4 Ways American English is Pretty Weird | PART 1
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- čas přidán 7. 03. 2024
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Just like British English, American English is sometimes a little, um, quirky.
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WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE DOING SOMETHING, JUST SAY FUCK HIS/ HER ASS OR INSTEAD OF SAYING FUCK OFF JUST SAY GO FUCK HIS/ HER ASS .
Maybe dont give away your details but dont worry it doesnt matter your details are still on the places you actually need to worry about!
Laurence Mate. PLEASE comment at some point on the Brits calling a Military officer a LEFT-enant where as in the US such anofficer is a LIEU-tenant !
@@balancedactguy They stick to the correct original way! the americans made up their own mispronunciation
You still have dual citizenship right? The question on my mind and probably on the minds of lots and lots of people subscribe to your channel like I am, is if Donald Trump gets voted in as the president in 2024, are you and your wife moving back to England? If I had an out I would leave.
English is three languages in a trench coat.
its a lot more than that.
@@dragonivy4779 lol true
Very fitting for a place that is basically 50 countries in a trench coat
Only three?
More like 7
As an American, I think "I could care less" was supposed to be used sarcastically, but then a lot of people forgot/missed that particular memo.
Sarcasm used to be very common, now it goes over most peoples heads. In todays world, I fear both sarcasm and common sense have become superpowers!😢
I have a theory that the original phrase is “as if I could care less,” and the “as if” got dropped somewhere early on
@Cheesyenchilady It's just one of many commonly misspoken phrases. People attempt to use this phrase to communicate that they do not care at all about something, so the phrase can only logically be: "I couldn't care less."
When someone says "I could care less," this construction communicates that the person *does* care, but they *could potentially* care less. Which... is a very strange thing to say.
I also think it's a lazy-use contraction of the "I couldn't care less", as it allows for a far more lazy, yet quicker relaxed way of speaking.
Edit: Corrected lazy use to use a hyphen lol
Nips ma head when folk say could for couldn't!😂
FUN FACT: The words crayfish and crawfish came from French! In Standard French, the word for crayfish is écrevisse and is pronounced Eh-CRAY-veese, thus we get CRAY-fish in English. However, in the Deep South in Louisiana the French Speaking Cajuns spoke a different dialect of French that had a Southern Drawl and pronounced it more like eh-CRAW-veese thus we got CRAW-fish in Southern American English.
Crawdads. 😡
Crawfish is the common pronunciation in Arkansas. 😊
Crawdids ( not dads) and crawfish in San Diego 😅
No. CrawDADS. 😡
@@GamerNerdess lol. Looks like we just call em like we see em. I'm almost 70 years old, born and raised in Arkansas and said crawfish all my life. Oh well, we learn something everyday. ; )
Only British readers will find this interesting... back in 1995 I had a roommate from the UK for a few months. As it happened, I had a sports car that was missing a piece of plastic from the fan- switch assembly which looked bad in an otherwise pristine car. So I stopped by the Nissan dealer to see if I could get the part. I left my number as the parts guy promised to look for it. Later on, finding a blinking light on the answering machine I pressed the play button with my roommate in the area. "This is Bob from Nissan calling for Brian about his knob." My roommate rolled on the floor and must have played that message a dozen times.
😂
I've consumed enough British tv shows to still appreciate that 😂
crayfish hho hum. so Brits spell a place wor ces ter shire" but say it in 2 plus a half syllables. They think We are weird. Also they don't pronounce r ever. or H. and sometimes s. So "appy Ee ahhh" means Happy Easter. They think We are nuts or crazy not Bonkers. ok some expressions ore fun. Nouns are interesting like Jumper and whatever they call a hoagie bun or sandwich. It's the verbs. And places. And we'll the sound that seems to reek if superiority.
@@LorraineRarich I think YT put you in the wrong convo. Happened to me recently.
🤣🤣
I grew up "waiting in line" for things, but a lot of people around me now say they are "waiting on line" and frankly, I don't like it. The first time I heard it, I thought they meant they were waiting in an online queue for tickets or something.
It doesn't REALLY matter, I suppose, but it does kind of fill me with unbridled rage.
Did you move to New York? Bc AFAIK it's been like that there forever.
I heard waiting on line most from British tv and it's confusing because it sounds like online. Before online was a word, it sounded to me like someone was standing on a painted line
That is why we are queuing makes a lot of sense!
"Waiting on line" sounds to me like the equivalent of when someone types "for all intensive purposes." I want to reach through their internet connection and... hand them a dictionary.
Edit because someone is going to ask: It's "for all intents and purposes." Enjoy your dictionary.
Yes...Feel how the rage makes you powerful. If you only knew the power of the dark side...he he he!
There are other similar things that fill me with unbridled rage..."on line" instead of "in line," "on accident" instead of "by accident," "waiting on a friend" instead of "waiting for a friend," etc.
When my father was stationed in England during WW2, he once went up to a service window and asked a question. The person behind the window said, "I'm sorry--you'll have to queue up." My father responded, "I'm sorry--I don't know what that means." Someone in the queue shouted, "Get the hell to the back of the line!" My father said to him, "Thank you. THAT I understand!"
"The most common mistake is thinking English is a language. It's actually three languages in a trenchcoat, sneaking about and pocketing any loose vocabulary that looks unattended."
It's a serial abductor.
Who said that. ? Pretty true.
Only 3?
Zombie language.
Someone commented that 6 days ago
I love how there are like 500 different names for rolly pollies, and they're all adorable.
In Swedish they are called _gråsuggor_ "grey sows"
Except pill bug I guess, which is the one I grew up with
Though I also heard potato bug growing up
It's a slater.
Does nobody else call them sowbugs? Everyone in my family either calls them sowbugs, or less commonly pillbugs or rolly-pollies. Never potato bugs (potato bugs are those big creepy tan bugs that like to live in wood piles and that chickens find so delicious).
I call them wood lice or slaters depending on whether I find them in wood or under my roof slates.
This was fun. Here in Boston I grew up with 'r's inserted where they didn't belong and dropped where they did. "I have an idear. Afta I pahk my cah let's eat a tuner fish sandwich while we use the warshing machine."
