicking and screaming into the slightest change. They have virtually no concept of what it takes to be the "greatest country" because they don't actively think about it.
Halfway there; I'll try to keep it short.
The reason why the US is the greatest country is purely ephemeral and has now been adopted by most other developed nations. The idea that anyone could move to and make a new and better life for themselves aka "The American Dream." Now, as I said before, most other developed countries now have this ideology and are very welcoming to people trying better themselves or their situations. In recent history though (say, the last 250 years), the US has been the best place to do it. At a purely ideological level, the US (on paper) still is the greatest country because it tells you that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are guaranteed. But, much like a late night infomercial for a shitty product, this has never worked the way it was intended. It sounds great but simply can't exist in that form with our current population. If the country still exists in another 250 years, maybe (but that's doubtful) they could learn to be a true melting pot.
TL;DR - The ideals that the USA were founded upon make it the greatest and the subsequent failings of our populace from the inception of the nation proves that is most certainly isn't.
Sorry. I know that's super long.
I have a feeling a lot of the british people who think Americans are rude and have no sense of humor are the ones that make fun of school shootings over jokes about beans on toast.
Yes, the casual cruelty of some British people can take your breath away. Thankfully they are not the majority.
Well, when the come here, where do they go? California? Texas? Idaho? No.
They go to one of the rudest places on Earth: New York City
To make clear this video's point about American accents, when legendary voice actor Daws Butler (a native of South Carolina) first recorded the voice for Huckleberry Hound, he was asked to do a Southern drawl for the character. He responded, "I can think of ten different drawls off the top of my head. Which one do you want?" For the record, the one Butler actually used seems to have been based on an acquaintance from North Carolina.
I'd add it's not just accents, regional word choice is a huge indicator of where someone is from and using the same word in different accents could mean different things if you are familiar with them, if I here someone with a southern accent ask for a coke I know the correct response is "what kind?", otherwise it's "is Pepsi okay?" At least in the northeast. I'm from the south originally and moved to New England later on. Also "bless your heart" in s southern accent is often sarcastic or a kind of throwaway term for disagreement, whereas it's probably more sincere in New England although I admit it's used much less.
Would be curious to hear these ten different drawls!!
@@jamesburton1050 good thing he didn’t do the Ocracoke Brogue. If you’re interested in what that sounds like there are some videos on CZcams about it.
I worked for a company that had a lot of customers in NYC. After a while I could tell where the accents were from. I grew up in the South and yes we have a lot of drawls. When I moved to California - no one understood me - especially the numbers and that worked both ways. I used to say I just didn't change coasts I moved to a foreign country!
@@omgandwtf1 As a Southern Belle I completely disagree about Bless Your Heart. My grandmothers said that to me a lot and to others in a very loving and caring way. The church I attend also says Bless Your Heart. I have lived in VA and NC. I visited SC five or six times. I haven't heard that saying as a throwaway terms. Bless in the Bible means Happy. The saying wishes that person a happy life. And when I lived in OH and CA I did not hear BYH at all.
I'd say that the "Rude American" is largely based on where you are in the country. In the Midwest you're likely going to get some of the most polite and nice people you'll ever run into, even if you occasionally run into rude people. Go to New York and you'll likely get a lot more rudeness. And, ironically enough, banter is alive and well in New England, where I grew up. The only way I knew someone liked me was if they would shit on me and could take it when I threw it right back at them
I feel like there's banter everywhere but you have to have years of friendship to be able to in many places to get away with it. A friend of a few months might not be okay with it but their friend of 6 years could be.
To be fair, the north east isn't nice, but they're kind. If you need help with something, we'll tease you but also stop what we're doing to make sure you're alright.
@@moomicus3118 I've lived in both the Northeast and the South. I'll take the honesty and sincerity of the North every time. The South is treacherous.
@@gwendolynrobinson3900 The rude American stereotype is because Europeans will most often travel to places like NYC, LA, and SF, which are completely full of rude assholes. On their side of the pond it's because when Americans travel to Europe, it requires dealing with idiot ticket counter workers, idiot TSA agents, and, of course, other idiot passengers, so by the time Americans get to Europe, they're a little on edge and not all smiles and rainbows.
Rude Americans come from the cultural influence the US has had, often showing the people as rude
I have a degree in English with a focus on Linguistics, and I was told in grad school, given evidence for, and fully accept that both British English and American English have both changed over time - neither is "older" or "more original," they're both modern versions of older versions of English that diverged, mostly bc of a difference in location. There's a thing called natural drift which is that all languages everywhere slowly change over time and this is normal, harmless and impossible to prevent, but if one language is spoken in different regions they develop in unique ways from each other, but all of them are still different than what they were in the past
It's not just Brits who don't get the distances--especially out West. Years ago, when I was living in DC, I met someone who was going to take a trip out Oregon. They had never been outside of New England (until going to DC). They asked if it was better to take a taxi or rent a car for the two weeks they would be there. After asking a few questions, I found that their itinerary would be to fly to Portland, visit Multnomah Falls, go skiing at Timberline, visit Bend, go to Crater Lake, go to Klamath Falls and then head to the coast and visit a few towns before heading back to Portland...I had to explain that the drive from Portland to Timberline alone was 3 hours, and that from Timberline to Bend was another 3 hours (in good weather), Bend to Crater Lake was at least 2.5 hrs.... They did not understand that you can drive for 6 hours East or South from Portland and still be in Oregon...
This so much with people visiting California. I had friend a couple of years ago that was visiting friends in San Jose while I and some other friends where at Disneyland. He said, I will drive down one afternoon and have dinner with you guys and then drive back up. The look I gave him over the video call, he didn’t understand who far he was talking about driving.
"New England," you say 🤔
As someone who grew up in Connecticut, I can definitely relate to this. Honestly, I find larger states kind of overwhelming!
I've been doing seasonal work in the northwest for a couple of years now and while it never really phased me, I think it's funny meeting people coming out for the first time especially from the northeast or from big cities like LA who are just baffled at how long you have to drive to get groceries, for example.
Ahhh reminds me of the good ol days when I drived from Vegas to Oxnard in a mere 6 hours to visit my grandmother.
In the US we don't all have pools, but I think growing up we all knew some one who did. There was always a kid at school with a pool that invited everyone to their b-day party to show off and it worked, that kid was always at least somewhat popular.
Maybe if you lived/grew up in the suburbs. I cant imagine people knowing a kid with a pool directly in some cities near me, there's no room for them at all
@@FunctionallyLiteratePerson yeah, i grew up in a rough part of St Louis. Didn’t know a soul with a pool. We kids didn’t know how to swim, and my kids can swim better than i do to this day. 😅
And depends where you live too. Where I grew up if you had a pool you were rich (by kid logic) but my cousin's husband grew up in a desert part of California where they knew absolutely no one with a pool, or a working one, cause they were always rationing water
Nope. Even in the burbs, I never knew anyone with a pool, growing up. A gaggle of neighbor kids would be packed into someone's station wagon and get dumped off at the local lake for the afternoon.
In Florida this was definitely a thing, but idk if I’ve seen any pools somewhere like Colorado.
Accents are super-fun. I can tell you as a lifelong Californian that just my state has numerous accents, some based on location, some based on generation and some based on the predominant places of origin of the majority of the people that live there. Remember the "Valley Girl"? Yes, that was a real accent and still influences the way we speak in CA today.
Haha! Yup. I’m from the coast of so cal and we use the word “like” a lot. There was an episode of Graham Norton with Miriam Margolese (spelling😬) and she kept correcting Will I Am when he said “like.” I love her but I kept yelling at my TV, that’s how we talk in CA! Give him a break!!!!
As a Texan, I am so, so sorry.
Poor soul.
I'm from New York, boroughs & upstate. All the boroughs & some sub-parts of the boroughs have accents as does my part of upstate. My boroughs friends/schoolmates would know if I'd spent time upstate (ex: over the weekend) & vice versa, & my mom knew which friends I'd seen just by how my accent had changed since we were last together.
