Common language

[onehitwanda]

More than one person providing sexual services in a building. It's owning or managing a a brothel that's illegal, not being the sex worker - so if you own a 6-flat building and Annie at no.2 does happy massages, then Bob at no.5 also invites people for favours in exchange for money, you the landlord have a problem... Any receptionist or bouncer, likewise. And any two workers means one could be said to be profiting off the other...

this is so stereotypically British.

 

[EmilysRopes]

We've got to page 5 without a discussion of rhyming slang and the associated Cockney alphabet?

The former is responsible for money = bread (bread and honey), look = butchers (butchers hook) and countless more.

The latter begins "a for horses, b for mutton, c for miles ..."

Probably more likely to be used by working class folk or Londoners if you're thinking of using them in a story.

On a vaguely related topic, posh actually comes from "Port Out, Starboard Home", the preferable cabins if you were travelling by ship between the UK and India.

Finally suitably named Americans should be careful of telling the English "I'm Randy", which means horny to us and Brits should be careful of the phrase "I'm going to get my head down" which may not be understood as "going to sleep" in the US.

Educated in Wimbledon for linguistic reference.

 

[ElectricBlue]

So how do the British pronounce Vauxhall? The make is still around.

Voxall.

 

[KeithD]

Only during the Wimbledon tennis coverage this year did I learn that the company Barclays puts the stress on the second syllable.

 

[djrip]

Back in the Day, you were expected to do PE in your pants (US panties) so yes you'd be in trouble if they weren't the regulation knickers in whatever terrible colour they were. By the 1980s only private schools cared but yes, we had to do sport out on the playing fields in just our pants and Aertex shirt, until year 5 (age 10) when you were allowed a games skirt (hardly any longer but at least it was a skirt). And yes, the playing fields did have various men in raincoats taking an interest from the other side of the fence.

Wait what? Really? So weird!

 

[Bramblethorn]

On a vaguely related topic, posh actually comes from "Port Out, Starboard Home", the preferable cabins if you were travelling by ship between the UK and India.

So it's often said, but this one doesn't seem to be supported by evidence: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/posh-history-and-meaning

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Only during the Wimbledon tennis coverage this year did I learn that the company Barclays puts the stress on the second syllable.

What? The bank adverts certainly don't. Some accents may balance the stress across both syllables, but it's usually exactly like Barkley's (or Berkeley Square)

 

[Kumquatqueen]

We've got to page 5 without a discussion of rhyming slang and the associated Cockney alphabet?

The former is responsible for money = bread (bread and honey), look = butchers (butchers hook) and countless more.

The latter begins "a for horses, b for mutton, c for miles ..."

Probably more likely to be used by working class folk or Londoners if you're thinking of using them in a story.

On a vaguely related topic, posh actually comes from "Port Out, Starboard Home", the preferable cabins if you were travelling by ship between the UK and India.

Finally suitably named Americans should be careful of telling the English "I'm Randy", which means horny to us and Brits should be careful of the phrase "I'm going to get my head down" which may not be understood as "going to sleep" in the US.

Educated in Wimbledon for linguistic reference.

Some cockney phrases are common across Britain and certainly understood even if someone doesn't use them (butcher's, bread, scarper, brassic, Ruby Tuesdays), others give a very distinct south/East London feel or very working-class characters, even if others understand (shift your plates, he's wearing a dodgy syrup, lend us a lady...). The first category I've had to learn not to use with my American family, one by one - the second I always knew they were local slang.

Telling Americans staying in your hotel that you'll knock them up in the morning gets some raised eyebrows, and 'knackered' meaning totally tired and exhausted isn't understood.

Lots of insults don't travel - my cousins never comprehended being called wankers or shandy-drinking wusses, whereas Brits don't say jerk or douche.

Wimbledon (home of the Wombles as well as tennis) is very posh, especially round Wimbledon Village. For anyone unaware of the short furry environmentalists the Wombles, they're performing Step On, by the Happy Mondays, here.

 

[Pureotica]

That spell check comes from the browser, not Literotica. It's controlled by the regional settings in the browser.



No argument with any of this, and as a dual national I reserve the right to mix and match my dialects. But these days, IME, US-English chauvinism is just as prevalent and just as obnoxious as UK-English chauvinism.