I had no idea that adding “r” was a boston thing! I often wonder why only sometimes I come across someone here in the south who says things like “warsh” but not every body does. So their family probably comes from the Boston area somewhere down the line
They Might Be Giants have a couple of very fun songs that lean heavily on the stereotypical Bostonian accent, most notably "A Self Called Nowhere" and "Wicked Little Critta"
@user-nt4zn3mz1g, that is funny, but true 😆
That't sounds kinda fun tho! Being mexican and learning that is a thing makes me wanna go there to hear it myself
I knew a lady from Boston, but she put a W in the name of the city: Bwoston! And she added Rs where they shouldn't be: drink some warter!
The r in the pronunciation of colonel comes from the fact the word was originally spelled coronelle. We just didn’t change the pronunciation when the French did.
You got it right! This is why CZcams isn't a reliable source of information on technical topics.
Same with lieutenant. The American pronunciation is actually more in line with the original French.
@@GoodLordBagel If there's a Lef-tenant, should there be a Righ-tenant? Asking for a friend....
@@av8npa Not until a Lieutenant is authorized to walk to the right of his Captain.
@@GoodLordBagel Not quite true - the original word in English was 'lievtenant', pronounced a bit like 'lurftenant', and came via the Germanic speaking Frankish areas of Northern Europe. The v became spelled as a u instead (because it was originally latin, and that interferes with everything), and while English kept closer to the original pronunciation, America sided with the evolving modern French language to change it to more closely match the spelling.
The teacher explained that while 2 negatives (“I ain’t never been there”) makes a positive, no case exists where 2 positives make a negative. A Scotsman in the back said, “Aye, right.”
Yeah, sure.
Then there is Spanish, in which multiple negatives merely emphasize the negative. Therefore, "I ain't got no..." is totally legal.
Yeah saying two negatives cancels it out is a pretty weak rationalization. When you study English and how it evoles, how English dictionaries work (descriptive guides) and study other languages, you realize there are no set in stone rules, and no one is overseeing it. Who decides the rules? In English no one. It's more about tradition, but that changes as people die off and the youth want their own way of talking. Eventually current English will become like the "Canterbury Tales". It becomes rather unrecognizable. There is no control over it. The British have done the same. Otherwise they'd talk like a Shakespearean play. Remember they did a great vowel shift.
Yeah, yeah .
obviously. one plus one is two, but one plus negative one is zero.
5:52 - Saw a license plate recently that read “JZZ LUVR” and yes my mind went there. How could it not. 😬
You can only have 7 characters on a plate
@@TheInkPitOxYou know that there’s not one world wide rule set for plates, right?
Just tell everyone you're into scat, hep cat.
@@franklyanogre00000scat is poop, not jizz....
I love jazz too, but I'm embarrassed to admit my mind went there also!
Another regional synonym: hoagies, submarines, grinders all refer to a type of sandwich.
You forgot hero and po-boy. 😂 It was hero in NY and Po-boy when I was growing up in Texas.
Hero and zeppelin!
Zep! Foiled by spellcheck again!
ive never seen it written out like "submarine" its always just called a sub
these are all, just, colloquial nicknames.
I'm reminded of something once said by someone probably much wiser than myself... "The U.S. and Britain are two countries separated by the same language."
MarrockV; Winston Churchill said it.
Yikes! THAN, not then!
Could have been a Cunk joke.
@@altond511 Oh. I thought it was George Bernard Shaw. My bad. BTW, those little rollypolly pill bugs are called "sow bugs" here in So Cal.
In NZ we call them Slaters LOL.
Old episode of “I Love Lucy”. Lucy and Ethel are in London and need directions to see the queen. They ask a stately looking gentleman with and umbrella and a bowler hat for directions. He rattles off something so fast, it’s unintelligible. They ask again and he replies in same. Finally Ethel says, “I’m sorry, we’re American….we don’t understand English.”
😅 I do find myself needing subtitles when watching British shows.
Me, too.
For what it’s worth the English don’t much understand English either. You read me… the absolute bafflement a typical southeasterner will experience when going to other parts of England (to say nothing of Scotland, Wales or Ireland) is a source of constant amusement for me and many others.
I think back to that video of the parliament meeting where a very posh Londoner absolutely could not understand hardly a word from his Scottish peer and asked him to speak standard English (which the Scotsman already was). By the end of it the Englishman was babbling repeats of his request. The funny part is the Scotsman in question was rather typical. Neither a Glaswegian or a Teutchter (having family in Uist a word I use with pride) even.
Or, the time I had to translate english-to-english between a south-eastern lad and a friend of mine from Liverpool. The Liverpudlian understood fine mind you, it was his being understood that was the problem. So yes, have the far northern man (blas na Gaeilge Uladh agus Gàidhlig a Tuath orm) bridge the divides between Englishmen. A chuckle worthy moment to say the least. 😂
while this can equally be said of the anglo-american divide, it's more about listening
the moment i could properly declare myself fluent in english was when i could explain to a brit what our scottish friend had just told him
to me, a non-native english speaker, their dialects do not feel massively different, i listened to as many as i could, i thought they'd all be on the test
test of life that is, as our english exams barely had any hint of non-southern accents, but the point is i never had the gall to judge a speaker for his accent or give up on understanding them
Americans speak more slowly than Brits. It takes an American around three times the amount of time to say a sentence than it does a Brit.
"I could care less" annoyed me so much that I started saying "I could NOT care less" by default
So my grandfather was born in 1909 and he got extremely upset at me one day in the late 1990's. I kept saying something was annoying. He didn't understand me. Then said I wasn't speaking an actual word. I argued back and he said that he had never heard annoying. But only was aware of something being an annoyance! This came to mind when you said you never heard of addicting before.
Addicting is really annoying.
Is the correct word for "addicting" supposed to be "addictive?"
“American humans, and children.” Ouch. Glad I’m not a kid anymore.
I think being a child in the US means a bleak future.
He talks about 'Humans and children' as if children are not human frequently and has done so for a long time.
It's British humour
Glad to see that Americans are being recognized as superior to the rest of humanity. As we should be.
Glad I never was one.
Library is the one that gets me. "Li-bary" is so common it hurts. They pronounce it "lie berry". Definitely a pet peeve of mine.
It's almost as annoying as when some English people say 'ba tree' when they are talking about a battery.