"Gag me with a spoon"
I once dated a physicians assistent who truly believed the English pronunciation of “aluminum” referred exclusively to the element, and the American pronunciation referred to the foil we wrap food with.
I will never forget this.
Annoyingly, far too many Brits refer to alumin(i)um foil as "tinfoil". Which it most certainly isn't!
@@robertfoulkes1832 Midwesterners also do that
@@OtakuUnitedStudioI also do that! a lot of people do that, though technically my dad does carry a lot of midwesternisms from his parents
Just cuz you have a Master's degree doesn't make you smart 😅
I'm an American expat that has taught ESL for over a decade. So many people tell me they are worried about going to America. Ignoring obvious societal issues (gun violence), they assume that Americans are extremely rude since we are "individualistic" and shows placed in NYC.
I check in after their trip to the states and they are always shocked at how nice people are. I live in Korea so common decency and public etiquette is very different.
Holding doors open for others, sensing when someone is trying to pass you and moving without having to be asked or saying "sorry" for inadvertently blocking someone, a lot of "please" and "thank you"s. These are all pretty uncommon in Korea and being manhandled by older people to get out of their way is pretty common.
Even with lower level English skills, they are impressed with how much effort Americans put into trying to communicate effectively.
I blame the crappy American and Canadian tourists. That's right, I'm throwing some Canadians under the bus too. I've seen rude AF Canadians be terrible and heard the locals say "Tsh, Americans. What jerks." NO!! IT WASN'T US THIS TIME!! 😅
Haha I can relate to that last bit. I'm American and I once had an Italian friend go off at me (in a joking way) about how we invented the Hawaiian pizza. My reaction was just like yours, "That was Canada, not us!!" 😂
Yes, I think the rude American stereotype is largely based on young Americans out for a "party tour" or entitled wealthy senior citizens. I have lived abroad and always slunk away in shame after seeing such behavior!
I think people in the Midwest are particularly overly nice. I can not even bump into someone, only getting close to them by a few inches, and they'd say sorry. It's kind of annoying tbh, but at least they're saying sorry. Unlike NYC residents lol
All things considered, the "Karens" of the US/Canada do take vacations as well, and foreigners notice them because "I WANT TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER! IN ENGLISH, NOT MEXICAN!" The regular folks who just so happen to also be tourists are being quiet and respectful, or minding their own business in general.
New Yorkers are actually helpful AND nice so don't be afraid of asking. Ask more than one person if you have to. Its a big city. The first person you ask may be new themselves or may honestly not know how to help you.
We had a friend from the UK come to visit one year, and not only did they think it would be a good idea to take a bus across the country, but they thought it would only take a day from the East Coast to Colorado. We completely blew their mind when we took a "day trip" driving around the sites of Colorado and hadn't even gotten out of the lower corner of the state despite driving for at least 8 hours seeing the sights.
It can happen to us, too. A friend lived in New York for a few years without a car. When she came to visit me and we did an east coast road trip, she actually thought we could get from the LL Bean headquarters in Maine, across the state of New Hampshire, into, Vermont, visit the Ben and Jerry's factory for a free pint, and be home in Rhode Island by the end of the day. 🤦🏻♀️
We had a friend in Lincolnshire who went to Chicago on a business trip. He called us (in Des Moines) and said he planned to "hop on over" to see us. My husband and I looked at each other, dubious. Our friend thought it would take a couple of hours by car. When he found out that it would take a minimum of 9 hours to get from where he was at to our house, he changed his mind.
Many European and East Asian visitors to the US think of a trip to the Capital city from where they land is something of a short trip. European visitors to the US are particularly prone to this view. It comes as a real shocker to them when they're told that a drive from, say, Boston to New York is a 3-4 hour trip just to get there. When they find out that Boston to Washington is a 7-9 hour drive, it's enough to cause fainting.
A lot of that comes from their mental maps of their own countries' distances between cities; they then use the same thinking when considering trips between US cities/states. They fail to realize how truly MASSIVE the contiguous 48 is in land area. The contiguous 48 is almost as large as Continental Europe (including European Russia, the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova).
It's funny because I have heard this a lot from various friends whenever British people in particular visit. Hearing people in Colorado saying they'll visit the Grand Canyon over the weekend not realizing it's 12 hours one way. Sure it's doable but you're not gonna have an entire weekend to enjoy it. In the inverse it's hard for me to consider how well connected Europe is. It's hard to really visualize that a trip from London to Paris is only about 6 hours. Something definitely doable over a weekend.
Americans from other regions do that, too. I grew up in Florida and regularly people thought they could get from NW FL down to Disney and then back in a day. Nooooope.
being a proud american is a funny thing. out of all the topics to evoke a patriotic feeling i wouldnt never have expected the size of america to be one of them.
i start hearing about the time it takes to drive from GA to CA and i feel like standing up and saluting.
very strange and unexpected
Now you know how we Texans feel, and why we feel so much spite towards Alaska.
I drove from GA to CO, took over 24 hours and we didn't stop the entire time (exept for gas, snacks, ect.), but damn it was fun
Being proud of any nationality is like yelling "I have achived nothing so I have to be proud of the fact that by accident I was born some particular place!"
@@wizardman1976 That is not at all true. People can be proud of multiple aspects of themselves. Just because they are proud of one thing doesn't mean they aren't proud of other things.
Years ago, my ex-wife made online friends from Australia. They came to visit us once (Central Iowa) and it was alot of fun comparing myths about each country. They quite surprised that didn't own a gun, were shocked at how easy it was to find Dr. Pepper, and was worried at how much trouble it would be to find an actual Walmart. They also didn't understand that the large selection of BBQ sauce available at Walmart was a tiny fraction of the real number of BBQ sauces one could find in America. They laughed like hell at Outback Steak house and it's commercials on TV, though. We were told that NO ONE had that accent in Australia, and no one ever used the word "barby" when talking about BBQ. They did make us ANZAC biscuits, though and they are DELICIOUS!! Yes, I know they weren't Brits, but still a funny story!!
Absolutely lovely! TY for sharing :)
I always thought Brits were stand-offish, so I was quite surprised when I was in London, on the Tube, when someone leaned across the aisle and asked, "Are you American?" I admitted that I was, and how did he know? He said, "It's just that you're looking at EVERYTHING!" I'm just surprised he talked to me! My sister lived in London at the time and told me how Londoners don't talk to one another on the Tube.
My Korean American friends will be riding the subway in Korea and random people will ask them if they are American.
"Yeah... How did you know?"
You have a default small smile and actually made eye contact
Americans are oddly known to be super rude and super friendly at the same time. As an expat myself, I find the dichotomy very amusing
@@UnicornsPoopRainbows I always find it amusing when people complain about Americans being too friendly, talking to strangers, and smiling. If we walked around silently glaring at everyone they'd complain about that too.
Anecdotally speaking, I have found that about half of the Brits I have met are stand-offish and even a bit haughty at times. But the other half (roughly) are open, friendly and would give the Irish a run for their money in a gab contest. So, either half of Brits are open and friendly, or all Brits are open and friendly, half of the time. And maybe that average is just what you'd expect from people everywhere.
But when they do, they are charming.
I think this is as much a city thing as a US/UK thing. No one in New York, Boston, or Philadephia talks on the subway either.
Some years ago I visited the UK and planned out a trip that included London, Belfast, Dublin, Galway and the Aran Islands. I wanted to see some of Scotland as well, but being a Canadian, my brain couldn't fathom adding yet another country into our two week itinerary. Needless to say, I got quite frustrated with myself while standing on the northern coast of Ireland, realizing I was in fact looking at Scotland, and just how close it was. This was before google was a regular part of life and at the tap of a finger you could figure out that it only takes a couple of hours or so to get between major cities in the UK.
Interesting that 3 of your 5 destinations weren't even in the UK!
@@robertfoulkes1832 what’s interesting about it?
@@robertfoulkes1832 They were until 1922.
