Ask UK

1226 readers

5 users here now

Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the UK.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

Have you replaced any British words with their American versions? (feddit.uk)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Oneeightnine@feddit.uk to c/askuk@feddit.uk

112 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For example, switching out the word 'boot' for 'trunk', or ditching the word 'rubbish' for 'garbage'.

This is something I've noticed my 6 year old does pretty regularly. We went through a stage where 'sweets' became 'candy', 'holiday' became 'vacation' and 'courgette' became 'zucchini'.

That last one didn't happen but if you're still reading you've got my respect, or as the Americans might say '...mad props'.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] peto@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I quite like shop in the sense of workshop, and I also rather like y'all.

I also often refer to whisky as scotch, though I feel like that is as much about making myself understood.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Aren't scotch and whiskey two different things? In a rectangle/square sense

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Scotch is whisky from Scotland (shockingly).

That's not an Americanism really; people call it Scotch in British English too. It's just that because 99% of the whisky in the UK is Scotch anyway you don't really need to specify. Whereas because most whisky consumed in the US is bourbon, they tend to specify when they mean Scotch.

The same is presumably true in reverse, i.e. Brits using "bourbon" more than Americans because of the need to specify.

Personally I'm not bothered by the whisky/whiskey distinction. Whisky was traditionally Scottish and whiskey Irish, with the Americans going the Irish way and other countries (like Japan) going the Scottish way. But it's a bit of a meme to nitpick at this point; they're indisputably just two spellings of the same thing.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's more along the lines of what I was thinking. I could never tell the difference between the taste of any distinctions

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Once you've got your eye in, scotch and bourbon are quite different. Many (although not all) scotch whiskies have peat in their flavour profile (a kind of smoky, salty, earthy flavour which is very distinctive), while bourbons never do. Bourbon is almost always quite a lot sweeter than scotch.

They're also made quite differently. Bourbon is mostly corn, and often has lots of rye and wheat in the mix, whereas scotch is mostly made of barley. Bourbon is always aged in new oak barrels, whereas scotch is mostly aged in second-fill barrels (which might previously have been used for bourbon, wine, sherry, port, cider etc.).

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Even in my college days I was just never been able to get past the poison taste of ethanol to get to the good stuff that differentiates the flavors

[–] livus@kbin.social 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Whisky and whiskey are two different things.

"Scotch" is American for whisky but not for whiskey.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Guess I'm even more ignorant to booze culture than I thought

[–] Deebster@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago

Y'all is great, but I can't use it without sounding like I'm taking the piss.