The secretary of my elementary school back in the 90s would say "li-berry" on the intercom and it drove me absolutely bonkers. Even kid me was like, "this is an educational institution, you need to pronounce words correctly." lol
@@JarrettOriginal this seems to transcend education. I have come across several doctorates that say Li-berry. Blows my mind every time.
In England, they say lybree
@@organfairy I had a supervisor that would "Vomik" instead of "Vomit" and "Ideal" when he meant "Idea". My brother and even some other random people say "Ideal".
One that gets me is when someone says, “needs replaced” instead of, “needs to be replaced” or, “needs replacing”.
Being from pittsburgh/western PA I didn't know that wasn't proper until recently. "The lawn needs cut" is a perfectly fine sentence to my ears lol. We drop the "to be", pittsburgh dialect/slang can be quite different haha
One that gets me is commas that shouldn't be there, like the 3 you typed.
Fun fact: The word for a place that sells pizza is spelled "pizzeria". (Switching to French, a person in charge at a restaurant is a restaurateur.)
and then there are the ones who are so rhotic they pronounce Rs in words that don't even have them. like people from "warshington"
My grandmother was from the upper Midwest, and she pronounced it warshington.
Lol people from Washington (state) don't say warshington. Lived there for about 15 years. Only ever heard that pronunciation in the Eastern US
My mother was from Iowa, and would say warsh, as in warsh the clothes.
I sawr what you did there.
I've never heard a person from Washington pronounce their state with an r in it.
My kids drove me nuts with "on accident". It makes me insane! Things happen BY accident, but are done ON purpose.
I do lots of things on accident. But not this post, it was by purpose.
I've never heard on accident till this. Would jump out.
@@markoshun I never heard it until about ten years ago, but it's suddenly very common. It's currently one of my most-hated language shifts.
No, they are not done "on purpose." They are done _intentionally._
@@TestUser-cf4wj Now, now, that kind of fancy talkin' ain't going to get far with us simple folk.
I am an American. I was in London England several years ago. A woman approached me and a friend from Nottingham. I could only make out a word or two of what she was saying. I whispered to my friends, "What language is that?". He responds, "English, but she's Scottish.". Fortunately, he begins to whisper translations to me. It turns out she was offering sex for money, and asking for a cigarette. I blushed, handed her a cigarette, and walked away. So even within the confines of a relatively small nation, such as the UK, English is a complicated language.
Great story
One thing I noticed being from the south (Texas), there are some accents where the word “forwarded” sounds exactly like “farted”.
Every December here in Florida, my ear will be fooled by a TV ad for a car dealer's end of year event........"COME ON DOWN TO OUR GREAT URINE SALE !'
i'm from indiana on the kentucky border. i wondered why a new character on a show was called "Tomorrow" Much later i realized her name is "Tamara" and i have corn bread in my ears. mmmmm......cornbread.......
Suddenly remembered the Beverly Hillbillies episode where hippies descend upon the Clampett mansion upon hearing that Granny is smoking crawdads.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one 😂😂😂😂😂!
LOL about Granny!!😃
I used to think crawdads were a type of cigar...
To be fair they first met Jethro running around the woods dressed up as Robin Hood with a chimpanzee sidekick and Ellie dressed as Maid Marion .
It was only after that encounter that they wanted to meet Granny when Jethro said he wanted to smoke some more crawdads 😅
😂😂😂😂
1:59 Actually, in many states, the owner of a piece of real property is public information and can be found online; in summary, if you own a house, your address is online.
Don't tell this guy about how we used to have phone books until just a few years ago. lol.
Now that is how you spell freedom. Fuck America, fuck the state.
@@lafelong I have not seen a phone book in probably 15 years. They went out about the same time as pay phones.
@@lafelong And phone books used to also print your street address next to your name and number.
@@ADBBuildWe received phone books delivered on our front porch two years ago. Nothing since then.
As someone who uses "I could care less," I've always said it sarcastically. It's like "we should all be so lucky," "may you live in interesting times," or "bless your heart." The meanings of which are different from their literal intention.
You're the usual one. Most people do it because they don't know better.
This is a great video. My B.A. major was in linguistics, so this fascinates me. I appreciate that you present your videos in a nonjudgemental, explorative, rational manner. It nurtures harmony and understanding rather than discord and intolerance. That is very important.
Dissimilation is when a phoneme changes into something else because it sounds too similar to a neighboring sound. The r-dropping you talk about at 5:08 linguists would call elision, not dissimilation.
You also said that Americans add an 'r' to some words like colonel. Ironically, this actually comes from dissimilation, and not from intrusive-r. Sometime during the evolution of Spanish, if there were multiple Ls or multiple Rs in a word, one would change so they weren't making the same sound over and over. Latin arbor > Spanish árbol. Where Italian has colonello, Spanish has coronelo.
We actually borrowed this pronunciation, but spell it like the French word. The pronunciation with L is a spelling pronunciation that happened later.
Those wacky Spaniards!❤
6:02 interestingly enough, in the original Star Wars: A New Hope, the music that they are playing in the Cantina is called “jizz“. Just going to show that like most writers, George Lucas should’ve asked a 14-year-old to read his script and check for giggles and snickers.
Alternatively, he knew exactly what it meant and used it as a joke. The script and stage notes had lots of text that was never meant to be used on screen. That's where a lot of the action figures got their names, like Walrus Man, Hammerhead, and Snaggle Tooth.
They were jizz-wailers, right? Good old Max Rebo!
Jizz-wailers, as the performers are known.
Canonically it has two names, jizz or jatz. But I think everyone knows what is the best one of the two
Was "jizz" a slag term in the 70s? Feels recent.
I grew up in the Anglo section of Louisiana, where "woodlice" was an old-folks work for termites. We called the terrestrial crustaceans that your depicted by the name "pill bugs."
The US military apparently uses missles while the UK uses missiles.
And the Catholic Church uses missals.
"I'm always sometimes right." Words to live by.
Everyone is "always sometimes right" because no one is always right or always wrong. (Some get very close to either, though.)
@@freethebirds3578I am sometimes always right and I am sometimes never right. ie. When quoting Monty Python I am always right but when quoting TGoT I am never right.
I usually always do!
_60% of the time, it works everytime_
Drink driving is a bizarre way to say drunk driving.