@@SWalkerTTU Just over a century ago! Hardly justifies describing a modern tour where 3 out of 5 destinations were in the RoI as a visit to the UK!
it was always hard for me to believe that people don’t think the us has a lot of accents. i lived in central indiana for a long while, and would routinely visit northern indiana and kentucky to visit family. the accent difference between just that is hard to believe. then moving to virginia was a whole thing in terms of accents
Many decades ago my dad was a freshly minted USMC officer and under him he had 2 sergeants, one from the deep South and the other a Southie from Boston. Dad sometimes had to act as a translator between the two. On one than more occasion I have been in Europe, chatting with folks, and while they knew I was American, none could figure out where I was from, due to a lack of an accent. They figured it out when I dropped into local surfer lingo, then local Hispanic accent.
Former marine here from Georgia. Had friends in SOI who were straight out of Boston and ended up becoming amazing friends. The accent clash is definitely funny
The swimming pool thing also depends on where you live. They’re not common in the north but are pretty common in the south. In Florida especially, LOTS of houses have pools
I was about to say the same thing, inground swimming pools in Florida are very common.
Yup. It's very regional. In the North of US they are uncommon because it's a hastle to maintain something that you can't even us the majority of the time. As you had down South, they become more and more common.
Many people in Los Angeles have inground, cement pools. Our family home has a beautiful pool. Now the apt. I live in has no pool. I don't see many pools in my neighborhood. And I never see people swimming in the very few Apt. pools I see. I have heard some apartment pools are not heated.
@@knighthawk3749 When I lived in Connecticut (back East), some of my friends had big above ground pools. They invited me over to swim alot.
Whereas in Los Angeles, many people have pools and they don't invite people for parties or even use it themselves.
@@grace7701 that’s probably because if you go swimming in any other water you’d get eaten by an alligator or shark.
I love that you don't defend us, you just explain it and let people decide what they want.
Well to be fair we are kind of a mess
@@borttorbbq2556 and the UK isn’t?
@@LoveK1 oh they are they are but that's not where I live I live in America and I can full-heartedly say that I love America but we are a mess right now
I like that he doesn't 'attack' us and defend Britain, but just explain the difference.
You say that as if there a reason to be defensive. I happen to be proud of my country! I mean, mostly.
The U.S. has thousands of accents. Spent a lot of time in Cincinnati as a kid though I lived in Tennessee. I worked retail during uni and surprised two older ladies when I suddenly exclaimed, "You're from Cincinnati". It was quite unique to older, 50+ women at the time. Not even sure it still exists.
My own accent is a bit non-descript as my Mom is German and was learning English as I was. So I typically have an easier time dealing with a wide range of accents than most people I know and most people assume I'm from the northern midwest. I've only ever heard 2 accents I truly have difficulty with - one unique to Lynchburg, Virginia and the other from the Appalachian mountains of southeastern Kentucky. The mountain accent is the most difficult. Not too long ago. I had a mountain customer that I had to ask to repeat herself 3 or 4 times with each sentence and even had to resort to asking her to spell a couple of words. The result was a long line of customers waiting and the mountain customer stomping off infuriated, as if I'd just stepped off the boat from China. I immediately apologized to the next customer for the wait and the awkward exchange and he exclaimed, "No, no, no! You were doing great! I barely understood a word. How long have you been down here?" I snickered, explained I was native Tennessee and said, "Chicago?" He answered, " You're the first person to recognize my accent in the 6 months I've been here! It took 3 months for me to get used to my first name having 3 syllables!" I asked his first name and he answered, "Tim". I LOL'd and pronounced it for him: Tee-yum-muh. Nailed it!
I once needed translation at a buffet line during breakfast in Florida . The guy asked me 4 times if "u won the bess-elle"... after seeing my frustration the person behind me said " he wants to know if you want the special"... I felt like an idiot 😂& i was.
Could you elaborate on that accent from Lynchburg? I grew up there, but with one parent from Richmond and the other from south NJ, so I don't think I ever picked it up. I live in the Philadelphia area now and have a lot of trouble describing what that accent is. I usually describe it as a milder Appalachian accent
@@amandac.s.9452 The Lynchburg accent was definitely unique. A friend from uni had moved there after school and wound up working in retail as a result. She knew that I had an easier time than most with accents, so she was interested in how I would do with this one. I flunked! We ran into a group of 3 of her coworkers, and as the conversation progressed, the accents became so thick, I couldn't understand anything and I tuned out at it was giving me a headache. Not like me at all. They might as well have spoken Mandarin! Turned out, the accent was remnants of the plantation slave days where many children, (most especially those from well-to-do families) in the area were raised by black nannies.
This was 40 years ago. Most people in the area did speak with more of a southern drawl/ bit of Appalachia, but for those with very deep Lynchburg roots, that regional accent was strong. It was as thick as any patois from any island or region of Louisiana that I've ever heard, but not as lyrical - more chopped up sounding. Occasionally a word related to ebonics was noticeable. As we left the group of women, they slipped into a more generic accent to say goodbye to me. I would think it may be almost extinct at this point except for those in their 70s and 80s. I was there in the 80's, and it's the only place in the U.S. that I have spent time that didn't have at least one interstate running thru it, (it was an hour and a half off of the interstate route) so it must have been quite remote in the 1700s and 1800s.
The only other English language accent I've come across to give me immense trouble was Glaswegian, spoken by natives of Glasgow, Scotland. First came across it on an old UK series called, "Taggart", where the title character was a Glasgow native. Took me two months of watching the program off and on, before I was comfortable (didn't get a headache) and didn't have to constantly back up the video. I belonged to a UK based forum at the time and the English members congratulated me on getting it so fast as most of them still couldn't follow it. What caught my attention, was the character using "y'uns/y'ins" as opposed to "you all, y'all, you guys, you lot". I'd wondered where the Appalachian "y'uns, y'unses" had come from for 50 years! Now I knew.
We moved to East Tennessee from Middle Tennessee when I was 12. The first person to approach us was a tiny 6 year old girl, front teeth missing, that looked up at me with a HUGE toothless grin and asked, "Where 'air' y'unses frumm?" I looked at my Dad and said, "Daddy, where did you move us to?"
Now if someone could explain when the "extra plural" form of "y'uns" kicks in and becomes "y'unses." 🥴
@@cliftonmcnalley8469 I'm from Cincinnati too, but moved to rural KY when I was 12, so this is very relatable. I remember being asked by another kid "Whoya keeyin tew?" I had to ask them several times what they meant. "Who Are You Kin To!?" Then I had to ask what kin meant. 🤣 My mom (and a few other older people in my family) has what I consider a strong, nasal Cincinnati accent, which no one can ever mimic or place.
Where I live in the US, soccer is incredibly popular and it always confuses me when people say Americans don’t care about it. My old US History teacher always interrogated the class about what teams everyone supported. I never really cared too much about it so honestly I’d get a bit annoyed when we were in class and people were trying to subtly watch soccer games on their phones (especially with the world cup - the games have been everywhere)
I have to guess that you're on a coast or in/near a big city. Here in the Midwest, I don't know anyone who cares one iota about it, although I think I've heard of one or 2 people who do a bit. So, it always seemed pretty accurate to me, but I can understand of course why it wouldn't to you :) !
@@ajb.822 As far as sports go, the school I went to growing up did hockey, soccer and basket ball. Football for us is one of those sports that most didn't really give two hoots about because it's considered more of a "southern thing". But once most grow into adults is when they start following the football crowd. Me personally I tend to find sports in general lame. But to each their own that's why there's many things to enjoy. :)
A friend of mine was seated next to a guy on a flight who was a linguist. They got to talking and the guy said he could tell him what neighborhood he grew up in by asking a few questions. My friend said go for it. He did and pegged it to a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. He was dead on it. There are thousands of accents and subtle words that give away where you're from if you know what to listen for.
Pittsburgh is a very specific accents Nothing else sounds like it 😂
I would like to learn how to do that.
