Can British people pretend to speak like Americans?

"In England we call the secondary toilet in a house a "cloak room", but 'apparently' in the U.S this means a place where you hang coats!!!!!!! "
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I've never heard anyone in England call a secondary toilet a "cloak room". To me, a cloak room is where you hang cloathes. I call it a downstairs toilet - because mine's downstairs, and the main one in the bathroom is upsets.

"I think she's Australian actually"
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I think he's talking about Minnie Driver, and she's British.

Cloakrooms in the UK are usually those depositories in theatres, etc. where you go to leave your outdoor clothes while you're watching the performances.

As for poo - that is the widely accepted term for faeces. There are, of course, various other terms in use, but we're just talking "poo" here. Even Anne Robinson has used it in the Weakest Link - I can't remember in what context exactly - maybe she was just being her usual nasty self to one of the contestants....may his or her answer was a "load of old poo", or maybe the contestant was some kind of sanitation engineer. "Poop" is another term - but many people use that when referring to dog mess - the process of clearing up after your dog is most often called "poop scooping" - and the local councils provide free "poop scoops".

Playing "Pooh sticks" - like in Winnie the Pooh - chucking sticks into the river on one side of a bridge and then running over to the other side to see it floating into view from underneath the bridge and off down the river.

Mark Addy does a reasonable job in the series "Still Standing". Had I not seen him in The Full Monty and The Time Machine, I might have assumed he was from Canada or the US.

Adam - you have never heard of the euphemism 'cloakroom' to refer to the toilet?? Blimey! I recently moved house and the plans had the downstairs toilet listed as a 'cloakroom'. The state agent also referred to the downstairs carzzy as such. Admittedly I have really only heard the term used by older generations and posh types, but I have heard it often.

I'm not to sure how it come about, but just thinking about it is obvious that most places to hang up a person's coat is normally outside of the ‘downstairs bog’, so maybe that is a clue.

Anyway, it is definitely a euphemism used/was used here in the south - much like how the yanks use 'bathroom' for toilet I suppose.

I noticed, on a recent episode on "How Clean Is Your House", that the Brits call chewing gum, something like "plasteen". It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about.

>>Anyway, it is definitely a euphemism used/was used here in the south - much like how the yanks use 'bathroom' for toilet I suppose.<<

Of course, in people's houses bathrooms commonly actually contain baths or showers, you should remember.

Oh yes Travis it can also actually mean that as well!!! It's funny because I could never really understand why Americans say Bathroom until an American work colleague mentioned that it was simply a 'politer' way of saying that one is going to the toilet. I can sort of see her point - but come on we're all adults, we know what we REALLY mean. I suppose the term "restroom" is used in the same way.

I have never heard of chewing gum being referred to as “plasteen” before Jasper. It may be a regional thing?? They may have meant “plasticine” which is a dough type substance that comes in multi-colours which children use to make things out of. I’m certain that you lot have it over there but it may be called something else (the chances are high!!).

Ok I’m still in need of an answer here; does that last sentence need to end with a full stop/period?? Cheers.

>>Oh yes Travis it can also actually mean that as well!!! It's funny because I could never really understand why Americans say Bathroom until an American work colleague mentioned that it was simply a 'politer' way of saying that one is going to the toilet. I can sort of see her point - but come on we're all adults, we know what we REALLY mean. I suppose the term "restroom" is used in the same way.<<

One thing you should remember, though, is that in North American English the word "toilet" actually refers to the porcelain throne itself, not the room in which it resides.

<< They may have meant “plasticine” which is a dough type substance that comes in multi-colours which children use to make things out of.>>

Oh, I see! <laughs out loud>
Well, it LOOKED like chewing gum.
Is plasticine the same thing we call "Play-Doh"?

One thing I like--they call the stoves "cookers" over there. I believe they've got this one right. We win the 1stfloor debate, though. :-)

Another interesting thing--the washing machines in the UK are located in the kitchen, which seems rather odd. Perhaps there's a space constraint. In the States, the washing machine and dryer is in its own tiny little room.

Their kitchens are smaller, but warm and sunny--far warmer and cozier than ours.

Yes, space is very much a constraint in the UK. Regarding kitchens and washing machines and house sizes generally.....the biggest problem we in Britain have, compared with the USA, is all to do with space ....actual room to accommodate everything that goes to make modern life function efficiently. In this tight little island of the UK, covering an area about 35% that of the State of Texas alone but with about 3 times its population, space is very much at a premium when it comes to planning everything out.