Who says drink driving? I haven't heard that.
Pretty sure they do in england and australia.. I agree it sounds stupid@@coyotech55
@@bmorg5190 Yup. Don't drink and drive, though. It'll land you in all sort of trouble.
In Ireland it's drink driving.
@@barbarahallowell2613 In Slavic countries it's just driving.
As an American married to a South African, don't even get me started about:
1. the meaning of 'now' (as in just now/nownow to mean some time in the future or maybe never)
2. the meaning of 'robots' (as in the thing that turns green and tells you to start driving again)
3. 'howzit' vs 'how's it goin'' (as in I don't actually care about your well being--I'm just making pleasantries)
4. 'sweet' vs 'lekker' (which mean the same thing, both in the denotative and connotative)
How is any of this English what
“I couldn’t care less” says that you are at the bottom of caring. “I could care less” is a threat to giving up current care levels to a lower care level. This phrases is most commonly used as a threat to giving up on something like an idea, news, or people.
Interesting definition. Must be regional, however it is a logical definition. Just not the one used where I grew up. I do like it better, but no one would understand without an accompanying explanation.
That interpretation of "I could care less" implies some kind of consequence to me caring less--such as I've offered you something, but your persistence in asking for more is causing me to re-evaluate promising you anything at all--but I've never heard it used that way. If there's no consequence, then I couldn't care less about you caring less, which makes it a poor threat.
These little linguistics videos are kinda my favorite.
Still waiting on you taking on the true Boston accent. Please, before it vanishes, and only Hollywood Boston exists!
There are other, much better, linguistics channels out there.
I agree!! And this is so much fun as well as educational! Notice that people are kind in their responses-- that's more than wonderful!
Yerp
I recommend cat and model train diorama vids. The model train has a camera, numerous cats lurk, waiting to knock it off the track with a paw. Very satisfying😂
A doodle bug is actually usually referring to an antlion. Antlions capture ants in a sandy concave trap, which slides the ant right towards the antlion hidden in the center. I call the isopods roly-polies.
Roly-polie is spelled differently, too. I learned to spell it rolly-polly, possibly because they roll up into a ball, so they're rolly.
Rolly-polly (long o sound on both) and pill bugs were both used where I grew up.
Did you know that it's possible to live with huge portions of the brain missing. People who say "on accident" are testament to this.
Saying that you could care less does not indicate that you care a lot, but rather that you care at least a little, possibly more, or maybe even a whole bunch. That is why saying that you couldn't care less is definitively more well said, as it leaves no doubt that you really do not care, since there is no way you could care less.
A really strange term I have heard here in the Philadelphia area was "plugged up" for something being plugged in to the wall for power. Not having grown up in the area to me plugged up is something a drain does, usually at the worst time.
I've been all over the US and I've heard that everywhere. Now that I think about it, I've used it myself before. Maybe it was ME I heard it from all over the US? 😁In my brain...such as it is...plugged "in" makes me picture a single item, like a lamp. Plugged "up" is for a larger scene, like maybe when I'm connecting several power tools to a multi-outlet for my woodworking, or maybe some multi-piece electronics like a computer, monitor, printer. I say this because my phraseology is to say "plugged in" for an item, and "all plugged up" for a lot of stuff.
If I'm talking about a drain, I usually say, "stopped up". Ah, the freedom of making language your own! Have a great Sunday!
Lol my mom used to say that until her friend began teasing her about it. She's originally from MS. I think I said it both ways as a kid.
ZZ Top is from 'zig zag top quality rolling papers.' They spun one, and that's what it read on the side.
Now you know.
I grew up in Texas - from where the band ZZ Top came - but I’m half English on my mother’s side so every time in my mind, I think of them as “zed-Zed-Top” I just want to laugh! 😂
Actually, it was two different brands of rolling paper-- Zig Zag and Top.
@@cholling1 I heard a different story but I could be wrong. I heard it was how the paper folded over.
They were BB King fans and they wanted a name that was similar to "BB King."
The band had a small apartment covered with concert posters and Billy Gibbons noticed that many performers' names used initials. Gibbons particularly noticed B.B. King and Z. Z. Hill and thought of combining the two into "ZZ King", but considered it too similar to the original name. He then figured that "king is at the top" which gave him the idea of naming the band "ZZ Top"
Ohhh Lawrence / Laurence (I don't know) did you know that in the south of the US, people say "on today" and "on tomorrow" as in, "I have an appointment on Monday", then when Monday comes, they say "I have an appointment on today." I'd never heard that usage before I moved to the south.
4:40 A good example of this that goes very unnoticed is the word photographer. I hear a lot of people pronounce it like "fertographer".
4:36 Those pockets of the US don't "remain" non-rhotic like most of England. When the US was first settled, most of Britain was rhotic, at least somewhat (the R sound had been weakening for some time, but was still much more prominent than it is today). Those are the pockets that have evolved their own non-rhoticity.
It's funny how a lot of British people think their English is older than ours lol
Not op, just Brits
Example: Ask someone from Boston to say smart car.
When English settlers arrived in Massachusetts the R sound had been weakening in England for 200 years.
@no_peace Well, there is a reason it's called English and not American
6:00 it actually 100% is what we're thinking about. That's why it was called jazz music, it's music you jazz to. 'vitality or essence' is a euphemism. And amusingly, we know this from old homemade comics depicting characters doing sex and referring to it as 'jazzing'
Now, one of the words we use for that is "jizz". I guess they changed up the vowel to make it distinct from the music.
Wow! I like Jazz, but it's not remotely erotic. I mean, maybe something like Dave Brubeck or John Michel Jarre, but not really. I guess tastes change with time.
@@brucetidwell7715 not.. not remotely erotic.. really? I mean everything has been sanitized over the years, but you listen to that REAL old jazz, the stuff playing in clubs.. and for that matter, all other early-to-mid-20th century music, in its rawest form being played in places like Harlem, and you will find it is absolutely about nothing but sex and drugs.
Like the reaction from polite society was mean, and did far more damage than the culture it attacked, but it wasn't an _unwarranted_ reaction..
@@edwardblair4096 I think that might be coincidence right? Different roots, idt jizz has a relation to jazz but who knows
@@edwardblair4096 Slang's funny that way. hearing "Jazm" kinda helps close part of that loop.