So he was a cunning linguist? Lol
@@ejohnson2720 weak, lol
@@samanthab1923 good
This is so great. To be honest, i am American and I have noticed a lot of British people like to criticize and make fun of Americans for how they spell things or their customers or their words for things, even things that Americans like are stupid. I find it to be very rude so I’m really glad to hear a British person say that Americans are not wrong just different. It’s a really good and respectful thing. Thank you.
Amen! Those kind of people represent the enduring British empire mentality in which they think they make the rules and they decide what is what. So its refreshing to see a video that describes things as different and not inferior/superior (which just gets boring).
LOL, people are people, wherever you are :D
Thank you for bringing up accents. It's very common for people to attribute a Georgian accent to Louisiana, when really they're very different...
Especially because Louisiana has more than one accent.
Shoot. There are multiple accents just in New Orleans.
I visited England in 2009 with my dad. I saw both sides of stereotypes perfectly. My dad, raised in the 1950s and armed with his fanny pack and tennis shoes, going up to anyone with a not-American accent (i.e., *everyone*) and saying/yelling at them “HEY How are you doin’!? boy it sure is nice to be here in the UK again. We’re from Seattle so this weather is actually pretty similar!”
The English couple we were talking to rolled their eyes (“Very nice, these Americans.”) and very dryly but completely sincerely asked us “Oh, Seattle, is that near Miami?”
So for a brief moment I got to see how both British and American stereotypes are sometimes true.
Chatting with a young couple of hikers on Hadrian's Wall in 2016, the young man asked me if I was Canadian. I said, no, American. He said that he wasn't sure of the accent but I seemed "too polite" to be American. His girlfriend slapped his shoulder, to tell him that he shouldn't have said that. I laughed out loud and said something about New Yorkers, and told him I live in the South now.
By New Yorkers I assume you mean people in New York City?
@@IguanaMom and not the 56 northern NYS counties
@@trotter7679 correct. I live in small town New York state on the edge of the finger lakes region and western New York. Most people in this area are rather nice.
I’ve had a Canadian say just the same to me. I thought it was a shockingly rude thing to say to a foreigner visiting his country. It was my first introduction to what I’ve come to see as a prejudice parallel to anti-Semitism. That is, a set of prejudices that allow mutually contradictory stereotypes: Americans are rude; Americans smile too much and chat to strangers like friends; America has no true culture, just a love of money; heritage American music is the soundtrack of Europe heard in every shop and restaurant.
@@DRL1320 parallel to anti-semitism is a colassal stretch.
As an Americana exchange student in Manchester UK 50 years ago, many of my classmates assumed:
I was afraid to walk the streets at night because I'd be mugged. That I'd risk walking into a tree in the dark was the only real risk.
I didn't know how to play soccer. I do
I would have a southern accent. I don't
Public transportation is commonly available outside cities. It's not
Hell depending on the city it's not always readily available within either.
What? You are more likely to get mugged in the UK than the US
And public transit has only gotten worse since. Þanks, auto industry.
With respect, things have changed a lot in the last 50 years. British people are much more aware of what is happening in the US.
@@Sophie.S.. Of course they are because they are obsessed with the US
I've heard that a drive of much more than an hour or so is a bigger deal for Brits than Americans.
I kind of got that impression when I drove a British visitor about 100 miles, though I was also visiting family. The drive also took us within view of one of the Great Lakes and he was rather amazed that we called such a thing a lake.
There's an amazing 3 part series on Accent Dialects in America done by Wired with Erik Singer, I HIGHLY recommend it. Shows just how many different accents are all in america.
America has one accent, the Upper Mid-West. The British equivalent is BBC English ;)
It's an unfortunate trend that rude people tend to be the wealthy; the more rude the wealthier. These wealthy people have the time and money to travel.
It's more personality and culture than status. If a wealthy person is raised with manners they'll be mannerly; if a wealthy person isn't raised and their mistakes are waved away and paid off they won't be mannerly. It's the same thing with poor people. If they're raised with manners they'll be mannerly. If they're not raised and their mistakes are waved away they won't be mannerly.
Some is according to personality and some is where you come from. Generalizations harm us all ❤️
I assume you must be wealthy then ;)
@@bryn494 I stated a personal observation which is not rude.
I have also observed an increase in the number of "snowflakes" (people that take offense to observations), but this increase does not seem to correlate to wealth very well.
when I worked in a call center in NC the locals had to be trained just to understand what people from the Greater Boston area were even saying
what's hilarious to me is people complaining about Martin Freeman's accent as his MCU character, saying it doesn't sound American at all, while I'm sitting here like "dude's from Bensonhurst"
I worked for an answering service for a while. One of our clients was an animal rescue type place. One day a woman called to report a raccoon with a jaw on it's head. I was thinking how in the world could that happen. It took my Virginia brain a minute to realize she was from Boston and the poor thing had a jar on it's head.
Another time I was speaking with someone from S. Carolina and she asked my name. When I said Mills, she said "meals", and spelled it out. I said "yes . . . NO" and spelled Mills. I had to agree though that meals is indeed spelled m e a l s.
I am from the Midwest, but live on the East Coast now. We had a fulbright at work from Venezuela. I spoke Spanish to him the majority of the time. About 2 months before his stay was up, we were talking to someone who didn't speak Spanish, so we were speaking English. He looked at me in amazement and said "wow, I can understand you so much more easily than everyone else here!"
I remember ordering parts from graingers once. Their call center is in the south or east coast. The city the parts were being sent to was La Jolla, pronounced hoya. The gal on the phone said La Golla. I chuckled a bit and corrected her.
I'm from NYC but live in the Midwest. I was watching a play based in New Jersey and only one actor used an accent that, while definitely from the region, wasn't any New Jersey accent I knew. Halfway through the character said they were from Canarsie and it all made sense. I made sure the actor knew that a native Brooklynite thought the accent was spot on
For those trying to figure out the Wisconsin vs. Chicago accent, despite their proximity, here's a quick tell: listen to how they pronounce the words Bag and Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, Bag is pronounced /beg/ in the IPA with a long a sound like in say, whereas Illinoisans pronounce it /baeg/ with the a sound of apple. As for the name of Wisconsin itself, people from Wisconsin put the syllable markers at different points, pronouncing it as Wi-scon-sin, whereas out-of-state people always pronounce it as Wis-con-sin, which doesn't seem like a big difference, but will get you called out immediately.
That's a pretty minor dialectal difference, there are much bigger ones in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and syntax that I've had to explain to Swiss relatives who came to visit and asked me to travel with them, discovering that Wisconsin English they picked up from us was different from even nearby states (granted, they're Swiss, so they weren't that surprised).
Wis-CAHN-sin
millenials and younger pronounce it b ah g
@@tysonwastaken I'm a millennial. No, we still pronounce it the same way. I also work with a lot of Gen Z and can't say I hear a change there either.
I'm in nw WI and I agree ! Hello from the land of bubblers & good cheese !
My parents were truck drivers who, get this, actually had a route that had them going from the tip of northern Maine to the far side of Washington. They could go from Washington and back in a week... if one slept while the other drove. It was very intense.
People will go on month-long road trips through America, haha.
I-95 can be a bitch :D
I was in Hong Kong during the Rugby 7s and met some very rude Brits indeed. There was one incident in a restaurant where a drunken table of rugby fans from Britain started drinking, then singing, and ended up throwing food at people at other tables. I've never had that happen in America.
A lot of the expats here are arrogant, rude, nobs.
Yeah, their sports fans are another level.
Well, no, they'd probably be afraid of getting shot. (Not really likely to happen, but we do have that reputation.)
Rude Brits!? Not compared to the French I've encountered.
@@jerelull9629 Oh yeah, I used to live in upstate NY and you'll find the French Canadians to be the most snobbish and rude when they come down as tourists. But they never threw food at me.
Our humor may be different, yet many Americans, myself included, grew up watching British sitcoms, Monty Python, Blackadder, Benny Hill, Red Dwarf, etc.
So either we understand British humour just fine, or we were just laughing at your funny accents.
Love Red Dwarf--such an under rated show--really funny.
Benny Hill is one of my favorites! His silent films are so well done, so funny!
@@ravenwolf7128 so did I!