Ahem.

US English chauvinism is probably a thing. I don't encounter it because Lit is the only place I regularly interact with non-American speakers. And my American-chauvinism is not particularly heart felt. I don't want everyone to speak like I do. It would be a boring world. My nephew lives in England because his wife is English, but I've only met her once because of the logistics involved. I've known a few other people who moved here from the UK or Australia, but they'd been here long enough for their speech to be mostly acclimated.

I'm mostly poking fun about UK-chauvinism. In my experience they've always been nice in person. Most of my experience with Australians is via Hollywood, whom I never assume are giving accurate representation. Mel Gibson lost his accent somewhere along the way. It was fairly thick in his early films. But I'm fairly sure he lives in the States now. Crocodile Dundee was a bit too on the nose with its stereotypes. I'm assuming he isn't typical. My academic advisor in college was Indian. Other than that, the boonies aren't exactly cosmopolitan. I rarely see people other than at work. My community is mostly seasonal cabins. Not many people actually live here. Census population is 260 but that's spread out across several townships.

Affect. What can I say? My first language is actually typo.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Never been many Yiddish speakers outside the Jewish community in Denver. My father moved from New York to Denver before I was born. His parents came to the USA right after the war. Well, as soon as they were able to. Not sure of the date anymore.

Yeah, this was forty to fifty years ago when there were a lot of Jewish people in New York and they were only maybe two generations removed from the European immigrants. (Am I really that old?) I'm sure that if I had gone to my 50th high school reunion last month (why bother?) the 100 or so people there would have likely known some Yiddish - even the Irish and Italian ones.

 

[KeithD]

What? The bank adverts certainly don't. Some accents may balance the stress across both syllables, but it's usually exactly like Barkley's (or Berkeley Square)

Their adverts on the Wimbledon coverage pronounced it BarCLAYs.

 

[gunhilltrain]

US English chauvinism is probably a thing. I don't encounter it because Lit is the only place I regularly interact with non-American speakers. And my American-chauvinism is not particularly heart felt. I don't want everyone to speak like I do. It would be a boring world. My nephew lives in England because his wife is English, but I've only met her once because of the logistics involved. I've known a few other people who moved here from the UK or Australia, but they'd been here long enough for their speech to be mostly acclimated.

I'm mostly poking fun about UK-chauvinism. In my experience they've always been nice in person. Most of my experience with Australians is via Hollywood, whom I never assume are giving accurate representation. Mel Gibson lost his accent somewhere along the way. It was fairly thick in his early films. But I'm fairly sure he lives in the States now. Crocodile Dundee was a bit too on the nose with its stereotypes. I'm assuming he isn't typical. My academic advisor in college was Indian. Other than that, the boonies aren't exactly cosmopolitan. I rarely see people other than at work. My community is mostly seasonal cabins. Not many people actually live here. Census population is 260 but that's spread out across several townships.

Affect. What can I say? My first language is actually typo.

Mel Gibson lived his first twelve years in America (Peekskill, NY), although he some of his ancestors were Australian. (I haven't researched his entire family tree.) I assume he picked up the accent after he moved there.

Paul Hogan was indeed born and raised in Australia. "This is a knife!" Then one of the guys pulls out a Tech-9. "And this is a sub-machine gun." "Okay, okay, you got me with that one."

(I know, technically it's a semi-automatic pistol, not a machine gun. I believe it can be converted to fully-automatic. Looks pretty scary, in any case.)

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well maybe there's residual Victorianism in some circles, but generally speaking Brits are tolerant of a whole bunch of naughty pursuits that we in the US are most definitely not. Take "dogging", for instance, and openness about BDSM. And they had the foresight to make things quite uncomfortable for the Puritans.

The thing about the United States is that there are so many different racial and ethnic groups here (well, there are in England now too) that it's hard to say what "American" culture - or sexual mores - is anymore. I'm sure that in the same block in New York there are recent arrivals from, say, Syria who have an entirely different worldview than recent arrivals from the Dominican Republic. In fact, that sounds like my neighborhood.

 

[Pureotica]

Mel Gibson lived his first twelve years in America (Peekskill, NY), although he some of his ancestors were Australian. (I haven't researched his entire family tree.) I assume he picked up the accent after he moved there.