We just laid one of my favorite coworkers. I am from Texas and he is from London literally two blocks from the O2 arena. I miss him very much and watching your videos is very awesome.
"But it's also completely and utterly a little bit bonkers." Great line, Laurence.
"Familiar" is a word that gets an **extra** R. I typically hear it pronounced 'firmiliar/furmiliar'.
Someone recently told me that "could care less" is now an acceptable form of that phrase because something something something blah blah blah . . . I can't remember his argument because I briefly blacked out on white-hot rage. "I couldn't care less" is non-negotiable based on WORDS HAVING MEANINGS. What one is saying when they use it is, "I already care so little about this topic that it would be impossible for me to care any less."
And don't even get me started on irregardless.
Let me propose that "could care less" could mean that even though I don't care at all about this subject, by supreme effort and the warping of space-time, I could care less. In that sense it's sort of a verbal smack down one-upmanship type of thing.
Exactly! And I'm with you on 'irregardless'.
Sounds like you really could care less about it
Bro I just pronounce it based on how it is written, am J americaning wrong?
Only okay to say furrmiliar in regards to cats
I love that you said catamount. I've lived in many places in America, places where those cats are called pumas, cougars, and mountain lions but until today I only ever saw catamount in dictionaries. Thank you.
I am slightly digressing, but I remember being amazed to find that there was a catamount brewery in East Central Vermont. I can’t remember which city it’s in. It’s either Windsor or White River Junction and I had a tour of the catamount brewery. It was great. I think it got bought out later by a Boston based brewery (Harpoon). And digressing a little further I was always fascinated with Apple Computer naming the various macOS versions sinceMac OS X 10.0 after species of feline animals so I used to joke that one of them had to be after lion or mountain lion there would be one that would be called “Mac OS catamount”, but it never happened!😮
I have even heard them called Jagwars and lepperds.
@@curtgozaydin922 Yes. Catamount is a New England (esp. Vermont) thing.
I was confused that he said “pyoo-mas” and not “poo-mas”
Not ever saw, if you follow college basketball. U of Vermont are the Catamounts?
Not a small amount of the population. Except nerds, elites, gold miners, and people from Chile? 1%? About 100% of the population of U.S. will find "catamount" in a dictionary.
Actually people in Louisiana and Texas also call the crayfish “crawdads” and growing up in the Midwest and Great Plains I think it’s also called both “crawdad” and “crawfish”.
So, potato bugs, to my mind, are actually Stenopelmatus fuscus, aka the Jerusalem Cricket. Some other words that you could explore are creek, coyote, root beer.
Regional differences on what carbonated soft drinks are called, or the difference between a valley and a holler, are also potential topics.
The big one that I can't adapt to, here in the midwest, is dropping the infinitive phrase "to be." So, instead of saying that lightbulb needs to be replaced," they say "needs replaced."
Same with "needs fixed." It's such a small thing, and yet, drives me crazy. Maybe I needs therapy.
Cheers.
Laurence has mentioned this before as if it were an American thing but I have yet to find an example of a Brit saying "colonel" without an R unless they're specifically using the pronunciation for a French officer. Sometimes the R is softer than how an American would say it but it's still there. Even the Cambridge Dictionary shows an R sound in both the American and UK phonetic codes.
And WHY is there an F in "lieutenant"...??????
@@diamondlou1 That is a mystery
@@diamondlou1 But only in the Army. In the Royal Navy it's pronounced sans the "F".
@@ailo4x4Never heard that.
The Anglo-Australian way of pronouncing it would have colonel as a homophone of kernel. "Leftenant" is a loan word from the French. Bizarrely in Australia a Lieutenant is pronounced "leftenant", but a Lieutenant-Colonel is pronounced "loot-kernel".
From California, it's weird that potato bug gets referred to the same insect as rolly pollies, pill bugs, etc. I've always grown up using potato bug to refer to the Jerusalem Cricket, a completely different insect.
Same here, but I'm from the Southeast mainly SC and NC.
And far more panic inducing than the cute little pill bugs... especially when you suddenly discover one crawling up your pant leg!
Canadian here, I've always called them sow bugs.
@@lindalor9284 Sometimes in southern California we call them sow bugs, too. Especially the kind that don't roll up. When my husband was in grade school, he did a science experiment where he trained some sow bugs. A friend (?) of his teased him mercilessly about the sow bugs ever after. To be fair, my MIL kept hermit crabs as a classroom pet for her preschoolers, my SIL had a pet rat back then, and my husband had a pet snake when he was a boy.
Yeah! Jerusalem crickets (the big bugs that live in woodpiles and that chickens love to eat) are potato bugs, while isopods (the cute little trilobite looking bugs) are sowbugs in my dialect, though it's not uncommon to hear pillbug or rolly-pollie, either (I say sowbug most commonly, my parents say sowbug or pillbug interchangeably, and we all might use all three. I don't know what my grandparents say but their form of our dialect is a little different, so I wouldn't be surprised if they say something other than sowbug most often).
The purpose of “I could care less “is correct it is implying you could care less more than it already “appears” you don’t. It’s a “salt in the wound” saying if you would. It’s the equivalent of asking someone to repeat themselves and after they start you go “HUH?” real loud…
idk why the algorithm brought me here but this may be my new favorite channel
Sometimes, after a long day, we all just need to watch Lawrence freak out about the mind breaking number of “Zeds” in the US.
Zed's dead, baby.
Americans love their zeds 😂
Jazzy and pizza have the double z and roughly the same word layout (consonant, vowel, z, z, vowel) but the second word SOUNDS like it has a secret T in there.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Surely, you don't mean Pete-sah.
@@DLBeatty Indeed I do!
I’m from Indy and your wife’s accent is a very good example how we talk here.
I'm pretty sure she happens to be from Indiana.
That's funny cuz she's from West Virginia 😊
The question could be why does Lawrence speak funny!
She sounds a little similar to folks from East central Ohio. A lot of folks here have that nasal twang
@@FourFish47 He's said previously that his wife's family lives in Anderson, Indiana, so unless they moved there from W. Virginia, I think she's a native Hoosier.
Just discovered this channel, and as an American who moved to the UK as a kid, I absolutely love it. It's so cathartic seeing a British person give American English its own space to exist and acknowledging that British English falls into a lot of the same behaviours.