@@alphagt62 adn the theme song for Benny Hill is adaptable for many things!
I also want to add that loved watching on PBS, "Keeping up appearances , "As Time goes by , and many years ago, when I was a lot younger, MTV had ..."The Young Ones"....hilarious! 😁
I'm from Washington state (Seattle area) and I remember watching in 8th grade a movie on the Oregon Trail and they kept pronouncing it ore-GONE and it would drive me crazy. The person pronouncing it that way had a pretty plain American accent other than that one word.
Another weird American accent thing that I'm familiar with is that in Washington state we have a tendency to pronounce our T's like D's. Typically we don't do it at the beginning of a word which can make it more subtle but the best example of a Washingtonian doing it is with Seattle which we will pronounce See-adull (like adult). There was a time the other day I was with a friend also from the Seattle area of Washington where I pronounced a "T" like a "D" and I did it to the perfectly wrong word where switching the T to the D was a completely different word and he got confused about why I was saying that word at the time. (I don't remember the word). I then realized that our shared accent screwed us both over a little bit and we had a laugh. Also trivia for those not from the state, but the name Seattle comes from an anglicization of a chief of the native people that lived in the Seattle region before any Europeans did. He was the chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. To this day the Duwamish tribe is not recognized by the federal government.
One last story about regional idiosyncrasies here. Whenever people from Washington state travel across the U.S. if we are staying on the west coast we will refer to our state just as Washington, but if we leave the west coast we have to refer to it as Washington state or else people will think we are referring to the Capital, Washington D.C. I had a friend that traveled to Kentucky for a robotics competition and he was getting annoyed at having to explain that he was from Washington State, not D.C. Here in the state if we want to talk about the country's capital we will call it Washington D.C., just D.C., or the capital. The only time we will refer to it as just Washington is when we say someone is "going to Washington" and even then we will typically say going to the capital or going to Washington D.C.
I'm a Tacoma to Kentucky transplant! I definitely had to learn to be specific when referring to "Washington". I had another term that meant something else down here...I used to live on the block next to university of puget sound, but "UPS" doesn't mean that down here!
We here in the midwest also pronounce Ts like Ds unless it's the 1st letter of the word. 'Little' for example. I remember as a young child, being surprised it was spelled with Ts !
@@emilynolan187I competed in speech & debate tournaments at UPS when I was in high school. The campus was beautiful, but you had to stay off the grass most of the year because the ground was so soft your feet would sink right in! A teammate of mine almost lost her high-heeled shoe making that mistake.
Hi, Federal Way native here. 🙋🏻♀️ I also was bothered by people mispronouncing Oregon, usually by adding an unnecessary syllable for the “e.” I also served a church mission north of Atlanta, and learned to clarify “Washington STATE” pretty early on. I also grew up hearing the phrase “back east” when describing where someone was going or where they were from, but my time in GA was the first time I heard someone say I was from “out west.” It sounded like I lived in the wilderness on a homestead or something!
My Mom was raised in Los Angeles but raised our family in Northern California (near Sacramento). Once, when visiting a shop in LA the store clerk asked where she was from and that her accent was so unique. She was raised in that exact same neighborhood, LOL. I too was once told I had a unique accent while in LA. I thought we sounded the same.
Being from Iowa I expected something like that when I moved to LA, but it never happened. The accent was the same.
I belong to an international cooking forum based in the UK. Cooking words are possibly the most different words, spellings and pronunciations of all between the US and the UK. The one that makes me twitch (as a Texan) is spelling chili with a double "LL." That has led to a few spirited disagreements. They say I'm spelling chilli wrong, and I reply that they are spelling chili wrong. Then a South American member says we are both spelling chile wrong. The British pronunciation of tortilla and taco also tweaks my Texan ears.
That reminds me of my grandson’s recent spelling words. Three of them were chilly, chili, and Chile!
They pronounce eggplant “Aubergine”! Trying to make something pedestrian a bit posh! I hear you…. California is totally in agreement regarding chili and tortillas!
"chile" - child (US South)
As an American I've always spelled it as chilli
Wolf is how I spell it...
Language differences: I was a foreign exchange student, with several others, to the University ofLondon. They threw a thanksgiving party for us. A professor was chatting with one of the girls on the exchange, they were discussing the cost. He asked her how she managed to afford it. She said "oh, I worked my fanny off."
honestly that is the kind of thing i would say on purpose, knowing it'll be either misunderstood or just low-key knee-jerk shocking
hilarious
Yeah... Americans use this to mean butt... Hahaha
...and that's why the Brits and others refer to it as a bum bag. Like the tale of the Scotsman who had moved to the US and wanted to ask a girl out, but being Scottish he went with what he knew and asked her if "he could knock her up sometime."
@@carlfromtheoc1788 I think we should just cut out the middleman and call it a cuntbag everywhere.
2:10 My German immigrant Great Grandparents had some relatives visit in Milwaukee (north of Chicago), I don't know when exactly but it was likely either just before WWII or in the 50s-60s. The relatives knew some friends / further extended family had immigrated to Michigan, and asked to borrow G-Grandpa's rowboat to go across the lake. That would be Lake Michigan, and its roughly 80 miles / 130 km straight across. They just took him to the lake to see, his response was "Oh, big lake."
The sarcasm thing is such a thing for me. I have a lot of trouble with detecting humor and sarcasm (I’m on the lower severity end of the spectrum of ASD). I know I have to deal with it, but when I get to know people who are constantly sarcastic, it’s generally a very short association. Even without my own issues, I think people who are always sarcastic are really just jerks who use the sarcasm as an excuse.
I watched England and France play today! It was such a good match.
There's plenty of people who Think they're good at sarcasm but aren't & many others who think sarcasm is an acceptable way of being rude...& don't really comprehend what sarcasm IS! You're absolutely right that many of these people are just jerks, who quite often love to be able to tell anyone offended that they just don't "get" sarcasm!
If you think sarcasm is to cover up for being a jerk, you must REALLY think Brits are assholes.
Laurence, what you are calling "standard American" dialect was once referred to as "Middle American" by professional broadcasters, which I was for many years. It used to be that there was a handbook of American English pronunciation from the Associated Press news service that was our standard of "Middle American" back in the old days of broadcasting. I have been told that the BBC has a similar guide book.
Like RP in UK, it was the most desired, most understood and least objectionable accent inbroadcasting.
I love that as a native NYer, people ask where I'm from.
Totally attributed to UK movies and broadcasts and parents who deplored sloppy speech patterns.
Thank Mom and Dad.
Yes, it used to be a thing to study broadcasting in the Midwest. The idea was to get rid of their native regional accent for something more neutral. Barbara Walters and Dan Rather were examples of that not working
@@LindaC616 Nobody had a problem understanding either of them, though, as far as I know.
The AP style book is still around. If you're a local reporter and want your story picked up, you follow it closely.
@@georgenahodil23 Not just reporters. I followed AP style as a reporter and still do while working in public relations.
Perceptions about being "rude" between countries really is related to cultural differences as well. Sometimes two people behave in the way they were taught was proper by their mothers, and then come away from the interaction thinking that the other is unspeakably rude.
My wife once commented on how I shoveled food down when eating. I pointed out she'd already finished hers :D
I’ve known many Americans and I can honestly say they are the most polite friendly and respectful people I’ve ever met. Many fairly wealthy people will address service workers as Ma’am or Sir. You never, ever get that in uk.
You know what’s funny? I live in the Southern US, in a very rural community. Whenever I was a little kid, everyone who wasn’t terribly poor had a pool at their house. Yet, in just my lifetime (19 yrs), it’s gone from something everyone has to a rich person thing.
About the Spanish words we pronounce correctly, that may be because of a proximity to a lot of Spanish speakers and a general (or so I thought) understanding of some Spanish words. Hola, fiesta, tortilla, siesta, buenos dias, buenos noches, to name a few. They're words I grew up hearing just. Around. But I'm biased, I'm from an urban area in the northeast. I'd imagine Spanish fluency differs by region and city.