Paul Hogan was indeed born and raised in Australia. "This is a knife!" Then one of the guys pulls out a Tech-9. "And this is a sub-machine gun." "Okay, okay, you got me with that one."

(I know, technically it's a semi-automatic pistol, not a machine gun. I believe it can be converted to fully-automatic. Looks pretty scary, in any case.)

I was never sure if Gibson's accents were authentic or acting. I thought he was Australian because his early films were things like Gallipoli and the Mad Max films. He had a fairly pronounced accent in them. I never realized he was born here, and he doesn't have much of an Australian accent anymore at all. I don't follow him, or Hollywood at all, to be honest. It's been a long time since I've been in a movie theater.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I was never sure if Gibson's accents were authentic or acting. I thought he was Australian because his early films were things like Gallipoli and the Mad Max films. He had a fairly pronounced accent in them. I never realized he was born here, and he doesn't have much of an Australian accent anymore at all. I don't follow him, or Hollywood at all, to be honest. It's been a long time since I've been in a movie theater.

Yeah, he's a Yank, but his film career started here in Oz. His accent in his early Australian movies is pretty typical Aussie, but once he cracked Hollywood in the Lethal Weapon movies, his accent become American.

Russell Crowe is a bit the same, although he was born in New Zealand - his early movies are Australian productions.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I was never sure if Gibson's accents were authentic or acting. I thought he was Australian because his early films were things like Gallipoli and the Mad Max films. He had a fairly pronounced accent in them. I never realized he was born here, and he doesn't have much of an Australian accent anymore at all. I don't follow him, or Hollywood at all, to be honest. It's been a long time since I've been in a movie theater.

He moved back to the United States at some point, but I don't when. In Gallipoli, he's supposed to be an Australian, so it would make sense that he sounds like one. The other main actor, Mark Lee, was born in Australia.

I'm kind of - amazed - that he did The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto in something close to the original languages. Even Kubrick didn't do Paths of Glory in French, which would have been a lot easier. I feel like saying, "Mel, haven't you heard of 'suspension of disbelief?' Everyone in the audience knew they were actually speaking French."

 

[gunhilltrain]

On a vaguely related topic, posh actually comes from "Port Out, Starboard Home", the preferable cabins if you were travelling by ship between the UK and India.
.

Okay, you got me. What difference would it make what side of the ship you were on? Something to do with it being cooler, perhaps? Those would be the sides facing the nearest land masses.

 

[gunhilltrain]

More than one person providing sexual services in a building. It's owning or managing a a brothel that's illegal, not being the sex worker - so if you own a 6-flat building and Annie at no.2 does happy massages, then Bob at no.5 also invites people for favours in exchange for money, you the landlord have a problem... Any receptionist or bouncer, likewise. And any two workers means one could be said to be profiting off the other...

Something else new I learned on Lit. It's legal in the entire United Kingdom, I assume? Not just "decriminalized?"

 

[XerXesXu]

Something else new I learned on Lit. It's legal in the entire United Kingdom, I assume? Not just "decriminalized?"

England and Wales. It's never been illegal In England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems. Soliciting in the street has been illegal since 1957. There has been a problem with police forces, not so much decriminalising as monetising prostitution. Now it's largely moved online.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Okay, you got me. What difference would it make what side of the ship you were on? Something to do with it being cooler, perhaps? Those would be the sides facing the nearest land masses.

Facing north, so in the shade. Particularly important crossing the Indian Ocean (assuming you went through the Suez Canal).

 

[Bramblethorn]

US English chauvinism is probably a thing.

Mmm hmm. As a petty example, the fact that browser software usually defaults to US English, rather than asking on install or checking system settings for an indication of what the user's preferences might be. (If we were going by number of speakers, not sure but I think Indian English might have a claim to being the most common variant?)

I'm mostly poking fun about UK-chauvinism. In my experience they've always been nice in person. Most of my experience with Australians is via Hollywood, whom I never assume are giving accurate representation.

That is a wise assumption.