For my entire childhood, I was insulted by practically everyone around me, as none of them respected that American English is a different dialect- instead just viewing it as "they can't admit that they speak the language wrong". I was regularly called r*tarded (usually several times a week for my entire adolescence), simply because I would sometimes write "color" instead of "colour". People didn't understand that the United States has had more influences than JUST the UK- most noticeably, influences from Hispanic cultures where "color" is the correct spelling. I tried explaining it to people and they would just call me r*tarded again. I had people who I considered friends berate me and my entire nationality by saying that Americans are mentally disabled because instead of using fancy Latin-derived words like biscuit/autumn/film (amusing because the last is not Latin in origin), "Americans use stupid simplified words like cookie/fall/movie. Hurr durr you cook it so it cookie, leaf fall so it fall, it move so it movie". I had one teacher who would give me 0 on any essay I turned in that had even a *single* American English phrase or spelling, even though SPAG was only meant to account for a small portion of marks and she wouldn't give the same treatment to British students who wrote things like "would of". That's not even getting into the fact that everyone used to call me obese, or insult me over politicians that I didn't elect and couldn't even vote on because I was a minor.
And then people are confused when I say I hate the UK and British people.
In Louisiana, those terrestrial crustaceans known as woodlice are called "armadillo bugs," likely on account of their similarity to the nine-banded armadillo, including rolling into a ball for defense. After all, the taxonomic family name is Armadillidiidae (which sounds like a lyric from a song from a children's TV program-ar-ma-dil-lee-dee-ee-day).
I only came here to say: once upon a time ago I wrote work instructions. Some of those work instructions I inherited and needed to rewrite, were a tad bit... overzealous. They had a foreword (for some reason), but my predecessors weren't exactly English wizards and titled them "Forward" instead of "Foreword". When I first started rewriting those instructions, I would retitle that section foreword. It took me a couple years experience to realize, it's a work instruction, if it needs a foreword, you probably don't need to read it, and just deleted the section.
Oops didn't know they were separate, thanks
I feel like I just stepped into another Mandela Effect, bc I swear I've seen Forward in books my whole life, but google is telling me no. 🤷♂
Mind blown. I had no idea these were spelled differently. Thank you!!!!!
I think that the American term for Forward is Executive Summary.
i got so confused reading this because i had never heard of the word "foreword" before and had no idea what it was
Lawrence, your house sale is a matter of public record. Anyone can look up your address if they know your general location and last name. Your address and name are recorded in the local tax records usually along with the sale history of your house, the tax assessment, tax value, Sq footage, acreage, any mortgages, # of rooms and # of bathrooms.
In California (or at least, Los Angeles County), they stopped letting you look up people's addresses by searching for their name. However, if you want to know who owns a piece of real estate, you can look up the parcel if you know the address or lot description, and then you can see who owns or has owned it. I don't know if this was to protect celebrities from stalkers (think Hollywood stars), or if it's a general privacy matter. I don't think that stops data brokers from publishing the information, though, unless laws have been passed barring the practice. But the Internet being the way it is, it might need a federal law, not just state laws, to prohibit it. Enforcement would be another matter (like the Do Not Call list-- what a joke!).
So glad you brought up ‘forward’. Drives me a little nutty when I hear someone say ‘foward’
Lmao you'd hate me. I pronounce that word as ford
@@StrongHammer12345 yeah same. texas
I appreciate the fact that the beans hummus is made from are called garbanzo beans, cici beans, and chickpeas. Its a quandry when making a shopping list.
At 6:40, most places spell the location where you buy a pizza as 'pizzeria', not 'pizzaria'.
Both of which are different to "pizzarrhoea"
Yep--from Michigan. @@jhonbus
If they spell it "pizzaria," that's simply incorrect. Ask any Italian.
One that gets me, seems common in the Northeast and Midwest - dropped infinitives. Instead of "the car needs to be washed" someone might just say "the car needs washed"
@SuLokify
A way of speaking which some Scottish people are now utilising.
The car does need to be washed because it is one thing...laundry is a collective so it needs washed. More than one changes everything.
Northeasterner here (with a couple years of Minnesota living in my past, too). I’ve heard “needs to be washed” and “needs washing” but never “needs washed.”
we would say it that way in the southeast too
@@crose7412It goes the other way, actually. It seems that this construct was brought over by Scots-Irish settlers.
I didn't know about "zed" until graduate school! While I was
working in the audio center one day, a student asked for a record whose call number -- she said -- was "LP-zed." I had no idea what she meant until she wrote it as "LPZ!"
From what I understand, you guys sounded more like us until recently and that it is your accents that changed
Yeah, they started talking all fancy and posh and in a condescending tone because that made them feel superior to us after we beat them TWICE.
@@XtremiTeezBurnt DC 👍🏻
The few that get me is that in parts of the US words like Coke (which is a brand of soft drink) means any type of soft drink and in other areas Soda or Pop are used. Another one is Vacuum discribing a machine used to clean your carpets and in some parts of the UK, Hoover (which is a brand of Vacuum) is used to describe Vacuuming your crapets.!
Earing fast = hoovering
Some brand names do end up covering a thousand varieties. Like Velcro, Super Glue, Duck (or Duct, your choice) Tape. They do turn in colloquialisms, don't they? I drank a Coke just last night, but it was a Dr. Pepper. 😁
@@k.b.tidwell Love this and yes! I call any tissue Kleenex any wound cover a Band Aid, etc. Brand names can take over similar items. I don't know if you're familiar with Kroger or not: It's a name for a well known grocery. A long while back in one of their commercials, Kroger became a verb in this: Let's go Krogering!"
@@user-hr3tx6uu9o definitely! Even though I don't have Kroger where I am, I'm familiar with it because my wife and I have shopped in one when visiting relatives in Virginia. Great day to you!
To be fair, we Americans call self-sticking bandages by the brand name Band-Aid.
There is definitely something to be said about how a word looks in text. A million years ago, when a computer was prone to making funny noises prior to having an internet connection, there was some discussion about the validity of "lol". I grew to embrace it because it looks funny and has the ability to convey more information than "haha".
When I was a kid, a teenage neighbor came over with his lawn mower and asked if we wanted our yard roped. He also hung a dead snake in a tree to encourage the sky to rain.