Edit: Also I've been told I have the most generic American accent by British friends but my American friends all say I sound like a British person with an American accent. I think I sound like I'm from New England, which does sound different from New York or New Jersey.
There's a great video by a British professor about how we pronounce foreign words and why.
If you show an American a word that they've never seen before, and tell them it's from another language, there is a natural tendency to do a "five vowel strategy": becomes /a/, like "father", becomes /eɪ/, like in "face," becomes /i/, like in "fleece", becomes /oʊ/, like in "goat," and becomes /u/ as in "boot."
So if you showed an American with no knowledge of Spanish the word "taco," they default to the five vowel strategy and say "tah-koh" /takoʊ/. But if you show a Brit the same thing, they would probably use normal English pronunciation rules, and come up with "tack-oh" /tækoʊ/, with the sounding like "plastic".
This system is an Americanized version of Spanish's five vowels, but it also (kinda) works for other languages that also have those five vowels, like Italian and Japanese. (Though, we also tend to apply this strategy to languages that don't have five vowels and it goes about as well as you'd expect.)
And this is on top of the fact that many Americans have, through school or cultural exposure, learned some of the rules of Spanish spelling. So we don't pronounce , becomes a "y" sound, becomes an "h" sound, becomes "k", and might even be pronounced correctly as an "ny" sound.
So yeah, even though it's not 100% accurate, it's still a hell of a lot better than the Brits. And it kinda goes to show that despite how much English speakers struggle with foreign words and names, Americans actually put a lot of effort into trying to pronounce them as closely to the original as we can.
@@natekite7532 This is actually really cool to read. It's wild that we just kind of do this without even realizing. Or that people in other places don't.
That's really cool info! It definitely still varies across the US though. My sister once dated a guy from Massachusetts (we're in Texas) who pronounced taco as tack-o. We never could stop giggling over it.
@@natekite7532 was that the one released a few days ago?
@@Serrifin yes lol, it was fresh on my mind
The rudeness thing is interesting to me. It seems like Brits are very polite when they have no reason not to be (e.g. interacting with strangers), but they are also less inhibited about being far ruder than an American would likely be if they are angry, especially with people they know. I think this impression is reinforced for me by reading Dick Francis novels (one of my favorite authors). I don't know how realistic to British life his dialogue is, but sometimes I find his characters breathtakingly rude, and am amazed that there are not more social consequences for what they say publicly. I feel like if an American said such things publicly in the US, they'd be shunned.
Generalisations here, but for us Brits IRL a lot of it is about people not losing face (not as much as Japan though). In public we'll often be polite to someone but behind their backs is another matter. In a restaurant we'll be asked if everything is fine, we'll say yes, and then moan that the food was cold etc.
@vivian, I’m often struck by the language and tone adopted by (apparently) British posters online. I’ve dealt with the Brits thousands of times in person and I don’t recall a jerk among them. And my Brit friends like to volunteer how strange they find American patriotism (flying the national flag counts as weird patriotism). But online? OMG, the gloves come off. And their Brit chauvinism and anti-American opinions really come out. It’s eye-opening.
@@DRL1320 I think that's just an internet thing. The anon nature of social media 'allows' many to be insolent and arrogant to make themselves feel better, regardless of nationality
You can be more rude when there's no risk of the other person pulling out a gun.
@@themanyouwanttobe Yet another stereotype that every American will resort to gun violence if the slightest thing goes wrong
In the US, “road trip” doesn’t just mean getting from point A to point B, it means “Oooh, Laurence, let’s go have an adventure”. Most Americans (at least the smart ones) know how big the country really is, and that it can take days to get where they’re going, so they have to plan ahead when they’re taking a road trip; getting enough gas, taking the car to the mechanic to make sure it’s roadworthy, bringing lots of snacks, etc. That’s also why “road trip” is a whole separate movie genre, and because anything can supposedly happen on a road trip, most of those movies are comedies.
Going over a hundred miles in early 60's Britain was a similar experience. We didn't have a TV, let alone The Internet or a phone :D
When I lived in northern Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, I used to go to DC United games all the time with my friends. Hundreds of people would show up hours early for hanging out, kicking a ball around, cooking out and drinking beer - same as for football games. And when the Barra Brava started up, the whole place got to rocking. It's no exaggeration to say that during the matches, the Barra Brava could get RFK Stadium shaking.
I used to believe that all Brits were really into their Royal Family. Then I met several while deployed and realized I knew more about the British monarchy than they did. The American fascination with the British Royal Family is interesting.
I agree with that. Some Americans saturate themselves in the lives of the British Monarchy. Probably because the media doesn't rest at anytime, and they need "news" in which to help saturate us. Maybe it's more the media is fascinated in getting any kind of story. Have a great Thanksgiving!
I live in the almost center of the us so it’s always driving to go to any of the coasts for me the trip is most of the reason to go anyways
Americans revel in mocking the monarchy
Some grudges never die
Most Brits are not bothered about the royal family either way, me included.Many want them removed some would quite happily hang them.
@@KaitouKaiju LOL!
I've traveled to all 50 states and lived in 29. Accents in the US number in the hundreds. My father was British and my mother was from Missouri and I was born and raised in Florida in the 60s/70s. He worked for NASA and we lived in what's called the "Space Coast". All those engineers and operations people came from all over the country so I heard accents from everywhere. I went to University in England for two years and was amazed at all the regional accents. I did find the UK accents a good deal harder to parse because some are barely English. My fist time up north I was lost the entire time.
Whoa 😳 29?
Fascinating
I hear Glaswegian and I get about every 7-10 words.
The jaudy accent is hard for me, also Wales. Honestly most chinese people I've met have very easy to understand accents when speaking English but instead their words choices are often confusing because they are technically correct but not normally used In the way they are using them. Like "you are a sh!t" grammatically correct but sounds strange I think most native speakers would say "you're sh!t"
That's not based on any fact. That's your opinion. Look it up.
Here’s just some examples of southern accents:
Rural southern, general southern, southern aristocratic, Appalachian, Cajun, Texas, west Texas, the Carolina’s have their own accent, and those are just the ones I know of personally.
New Orleans here and we have several dialects here alone. I happen to be a Yat since I come from the lower ninth ward. Some people have creole or Cajun accents, uptown is a genteel southern accent.
@@deanstanley2125 isn’t the genteel southern accent similar to a “Dixie” or southern aristocratic accent?
But yeah I totally forgot about creole
@@Jessie_Helms uptown and the garden district is very old money. Cotillions, yacht clubs etc. Some can trace their bloodline to Iberville and Bienville, a lot of " I do declare" types.
Reading Bill Bryson's book "The Road to Little Dribbling" I was under the impression that shopkeepers and restaurant workers in the UK were rude, or at least indifferent. When we actually visited for the first time this past August, I was delighted to discover that that wasn't true in the slightest. Everyone we encountered was disarmingly pleasant, to the point where I want to have a beer with everyone in the UK!
Also, being a Monty Python fan since childhood, I expected Brits to all be witty and sarcastically hilarious. This is 100% true.
Sadly, that is not always the case in the UK area.
Went to Paris once. Went to a small little bakery.
The person at the counter was incredibly rude.
I went to the UK on business. Two miles from my hotel was a tiny unassuming pub. I enjoyed conversation with the proprietor and some of the regulars. After a couple of pints they asked me if I was driving and I said yes so they were hesitant to serve me anymore. I went back the next day and after a couple pints they asked the same question; I said, no, I walked. I ended up staying until they closed down and had a wonderful time. Stopped in a few more times before my trip ended. SIX years later I went back. I walked in and ordered an Old Speckled Hen and the barkeep said, "You're that Yank!" and they remembered me. It was very cool. I recognized the wife of the proprietor as well as his daughter and son-in-law from my earlier visit, but didn't see Roger, the proprietor when I was there the first time. I asked about him and they said he'd passed away. But after an apology and an awkward moment passed, people started telling their favorite stories of Roger and it turned into a wonderful evening.