Mel Gibson lost his accent somewhere along the way. It was fairly thick in his early films. But I'm fairly sure he lives in the States now. Crocodile Dundee was a bit too on the nose with its stereotypes. I'm assuming he isn't typical.

Major flavours of Australian English:

Broad AE, aka "Strine" or "ocker": this is the stereotypical "Aussie" dialect that a lot of non-Australians think of as Australian, lots of "strewth"/"crikey"/"flamin'" etc. Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin, Outback Steakhouse ads, etc. etc. It's a real thing but mostly found out in remote/regional Australia. As a city-dweller, I'd go weeks at a time without meeting anybody who speaks Broad.

If you hear Broad AE outside boondocks Australia, it's probably somebody putting it on, either for the benefit of non-Australian audiences who expect the stereotype, or for political reasons. Australia is a highly urbanised country that likes to think of itself as a nation of farmers and bushmen, so Broad AE (being the dialect associated with those groups) has a complicated status in Australian politics and culture. It's sometimes taken as an indicator of honesty and plain-speaking, so politicians canvassing for the white working-class vote may adopt a bit of Broad AE, like the linguistic equivalent of putting on safety gear to do something industrial for the cameras. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they get laughed at.

But it's also stigmatised as being uncultured/uneducated, and other Australians often find it cringey.

The most famous example I can think of a genuine Broad AE speaker was Steve Irwin. I judged him pretty unkindly when I first saw his show, because I assumed he was playing up the ocker act heavily in order to pander to US audiences. But AFAICT that was how he really was. Here's an interview with Irwin on a show pitched for Australian audiences, where he didn't have much reason to ham it up.

General AE: how most Australians talk. There are still distinctive Australianisms in both the accent and the idiom, but they're much milder than the stereotypical screen Aussie. Andrew Denton, who's interviewing Irwin in the video I linked above, would be General AE.

Cultivated AE: closer to posh UK English, and sometimes mistaken for it by non-Australians. Geoffrey Rush in this interview is an example.

Aboriginal English: as spoken by First Nations people in remote areas, influenced by traditional languages. I'd assume there's a lot of regional variation here, because Australia had hundreds of First Nations languages, but I don't know specifics. For Australians not familiar with AE it can be hard to understand the accent, and there are some quirks in the idiom - e.g. "deadly" = "good", "cheeky" = "dangerous", "gubba" = "white people". Example in this interview with Shirley Purdie.

Assorted ethnic varieties: Australia has had a lot of migration from many different places so you can find varieties with influences from Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, etc. etc.

Those categories aren't neatly divided, of course. Mine would probably have been described as Cultivated AE when I was in my teens but it's drifted a bit towards General.

The thing about the United States is that there are so many different racial and ethnic groups here (well, there are in England now too) that it's hard to say what "American" culture - or sexual mores - is anymore. I'm sure that in the same block in New York there are recent arrivals from, say, Syria who have an entirely different worldview than recent arrivals from the Dominican Republic. In fact, that sounds like my neighborhood.

I hear this quite often from Americans, but I do think sometimes they underestimate how much diversity there is in other countries that they think of as being predominantly white/Anglo.

About 14% of people living in the USA are first-generation migrants (i.e. born elsewhere), and for NY State it's 22%; for Australia it's 28%. The single largest group there for Australia is migrants from UK, but there are very large Indian and Chinese contingents, and significant numbers from many other places.

 

[XerXesXu]

Mmm hmm. As a petty example, the fact that browser software usually defaults to US English, rather than asking on install or checking system settings for an indication of what the user's preferences might be. (If we were going by number of speakers, not sure but I think Indian English might have a claim to being the most common variant?)



That is a wise assumption.



Major flavours of Australian English:

Broad AE, aka "Strine" or "ocker": this is the stereotypical "Aussie" dialect that a lot of non-Australians think of as Australian, lots of "strewth"/"crikey"/"flamin'" etc. Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin, Outback Steakhouse ads, etc. etc. It's a real thing but mostly found out in remote/regional Australia. As a city-dweller, I'd go weeks at a time without meeting anybody who speaks Broad.