Many many years ago, my then teenage son was tired of all the calls trying to sell us things, one day when they asked for me, he said that “sh3 is temporarily deceased” we soon started getting calls trying to sell us cemetery plots, my then husband explained that we were not in need of cemetery plots, they stopped only to be replaced by calls trying to sell us tombstones, those finally stopped after my brother told them that I was in the basement, thankfully no policeman came to check out why I was temporarily deceased and in the basement, lol.
9:37 My father used to say, "I may not be right, but I'm never wrong" 😅
WoW ...!! My Mum used to say that too - and I've never known anyone else say it!! (R.I.P. Mum 🇮🇪 - Hilde Elisabeth -
23rd March 1917 - 11th October 2015)
A very self centered man I once knew said “even when I’m wrong, I’m right”.
And that was minor compared to other self- opinions…
@@A2D4
One might call a man like that a 'GNDN'* perhaps...?! (A *Star Trek* reference) 🤔🖖
I'm more used to hearing "forward" spoken with the "w" dropped - "for'ard"
As a New Zealand inheritor of British Isles culture, I'd like to mention "forrid".
In my youth in the 1950s, this was a pronunciation of both "forehead", and in the world of sailing, "forward", meaning towards the front end of a boat, yacht or ship.
Otherwise, before I retired, I would use "forward" for such as "move this forward to next month". But I hated people who said "going forward", when they could just say "next".
Yes, that is right, that is how I say it.
@@flamencoprof Forrit means forward in Scots
I basically say ”forward” like “ford”
We call them Rolly Pollie bugs in Michigan. But once we got a lizard as a pet and wanted a self sustaining enclosure, I found out there are tons of different kinds of those little f'ers and they are called isopods. They are super important at breaking down everything from decaying plant material to poop.
You'd be surprised just how many times a day I think to myself, 'ohhh Lawrence'.
Yes. My family now knows Lawrence's name quite well. He still hasn't explained why he uses a w instead of a u like all the other Laurences I know.
@Paul_Halicki to me Laurance is the weird way to spell it.
Also growing up I heard “peek-ed” (with specific stress on the two separate syllables) to describe looking pale, tired or ill. I had to look it up to find that it did, in fact have similar historical usage. I never heard anyone outside of family use it. This was in OH.
Hear peak-ed in the south
I have wondered if peek-ed for tired (which is the way I have always heard it pronounced) is done to differentiate between that and peeked, as in looking around a corner.
We don't actually use it in western Canada, but it's known from books, etc. as peak-ed. I don't think you could even use peaked to mean pale/tired as it means something completely different.
PEKID
@samanthab1923
PEKID
"Tank ewe 4 da humor" 🤣....ok, seriously, thank you for the humorous explanation of English and it's variants
3:08 When I was a kid, we called those sow bugs. (Ontario, Canada)
Got to admit, it's your sardonic delivery that keeps me watching. Well done!
As a US military linguist who spent three years in Scotland but even made it as far South as Avebury and back successfully (in my own American car by the by) and lived to tell about it, I've found English, in all its forms is just about the richest language there is...
Hear, hear, brother! Retired Navy CPO, been here in the East Midlands for 25 years now, and married a local English rose. They still lose their minds to "cheers, y'all!" ;-)
It's light sarcasm, not sardonism. Or perhaps I am wrong.
Looking it up... Sarcasm involves delivery with a layer of irony, where sardonism is a grim delivery that's often cynical.
I guess he is sometimes sarcastic, often sardonic AND sarcastic... I have always associated sardonic with extreme contempt, but I guess you're correct. I had to look it up
"by the by"? you mean "by the way"? is this another one of those weird regional language things?
@@Jzombi301 It's just old fashioned and predates BTW. Not wrong, just not used widely.
"American humans... and children" Two entirely different species and I couldn't agree more. 😂😂💀😂😂
As an American human with a child, I couldn’t agree more 😂
7:40 drizzle made me laugh. "And hasn't stopped emerging since". HA!
Of course, language is a dynamic, living thing. It evolves constantly. When you consider that British and American people have been separated by an ocean for centuries it's a wonder the usage isn't even more different. Portugal and Brazil speak the same language but very differently.
I've intermittently watched you for a while now, and I'm impressed with how far your production chops have come. The videos feel so snappy now. Really impressive.
Haven't watched him before, but the dude clearly tries to copy Map Men (menmen men men) delivery and cadence and style to a large extent
Growing up, Crawdads were called mud bugs.
I learned crawdads. I figured crayfish was the proper educated name. Turns out there is no proper educated name for those, so I stick with crawdads.
We called them mud bugs because when we saw their mud houses, we knew it was time to fish them out of their homes to play with. We never ate them.
Having grown up in Michigan, I never heard of them until my first trip to a Creole inspired restaurant, where they were referred to as crawfish. I had no idea that they had so many names.
Growing up in Eastern Australia, we called them yabbies, but that's not English. It's Wiradjuri (an indigenous language). I'm not indigenous, yabby is just what everyone called them. What's their name in Britain? Or aren't there any Yabbies/Crawdads/Crayfish/Crawfish etc .... in Britain? 🦞
@@cate9540I grew up on a lake in MI, we used "crayfish". We'd heard "crawdad". But bc of my last name, I was teased with that one and avoided it
Always enjoy your videos, so funny and educational
7:43
After much consideration and many laughs, giggles, snorts and, yes, even chortles later, this beautiful tidbit has finally hooked me.
Due to sheer perfection and refusal to slack pff, even a little, i shall now and ever after subscribe.
Thank you, Sir.
A Potato Bug is actually something completely different from the rolly-polly, and kind of frightening.
Talking about the wasp body with the baby face? When I lived in Pocatello, my first discovery of one (in my basement) scared the heck out of me.
Roly-poly, unless that's another variant I hadn't heard. Your spelling would rhyme with "jolly".
Yes, when you step on an actual Potato Bug, mashed potatoes come out... They gross me oot...