My wife's very first British meal was at a motorway services during an egg 'scare'; she ordered scrambled eggs. Are you sure said the kid at the counter. F**cking 'ell was the response from his co-worker who was emptying burnt bacon into the swill. Priceless :D
I have been to the USA many times since the 1970s (business and vacations) and was quite aware of the long distances across the country and also the different cultures and accents of the peoples.
I don't always get it right, but a few months ago, I was visiting a store in West Norfolk (UK). A lady sales assistant directed me to the section that I needed. I asked her if she was from New England. She told me that she was from Maine, so not too bad a guess, if not exactly precise.
Maine is part of what is considered the New England region so you were right.
Better guess than most Americans would make
No you're 100% right, Maine is about as New England as it gets.
yeah you got it right more than most people in the U.S. would. the bad thing about the U.S. is that every state is more like its own country and you don't hear much non local news.
That is genuinely impressive
Re. the whole "distance as measured by the length of your country of origin" works in the opposite direction, too. I had a friend from Russia... she seemed to feel that it was a "day trip", to drive from Baltimore to Cleveland! 🤣🤣🤣
2:15... YOU ALMOST CAN! (If you use a sports car with extra fuel storage and police radar and laser and radio countermeasures while ignoring the speed limit) The cannonball record stands at 25 hours...
Like Sir Winston said: “Two great nations separated by a common language.”
My sister went to the U.K. as a college student and was called rude because she was trying to work out whether or not she could afford something. She was on a tight budget and pounds vs. dollars is hard to navigate in the moment. They accused her of mocking them because "everyone knows all Americans are rich".
😮
The greatest thing about the US being so big is that you CAN road-trip it... many times, and never see the same places, lol. I'm 37, and have taken 5 week-long road trips and still have about 20 states I've yet to see. But, you think the US is big, do a cross-country trip in Canada. Vancouver to Cape Breton, about as direct west vs east, staying north of the border, is over 60 hours. I wanna do that someday, but would basically need about 3 weeks off to make it worth it.
Before you started explaining the shortest route from Georgia to California and said it was 36 hours, I immediately thought it was a 3day trip one way, I've driven From Cheyenne (WY) to Pensacola (FL), took me roughly 3 days as I was pacing myself, would have been shorter, but stopped by my home town in Mississippi on my way, which was about a 3 day rest and reunion.
Pronouncing lieutenant "leff-tenant" while correctly pronouncing the base word lieu is my favorite Britishism.
"you can drive across the US in a single day"
that is the funniest thing I have ever heard as an American. It takes 4 hours of driving just to get to the next state over, and California (my home state) is known for being long and thin. If you want to go from tip to tip it takes a minimum of 11 hours of nonstop driving.
Thanks for demonstrating that it isn't just Americans who sometimes think silly things about foreign countries. We all have preconceived notions about places we've never been before, and they're more then likely to be wrong more often then they're right. Assuming your preconceived ideas don't stop at "they probably have electricity and clean water". If non-Americans know more about American then vice versa, I think that has more to do with the proliferation of our media more then anything, combined with our size isolating us from a lot of other countries. Seriously, we only really have two neighbors and Canada is similar enough that you might not even realize you're talking to a Canadian rather then a Minnesotan or Wisconsinite. (Source: I can never tell unless they tell me. I have mistaken Americans for Canadians and vice versa, I've stopped guessing at this point. Course, I'm also so used to British accents that I don't even notice them half the time so maybe I'm just bad at being xenophobic). If anything, Florida has the most neighbors with the Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica (and Mexico in a kind of roundabout way) relatively close by, but they're still separated by an ocean. They're really only "close" if you live in Miami, or some other city at the end of the peninsula. These countries also heavily serve as vacation destinations for rich Americans so that kind of turns them more into tourist hubs then their own countries. At least as far as Americans are concerned. If Americans travel there, they will probably stick to the designated tourist spots and resort towns, which are _not_ representative of the local culture.
I don't feel like its a surprise that its usually people in rural parts of the country who are the most uneducated on other countries. If you at least live in LA or New York you're surrounded by immigrants even if you don't have any foreign countries you can get to easily. Which isn't to say that city dwellers are bastions of knowledge on these other countries, but they're more likely to pick things up then people who live in an isolated rural community that's 90% white, 9.99% black, with a single Asian or Hispanic person. People for whom a California-raised person joining the community is an exotic anomaly. (I might be overexaggerating, but my point stands). This is also assuming you don't live in rich neighborhood in those cities either as those people tend to be isolated from the immigrants who share their city and only enter their life to clean their house or pool.
I grew up in NY. NYC was 5 hours away from the town I lived in. 😂😂😂
Yep, people are rude everywhere, but Paris takes top prize for rudeness! I was married to a Brit for over 20 years. His and my sense of humor were different, but we always made each other laugh.
I remember my scouse friend's mum asking on skype if I (in Florida) and another friend of ours (in New Jersey) ever visited each other in person since (after I told her both cities were on the east coast) we must be pretty close to each other geographically and her son and a friend of ours living in Glasgow would sometimes visit each other. The difference of course is that Liverpool to Glasgow is a bit shy of four hours by car, while Tallahassee to New Jersey is seventeen hours by car.
Also the (British) discoverer of aluminum called it aluminum, but I'm sure you knew that. And to be fair a lot of Americans also think there are only two or three American accents, northern and southern and sometimes their own local accent. America is in fact a very big place and each state is like its own country, and a lot of the time a sheltered American who hasn't traveled will also think the rest of America doesn't have many accents.
"a lot of Americans also think there are only two or three American accents"
Nobody thinks that.
"General American" is West Coast. Hollywood is here and that really shifted the accent pool. Key traits of this are enunciating- helpful for universal understanding- and speaking quickly, which is less helpful but you can't understand fast dialogue if people don't enunciate. There are plenty of other accents in media of course, but you inherently need people that are easily understood, so you typically don't see thick, hard-to-understand accents.
Here in Michigan, we have at least three separate accents: the Upper Peninsula ("Yoopers"), Detroit, and the rest of the Lower Peninsula. The Yooper is the most fun to listen to.
My mom is from New York City. I used to be able to tell which borough people were from by their accents, but can't do it anymore.
My mom moved from outside Detroit to Phoenix a few years back. She got a job at a call center, and she could always tell when she got a Michigander on the phone.
Ironically, we can break it down even farther and figure out exactly where we're from in the state by seeing if you use the phrases: doorwall, water fountain, and Devil's Night.
@@wrifraffI love it! 😄
I had a great party trick at Central Michigan University of being able to identify what part of the state people came from by their accent. It helped that a good 40% were from Saginaw/Bay City. :-D
But there's definitely a gradient between the Yooper and LP accents, too. I've met many people in the LP who have Yooper-ish accents depending on how far north/how rural the place they're from is.
Why is it that when Lawrence knows what we're thinking, it always starts with a high-pitched "ooooo"?
I'm sure there's a story there. Oooh, maybe Laurence will tell us!
I'm in Rhode Island and the accents vary greatly even just in this tiny state. Travel 5 minutes into Massachusetts and then the accents change as well. Not to mention a Maine or Vermont will be different.
I've always thought I had a more British sense of humour. Might be my dad's influence and him watching Monty Python. Or just the fact I've watched a lot of British programs in my life starting at a young age. I do spell a lot of words with an 'u' where most Americans don't - humour, neighbourhood as two examples. I also use cheque to differentiate between the paper bank note and to check to see if something is done cooking, for example. I put a 'h' in yoghurt because it looks better, like the u in some words.
A few years ago my partner visited a small town in the far north of England. When he informed people he met there that he was from Seattle, in the USA, they were shocked, and said from his accent they'd thought he was Canadian! Apparently to them, American meant southern/"cowboy" accent!
I also lived in Georgia. I met a man who was a linguist. I'd never spoken to him before but somehow, and I have no idea how, he told me that part of my family came from Ireland. I told him that my great grandmother came from County Mayo, but I'd never met her because she passed way before I was born. I was totally perplexed. They settled in Chicago, and my mom and uncle really did have a Chicago accent. I grew up in Northern Illinois so I don't have that accent. When I first met my sister-in-law who's from California she said something along the lines of "good lord! Where are you from with that accent?" I thought I sounded just like her. Apparently not.
