The state of British English

Candy   Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:22 pm GMT
Marmite!! nectar of the gods.....yummm......:-)
Geoff_One   Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:39 pm GMT
In Australia, french fries are called chips.
Hellas   Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:39 pm GMT
* You can call then anything you like! Doesn't make them French, though..;)

Aha...At least someone has a sense of humor. (as opposed to a German sense of humor)

French Fries, French Toast, French Letter, etc... none of these are necessarily French but the misnomers don't stop with the French.
Candy   Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:44 pm GMT
<<Aha...At least someone has a sense of humor. (as opposed to a German sense of humor) >>

Hey, I'm British. Having a sense of humour is our birthright! :-)

Geoff, in Britain we call them chips, too. (And what Americans call 'chips' we call 'crisps')
Sander   Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:44 pm GMT
Hellas,

=>Aha...At least someone has a sense of humor. (as opposed to a German sense of humor) <=

I'm not a German neither do I have their sense of humour.

Ever thought of the idea that my kind of humour is different from yours?! I love sarcasm,irony and black humour.
Hellas   Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:26 pm GMT
* Hey, I'm British. Having a sense of humour is our birthright! :-)

Oh yeah, I know about that self-stereotype ;)
Candy   Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:36 pm GMT
It's true!!!!
kelly bundy   Fri Sep 02, 2005 2:35 pm GMT
chips & french fries ain't the same thing, you cry babies
get a grip
Candy   Fri Sep 02, 2005 2:38 pm GMT
<<you cry babies
get a grip >>

WTF????
cookie   Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:01 pm GMT
I want candies.
rookie   Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:25 pm GMT
I want Candy.
Adam   Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:48 pm GMT
I agree. Anglo-Saxon wine, like most things Anglo-Saxon, is doing better than French wine. Wine sales in France are decreasing, whereas last year they increased by a massive 23% in Britain. As things stand, the British will be drinking more wine than the French by the year 2015 - but British wine and wine from other Anglo-Saxon countries such as the US and Australia. The US will become a biger consumer of wine than France by 2008.

Also, a British wine was voted the best in the world recently.
Adam   Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:51 pm GMT
"ADAM.....the UK once had a very awkward monetary system....LSD...(nothing hallucinatory!) ...librae, solidii, denarii...pounds, shillings and pence....a THREE tier system - £.s.d. How the hell would we cope with something like that now in this country? "

No-one thought it awkward at the time. But they found the current decimal system that we have now awkward to start off with. We used that system of hundreds of years and no-one complained.

What next? Are you saying that the measurement of time (days, months, years, etc) should be decimalised?
Adam   Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:54 pm GMT
"Geoff, in Britain we call them chips, too. (And what Americans call 'chips' we call 'crisps') "

And what we call "jelly" in Britain the Yanks call "jell-O", and what we call "jam" the Yanks call "jelly", so whenever an American says "I'm having jelly on ym sandwich" it makes me want to vomit.
Adam   Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:01 pm GMT
"ADAM.....the UK once had a very awkward monetary system....LSD...(nothing hallucinatory!) ...librae, solidii, denarii...pounds, shillings and pence....a THREE tier system - £.s.d. How the hell would we cope with something like that now in this country? "


We manage okay by having 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 2 weeks in a fortnight, four weeks in a month, two fortnights in a month, 52 weeks in a year, 26 fortnights in a year, 12 months in a year, ten years in a decade, 100 years in a century, 10 decades in a century, 1000 years in a millennium and 100 decades in a millennium, but no-one's thinking about decimalising it all because "it's all too complicated to remember."

That's just a similar system that British money was before decimalisation in 1971. Whereas the French just had francs and centimes, and the Americans just had dollars and cents, and all other countries had similar money systems with "100 of something = 1 something", Britain, proudly, was different, because we didn't have that. We had shillings, pounds, pennies, groats, crowns, farthings. All different ones. And working out the prices of things was easy, just like knowing how many weeks are in a year. If we reverted back to that system now, we would find it difficult to start off with because lots of people won't be used to it, but when our currency decimalised in 1971 lots of people struggled then, too. They didn't find it any easier.