Radio firsts for Christmas 2012 - songs of the season

[djr33]

Interesting.

Well, that's what people I know say.

It's common? Any idea where it comes from?

[keyboard]

You don't say things like Thursday-Week? (If today is Wednesday, 8 days away)
How do you say it then?

[bernie1227]

Next week on Thursday?

[djr33]

You don't say things like Thursday-Week? (If today is Wednesday, 8 days away)
How do you say it then?

Oh, what? That means "Thursday in one week"? I thought it meant "one week, including [some relevant] Thursday". Like, "Let's do it Thursday week" would mean "Let's do it some time near Thursday, within one week of Thursday".

But... no, very different! Interesting.

As Bernie said, we'd say "Next week on Thursday" or just "next Thursday".

[Beverleyh]

Yep - we say "emyou" in the UK. Also "Thursday-week" (or whatever day - meaning "a week on Thursday"), "a Fortnight" (2 weeks) and "Monday while Thursday" (or any other combination of days, but "while" in this context basically means "until").

"to pull-up" is also much more common place than saying "to stop" - so if we were driving into town and wanted to ask the driver to stop, we'd say "can you pull-up here" more often than "can you stop here".

Huge Laurie is an excellent actor, probably better know as a comedy actor here in the UK - Jeeves and Wooster, where he plays a bumbling, idiotic toff, was one of my favourite shows. It sounded very strange for me to hear him speak with an American accent in House.

It's amusing to think that when the Brits judge an American doing a British accent, we judge him not on how British he sounds, but rather how un-Australian he sounds
I visited Disney Land a few years ago and heard a little boy asking his mum "why do that lady and man sound funny?", to which she replied "that's how they talk in England" - When I walking around the corner, I saw a lady and gent dressed in white, greeting everybody as Mary Poppins and Burt. I laughed when they said hello and shook my hand because they sounded Australian
I resisted the urge to test 'Burt' with some cockney rhyming slang - that would have just been too mean

IMO, one of the few American actors who can totally pull-off a British accent without so much of a trickle of anything else sneaking in, is Johnny Depp - his Sweeny Todd just made me shiver.

One thing that really winds me up is how American writers sometimes don't write scripts for British characters with the English versions of words. For example, last week I watched Miracle on 34th Street with Richard Attenborough, and just after the judge releases him, Santa speaks to the prosecutor and says something like "I hope you've fixed that TV antenna - I tore my pants on it last year". AAAAARRRRRRRGHHHH! In Britain, Richard Attenborough (being a true British gent) would have said "I hope you've fixed that TV aerial - I tore my trousers on it last year".

[djr33]

Haha, very amusing. And that's true. It's something that may not be noticed by a lot of people, but I am bothered by things like that too. Even subtitles and so forth. But that's just me, I think.

On the other side of things, bad acting can be great. There's nothing quite as entertaining as the awful German accents in the Spanish dubbed version of Captain America. (If you're wondering, I was in Ecuador when that movie came out. So, yes, I listened to various American patriotic songs, dubbed in Spanish. I think it improved the film!)

Also "Thursday-week" (or whatever day - meaning "a week on Thursday"), "a Fortnight" (2 weeks) and "Monday while Thursday" (or any other combination of days, but "while" in this context basically means "until").

Strange. I don't even understand what those mean. But "a fortnight" is fine, just archaic here. Most well-educated Americans will know that, while I don't think any Americans would know the others.

"to pull-up" is also much more common place than saying "to stop" - so if we were driving into town and wanted to ask the driver to stop, we'd say "can you pull-up here" more often than "can you stop here".

That's the same in America. The specific context in the TV show was a little strange. There was a subway train about to hit someone on the tracks. Then it stopped. So later someone said "But the train pulled up just in time."

In American English, we can say "pull up" as long as there's a destination-- "pull up over there" or "my friends just pulled up [outside, in their car]", and that sounds completely normal. But out of context like that, just to mean "stopped, at a random location", it sounds completely wrong to me (but again, just my dialect!).

[Beverleyh]

A very large amount of people (not just Australians) say "mate".

Guilty!
In Derbyshire, it's also very common to be called "duck", "chicken" and "love" - even men-to-men (big burly ones at that!) They're all polite and friendly terms though Nothing weird or insulting - its just the way we are.

[molendijk]

How about Esperanto?

No, I want the real thing!

[molendijk]

And go back about 500 years! (Haha, I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but it's amusing.

I even propose we go back more than 2000 years, and start to learn the language of Cicero!
Linguam latinam utor debemus, or something like that.

[jscheuer1]