Obviously, not being from around your parts gives me a fresh perspective on your forefathers butchering of the English language
The one that gets me is the word "gas"
Your cars run on gas,
Your stoves run on gas,
You pass gas,
You and your friends can have a gas
You gas on if you talk too much.
So much gas, how do you not get confused?
I realize that gas is short for gasoline (orig 1905) but the word petroleum (where we get the word petrol) was used over 500 years before in 1348. Thats 144 years before we discovered America. I'm surprised the word petroleum disappeared and was replaced so recently.
The difference in our languages intrigues me although I am not saying that because we are the birthplace of the language, that we are always right, we definitely aren't.
For a start, what we call trousers, you call pants. what we call pants, you call underwear (although so do we). I have heard quite a few English saying that Americans are wrong to call trousers pants but actually you are right as it is a shortening of the word Pantaloon which was a French word that made it into the English language well over 100 years after the first Europeans settled in America.
Aluminum, don't get me started on that, the original American inventor called it Alumium to match the IUM of other substances. 4 years later he decides to change the name to aluminum. This didn't impress the English scientists so they decided to take the new word but continue with the IUM for scientific purposes.
Fag is slang for cigarette in the UK (from 1888) but 26 years later it becomes slang for homosexual in America.
Fanny is slang for the females lower sexual organ (1879), 41 years later it somehow becomes "buttocks" in America. As you can imagine, fanny bag doesn't really translate well in England.
Seeing as you have all grown up speaking this language, can you think of any English words or sayings that don't make sense in America?
Sonic
smart - aka Smurf
You don't hear that term thrown around here.
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