My region calls isopods potato bugs too. The other Potato Bug is indeed a nightmare
Indeed. Potato bugs are giant massive weird-looking things like giant killer hornet bees with no wings
I've got one. On NYPD Blue, when a character intends to overindulge in alcohol they say "I'm going to get my load on". I had never heard that phrasing before. Here in the Midwest we say "I'm going to get loaded". In other words "filled up with alcohol". Its dumb, but makes descriptive sense. I've also heard "get a load on". That makes sense -- like filling a gas tank, except your stomach is the tank and alcohol is the fuel (btw, "tanked" also means "drunk") but until that show I never heard it phrased as "my load" which kind of doesn't make sense. It implies the alcohol was somehow earmarked for that person "Next load of whisky belongs to Detective Sipowicz"
I recall having a discussion about the use of "pissed off" meaning mildly irritated vs "pissed" mean drunk vs "pissed on" meaning wet. ;-)
I would assume he planned on paying for the alcohol, which means it will belong to him, especially after he loaded it.
I always thought getting “tanked” referred to ending up in the drunk tank in the police station.
I lived in NY for 35 years, from 25 to 60, and never heard a single NY’er say they were going to get their load on. 🤷♀️
I’m from the Midwest and if someone said “I’m going to get a load on” I’d either think they were weirdly saying they were doing a load of laundry, or vulgarly saying they were going to have sex with a good ending. 🤷🏻♀️
I watched a video about Social Security recently. People were saying these adults were 'entitled' (deserving to the benefits they were owed). Then people were commenting they're not 'entitled' (spoiled, undeserving). It was a funny argument over the same word.
PittsburgH has entered the chat. Did yinz know we go dahn er an at by the crick? Yinz ever drive a Jagwar dahn to the gumband shop?
btw yinz is similar to yall but instead of meaning "you all" it actually stands for "you ones" Pittsburghese is rough sometimes I can barely understand my own family members haha
My favorite college class was History of the English Language and it remains so. I'm in WV and I've heard leftover Old English being used by people who have lived in the same area for generations. Two examples are HIT for it and CHIMLEY for chimney. The English in my state varies but it is predominately leftover Scottish and words are said fast or run together. Another quirk is adding an L or not pronouncing it these two words: Lambasted is LAMBLASTED but the word solder becomes SODDER. Have to love the spoken word.😊 Oh by the way, my granddaughter and I were on my front porch when I noticed one table stacked on another was not straight. I said "It's WHOPPERJAWED "and that word scared her.
Heard “brolly” for umbrella & whobbley
I like comparing words that sound the same. Like sum and some.
It's also interesting that it depends where one lives how the English language changes. Different places has their own accents and term or lingo they use. I couldn't understand my dad's family when I met them. If a words end with an A they add an R to it for some reason. Example North Carolina becomes North Carolinar. My name ends with an A and my dad never could say it correctly. Before living with him I spoke the old English from up in the hills of NC but I don't remember it after so long. My step mom was learning English and we developed our own part English part German we spoke together. My dad was usually lost.. Lol.Theres also different slangs like when I came home I had picked up the CB lingo and it was automatic lol no one understood. It took a while to drop it. So it is interesting how things are so different sometimes in areas if your there long enough we pick up. Not just for back east but coming from living in Hawaii to the east was funny too. We all speak English and pick things up but at the same time it's different.
@@grandmarshallkingwolfman420 Yes. I was going to write that plus the Battle of Hastings. Thanks! The Norman Conquest changed speech with those OUs, etc. And later on those OUs became silent. On and on and a word like THOUGHT became pronounced as THOT.
@@grandmarshallkingwolfman420 You're headed in the right direction, but Middle English was also dead by the time America began to be colonized. Try Early Modern English instead.
@@samanthab1923 We normally say ‘brolly’ in Britain but sometimes ‘gamp’, which comes from the character Mrs Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit as she always carried an umbrella. Contrary to what many Americans believe, ‘bumbershoot’ is an American not a British word. I’ve never heard of a ‘whobbley’ as a term for an umbrella though 🧐
8:10 That says, "addicitive", with four syllables and presumably a 'soft' (sounding like S) C. Notice the three dots on the three I's that it has like a Simpsonian or Futuramatic fish (from the genus "Groeningus").
Canadian English is different again from American and British. Those little bugs are cow bugs or wood bugs here on the east coast.
One I was made aware of when I moved to Ontario was that the east coast says "I am done of it. I am done of supper. I am done of shopping. I am done of school" etc
Some of the extra Rs are in there not because we General Americans are extra-rhotic or anything, but because we're specifically taught in school that those words aren't pronounced as they're spelled. We're told that "colonel" has an R sound, and we're gullible enough to accept it.
Just like you Brits are gullible enough to believe there's an F sound in "lieutenant". 😉
No, it's because it's been influenced by the Spanish word coronel.
@@williampalmer8052 No, that is French. Laurence did a short on it.
Talk to a frenchman
The word, logically, is pronounced ‘lootenant’ in the USA, but in English it is pronounced ‘leftenant’, possibly derived from luef, the Old French for lieu.
@@Blondie42 No, with an r is Spanish. My husband is French and I live in France and they spell it the same as the English spelling.
The U.S. has a lot of really interesting dialects. It's fun to meet new people and try to place their accent/dialect. Also, realizing my own dialectic features. My girlfriend loves pointing out that I don't pronounce the "l" in "wolf", so it sounds like "woof". It's a feature of Philadelphia English (my native dialect), and I even studied linguistics at Temple University in Philly, but never realized I had this feature until my girlfriend pointed it out.
The lf is difficult to enunciate so at some point people just dropped the l. It reminds me of the way children say psaghetti.
The best Philly-ism is jawn.
When you buy a house, the buyer and seller can be searched on the local county website because it's public info.
Born and raised in SE Texas. We used crawfish and crawldads interchangeably. Occasionally we called them mudpuppies.
Lol the "roley poley" one got me. Especially that I knew them also as "pill bugs" being from California.
My son gets mad at me now if I call then anything but their "order" name, which is "isopods." Lol😊
I have one of those too 😂
Isopods? How dare he! jk
Also from CA, in my family we called the pill bugs, rolly pollies and even sal bugs but they definitely were not potato bugs. Those were big ugly brown beetles that could sorta' fly. Not like the pretty, iridescent black ones.
@@NotSoMuchFrankly I still call them rolly pollies. And they're ew.
On Long Island, we called them "sow bugs."
@@raedwulf61I've heard that in WV too.