He was just playing the psychics game. He took a guess. If he was right, amazing, incredible. If he was wrong, so what? You would’ve walked away and not given it a second thought. There was nothing impressive there.
@@spankynater4242 I'm still impressed because he wasn't guessing. After going to Ireland I realized what he meant. It's less of an accent and more that I have a slight lilt or rise and fall in pitch when I speak. My mother had a Chicago accent which is very distinct but she and her Chicago relatives had the same lilt. I think being an English language linguist would be fascinating. Our country has so many accents which other countries may not have such a diverse scattering.
@@suegeorge998 no, he was guessing. There was nothing impressive there. Except luck.
@@spankynater4242 since you weren't there nor anyone you know I think that my presence there has more validity. I appreciate your input but, again, you weren't there. I was,so please let this be. Thank you. Take care.
@@suegeorge998 trust me, just because you were there to witness his parlor trick, doesn’t mean that it was legitimate. You seem like the kind of person who would believe in a psychic reading.
Have you considered having your wife do her version of Lost in the Pond from an American point of view? That would be interesting.
No.
@@sassiebrat Yes.
He's done it I can't remember and she is cool
@@mlebrooks British vs. American English: Testing Each Other's Word Knowledge - she was in that one :D
@@sassiebrat Why?
Thank you. I enjoy watching your videos.
I lived in the Washington, D.C. area. Not only did we have all sorts of English accents, but myriads of languages.
I still remembered watching foreign films at the Dupont Circle theaters, giving directions to foreigners. Playing chess with Soviet friends and feeling grateful for a draw.
I read a lot of English literature and still remember getting an "F" for using "whilst" on a freshman university English class paper. Crazy!!
Thanks again.
People who actually live in America don't always appreciate how big it is. When I was living in San Jose, California, I once had a conversation with someone who lived in New Jersey, which is quite a small state, and I commented that I had driven three hours to visit a friend in Sacramento, California. The woman I was talking with couldn't imagine driving that long and still being in the same state.
.
Also, you may know this now: there are over 200 *Southern* dialects alone. That's pretty amazing.
I live in Michigan. Michigan is the largest state east of the Mississippi River. It is almost as far from the west end of the Upper Penninsula to Detroit as it is from Detroit to DC!! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!!
I think you'd be fascinated with the Appalachian dialect. Specifically the Smoky Mountain variety. You'll hear words that have been in use since the first Scotch-Irish and English settlers arrived, and they haven't changed much. Some people say it's a dialect closer to Chaucer or Shakespeare than any other modern English dialect in the world. Take that with a grain of salt, but listening to some of my neighbors use Middle-English, Shakespearean English, Germanic, Irish, etc. You can get a good sense of the sound with this video:
czcams.com/video/H1KP4ztKK0A/video.html
Yes, I went to the Smokey Mountains on vacation with my brother and sister-in-law, from our homes outside of St. Louis. We were talking to some ranger, and we were having a hard time understanding his thick accent. Afterwards my sister-in-law said he talked like he had marbles in his mouth, and she was originally from Florida.
I used to live in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, and the town I lived in had a Scottish Heritage museum sponsored by the Scottish Government. It was quite interesting the similarities the people there had to a Scottish accent. You would also see quite a lot of redheads 😂. (Franklin NC, for anyone wondering)
@@rutabega8348 That's where I live! Lol
@@gothnate no way man, that’s crazy. I lived there from 2017-2021
@@rutabega8348 We just got home from a ski trip in Boone and Blowing Rock. 😁 We love that area so much! We barely even cared that the GPS went crazy in the mountains and got us lost on snowy cliffs, because it was SO BEAUTIFUL ‼️❄️❄️❄️
You were spot on with the humor (or humour) thing. I don't know how many times I've been on Reddit and a Brit will say ... "Oh, this is British humour! You just wouldn't get it." And actually, Americans LOVE British humor ... The IT Crowd, The Office, Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Downton Abbey (OK, maybe not that last one, but I could go on. :) Oh, and as a Gen X'er, I can't leave out The Young Ones!
We get the humor. We just don’t always find it funny or very elevated. I do like British comedy but it’s rich they think we don’t get sarcasm. I think it’s quite the opposite 😂😂😂
My brother and grandpa used to love Benny Hill. I love Fawlty Towers and the show with Hyacinth Bouquet and her "candlelit dinners". When I was in high school, the smart kids loved all Monty Python movies. I think British actors are well-trained.
Of those I only find Benny funny. I prefer dramatic period pieces from the UK.
@@timchamberlin9280 Yeah, I think it's different for standup comedians, but that's the case for comedians anywhere out of their element because a lot of material is aimed at a specific geographic area/country with lots of inside references other countries wouldn't get.
@@jocelyneke6445 Keeping up Appearances and Fawlty Towers were hilarous!
My English boss was delighted when she found out that I've watched (and love) a lot of her favorite Brit shows. I grew up watching a LOT of PBS, and at least the my local ones were chock full of Brit TV exports.
Coming from an upbringing in Alabama, I always assumed that folks outside of the US understood it was similar to how the British Isles had so many widely varying accents and dialects how we did in “The South” and in general as Americans. When I first saw media of folks being able to differentiate Cockney versus basically anything else it became overwhelmingly evident that this was a parallel to how Alabamians could tell the difference immediately in the speech of someone from a neighboring state. 😂
I'm from Dallas. I moved my brother to S. Carolina a couple of years ago, crossing most of the deep south by car. I can't really tell southern accent apart.
Born and raised in northern Indiana but my mom's side of the family is from southern Indiana. Northern Indiana has more of a generic Midwest vibe to the accent, at least to my ears. But you definitely start hearing more and more southern twang as you drive down US 31 and get to the small farming towns. One thing that is really noticeable is that I pronounce "wash" with an "ah" vowel sound but my grandparents on my mom's side both pronounce it like "worsh."
Very true except for a couple of pockets that sound almost Canadian
I didn’t understand about the aluminum/Aluminium controversy until I was talking to my son-in-law one day (he’s British and moved to the US about 15 years ago.) We got into a discussion and it was only then that he pointed out that Americans and Brits actually spell the word differently - thus the extra “I” sound in the British word! Then he went on to explain to me that since the British had discovered it, obviously their spelling and pronunciation was correct! 😂
They changed the spelling and pronunciation after we adopted their first choice! They just like being different.
Actually, both spellings and pronounciations are correct scientifically.
This is partially true. The origin of the US aluminum was coined by the guy who invented it - Sir Humphry Davy from Britain. While the original word was adopted by the US, the British later changed to the current British version of aluminium to make it more like the names of many other elements, some of which were also already named by Davy.
@@sipazang9201 what I find funny is that they didn't do the same to other elements like molybdenum, tantalum, lanthanum, and platinum. Why did only aluminum get an unnecessary, extra letter, and not these others?
@@ericstoverink6579 No idea. Hell, no idea why people back then did half of what they did do...lol
Houses with swimming pools are quite common in the regions of the US that have warm winters, such as the South West and Florida. However, in areas that experience cold winters, like the North, Midwest and New England, houses with pools are fairly rare. This is due to the fact that, in these climates, they're prone to damage from freezing conditions if not maintained properly.
Economics also plays a role. I live in Mississippi, where the summer heat is just as bad as Florida, however far fewer people have pools. They just can't afford them.
@@pal5683 Yes, absolutely true.
1:45 I drove from Spokane, Washington to Austin, Texas in three days. It was ten *full* hours of driving a day. I ate and drank my own food while driving, only stopping to use the toilet and fill the gas tank. It about killed me.
I don't think you could drive cross-country (East-West) in three days, unless you had three people and a vehicle big enough to allow one of them to be asleep at any given time. I think it would take at *least* seven days.
Pools aren't super common in most of the country, but in some places like Arizona, they're almost a necessity during summers!