We wish to preserve our precious and very beautiful countryside, so there are very strict regulations and restrictions when it comes to building outside of the urban/metropolitan areas and the so-called brownfield sites (ie those areas not protected as greenfield sites or which are to be re-developed.

In America you virtually have unlimited space comparatively speaking, so you can have your large kitchens, and closets and utility rooms (our name for your own "tiny little room") for all your washing machines and dryers and dishwashers and all that kind of domestic paraphernalia and yet still have plenty more room in which to expand. If we were to do that we would soon be living in one vast mega metro built up area covering the entire UK and we would be falling off cliffs and piers and jetties into the pounding waves below to escape from a concrete island with all our lovely countryside turned into suburbs and shopping centres and motorways and leisure (pronounced "lezhuh"!) complexes. So everything goes into the kitchen for many of us without the extra space for utility rooms and stuff.

Warm and sunny kitchens? Well, warm maybe, but sunny? Well, now and again, maybe, like today for instance. :-) But this is the UK you know - the British sun is a very shy creature and doesn't like to show his face too often.....he hides his light beneath a bushel of clouds a lot of the time.

I used to love rolling plasticine as a wee lad - I usually turned it into lots of wee soldiers but I had problems making them stand upright and they kept falling over. They looked like the Gordon Highlanders after a night out in town.

"Toilets" is the usual word used on street signs/signs in public buildings etc indicating conveniences hereabouts, which most people refer to as loos anyway. Sometimes just signs showing a little man or a little woman. When I went over to Dublin a wee while back I saw these strange signs just saying "Fir" and "Mna" - I had to ask which was which. Fortunately in Wales every such sign is bilingual, as well as having those little men and women outlines.

Americans DO occasionally say "poo".

It occurs to me that we might be in the habit of saying "bathroom" for the room where you keep your bathing and eliminating necessities not because we are in denial about the porcelain throne, but because the bathtub probably moved into the house long before the crapper was invited in from the back yard. They ended up in the same room merely because they needed to share the plumbing.

Personally, Pub Lunch, I usually put the final punctuation outside the parentheses (sort of like this).

(Of course, this changes if the sentence is fully contained within the parentheses.)


If the phrase inside the parentheses has its own punctuation, I still put the punctuation appropriate to the rest of the sentence outside (it may be different, you know!). It looks awkward, and I don't know if it's correct, but the way I see it is that the parenthetical phrase is sort of an aside and doesn't have to match the rest of the sentence -- or vice-versa.


Yes, I call these ( ) parentheses and these [ ] brackets. But what the hell are these { } called? Fancy brackets?

>>Yes, I call these ( ) parentheses and these [ ] brackets. But what the hell are these { } called? Fancy brackets?<<

They're called braces.

Cheers Uriel - that was perfect!! Much obliged young lady.

Yep Jasper, "Plasticine" and "Play-Doh" are exactly the same thing and true to form, Plasticine is the British (and original!!!!!) manufacturer of the clay and Play-Doh is the US version (which from what I remember smells much nicer than ours!!). I think Play-Doh is more popular here now and is much more common. I think the Wallace & Gromit films/programmes are made from plasticine though.

You know Jasper, my mum is absolutely in love with US kitchens!!!! Especially the utility rooms and your Washing machines. When we were on holiday in Florida I'll never forget her reaction at seeing the kitchen (especially seeing as my mum is not, erm, the most kitchen orientated of mum's - I can't remember the last time she cooked!!). But how she loved your washing machines, she said they were much more practical than our ones. She actually used to actually enjoy doing the washing - amazing. I have no clue regarding washing machines and so I'll take her word for it. They were much bigger than ours though, and you load them from the top not the front - which looked strange.

What was also strange was that you could sit in the lounge watching the telly but still talk to the person in the kitchen!!! As you probably know, our kitchens are enclosed areas, in-fact most if not all the rooms in our houses are generally enclosed. Your houses, like in Australia, seem to be much more open. As Damian said, we just do not have the space here to have our houses laid out like you do in America (not unless you are reasonably wealthy that is). You definitely win that one!!!! I probably will concede the ground floor/first floor debate also (although it makes sense!!!!!). I'm not giving up on the public school/private school one though!!!!

"I probably will concede the ground floor/first floor debate also (although it makes sense!!!!!). I'm not giving up on the public school/private school one though!!!!"

Lol, well your date format definitely wins. dd/mm/yy makes a lot more sense than our mm/dd/yy format.