If you hear Broad AE outside boondocks Australia, it's probably somebody putting it on, either for the benefit of non-Australian audiences who expect the stereotype, or for political reasons. Australia is a highly urbanised country that likes to think of itself as a nation of farmers and bushmen, so Broad AE (being the dialect associated with those groups) has a complicated status in Australian politics and culture. It's sometimes taken as an indicator of honesty and plain-speaking, so politicians canvassing for the white working-class vote may adopt a bit of Broad AE, like the linguistic equivalent of putting on safety gear to do something industrial for the cameras. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they get laughed at.

But it's also stigmatised as being uncultured/uneducated, and other Australians often find it cringey.

The most famous example I can think of a genuine Broad AE speaker was Steve Irwin. I judged him pretty unkindly when I first saw his show, because I assumed he was playing up the ocker act heavily in order to pander to US audiences. But AFAICT that was how he really was. Here's an interview with Irwin on a show pitched for Australian audiences, where he didn't have much reason to ham it up.

General AE: how most Australians talk. There are still distinctive Australianisms in both the accent and the idiom, but they're much milder than the stereotypical screen Aussie. Andrew Denton, who's interviewing Irwin in the video I linked above, would be General AE.

Cultivated AE: closer to posh UK English, and sometimes mistaken for it by non-Australians. Geoffrey Rush in this interview is an example.

Aboriginal English: as spoken by First Nations people in remote areas, influenced by traditional languages. I'd assume there's a lot of regional variation here, because Australia had hundreds of First Nations languages, but I don't know specifics. For Australians not familiar with AE it can be hard to understand the accent, and there are some quirks in the idiom - e.g. "deadly" = "good", "cheeky" = "dangerous", "gubba" = "white people". Example in this interview with Shirley Purdie.

Assorted ethnic varieties: Australia has had a lot of migration from many different places so you can find varieties with influences from Greek, Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, etc. etc.

Those categories aren't neatly divided, of course. Mine would probably have been described as Cultivated AE when I was in my teens but it's drifted a bit towards General.



I hear this quite often from Americans, but I do think sometimes they underestimate how much diversity there is in other countries that they think of as being predominantly white/Anglo.

About 14% of people living in the USA are first-generation migrants (i.e. born elsewhere), and for NY State it's 22%; for Australia it's 28%. The single largest group there for Australia is migrants from UK, but there are very large Indian and Chinese contingents, and significant numbers from many other places.

Boonies and boondocks are a corruption of bundok = mountain in Tagalog. 'mga bundok' = mountains, rendered 'bundoks' by the occupying Americans.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

England and Wales. It's never been illegal In England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems. Soliciting in the street has been illegal since 1957. There has been a problem with police forces, not so much decriminalising as monetising prostitution. Now it's largely moved online.

You used to get business cards stuck all over phone boxes offering 'adult services', 'massage' and 'O-level' or 'A-level tuition'. O- and A-levels are the exams that were taken at 16 and 18, though O-levels have been GCSE since 1988 - in this context, they're euphemisms for oral/anal sex, ditto flute or Greek lessons... Now indeed online.

Selling sex itself was never illegal, just many activities around it. But sex between consenting men over 21 was decriminalised in 1967 in E&W, which resulted in anomalies like if men went for sex in a hotel (because living in a room in a house made such things impossible for many), that counted as 'public' so they could still be arrested for 'gross indecency'. And thus, when the Sex Offenders Register was created in the 90s, they'd be on it - until they applied individually to be removed. Northern Ireland didn't decriminalise gay sex until 1982 - there was a big "Save Ulster from Sodomy" campaign, which taught all the young kids what it was...

 

[Kumquatqueen]

On the subject of prudery, I read elsewhere yesterday that the US would never show a TV programme like Naked Attraction or Keith Chegwin's Naked Jungle, because of the nudity. Not that you're missing anything, but is that true? I know some channels (cable? HBO?) are more daring with the sex than others.

It's easy to spot a UK or European TV show even with the sound off, as characters will wander round getting dressed, and not have that samey airbrushed makeup that all mainstream American characters have. UK is less likely to show nipples or cock than the rest of Europe, but it's still a clear difference (watch Money Heist for an example, or Extraordinary).

 

[alohadave]

there was a big "Save Ulster from Sodomy" campaign, which taught all the young kids what it was...

Sounds like how DARE in the US taught grade school kids all about street drugs in the aim to prevent use.