new 2 barefoot

ok i just started goin barefoot and it feels great iv'e bin havin problems with my feet for ages and one of my friends pointed out it cud be wearing trainers all the time, ever since i started barefootin it theyve stopped hurtin so much yay for barefoot anyhoo my pointless rambling on is over

the moral of this story is ummm trainers are bad barefeet are the future rock on

 

And you'll not have smelly feet any more either!

 

who sed i had smelly feet hehe nah u ave a point

 

I'm sure you didn't mean it like that but you have raised an interesting point.

If a person says to someone "you've got smelly feet" it's meant as a sort of personal attack. The fact is that feet get smelly if they're locked up in shoes and forced to sweat with the sweat not evaporating and bacteria feeding off it generate the smell. Bare feet, don't get smelly. People think they do because whenever the see feet come out of shoes they'll release a horrible smell from being in shoes, and then you've got the sight of bare feet plus an awful smell that makes people associate bare feet with the smell. If you don't wear shoes in the first place, that's really the only way to avoid the smell full stop. If bare feet were smelly then the beach would be unbearable, would it not?

If someone's got smelly feet, it doesn't mean their feet are especially smelly, it just means they've been wearing sweaty trainers. Not all feet are a like, but they will in general react the same way to the same things.

 

You lot call them sneakers, which is even funnier to me! Since when do people go sneaking about in tennis shoes?

 

How about we agree that both terms are silly-sounding?

But the British do call the hood of a car the "bonnet." It sounds weird to us... but... then, isn't a "bonnet" a kind of "hood"? They call a "stove" a "cooker," which actually makes more sense than "stove," because at least it says what it does.

But I do draw the line at calling a "fender" on a car a "wing"! CARS DON'T HAVE WINGS. AIRPLANES DO. In fact, like the "cooker" argument, "fender" does make the most sense because if you nudge something with your car, the fender does "fend" it off, i.e. it wards the obstruction away from the tire! Score for the Americans!

Blue skies,
-Jeffrey

 

hmm ok iv never heard of a fender nor a wing lol but then again i dont drive:sunglasse umm i call any shoes that arent made of leather trainers lol such as skate shoes = trainers its not just tennis shoes. i like how we call it a tap and u guys call it a fauset. hehe cultural differences are great then again weve both inhabited things from eachother such as my friend says mom now instead of mum lol anyhoo byeee

 

haha. i say mum instead of mom now cause i went to australia and somehow came back pronouncing it that way on accident. now my family makes fun of me.

 

Congrats on the bare footing. Welcome to the 'club'

We probably do use similar terms, lots of American TV is coming our way (and vice versa) and the rest is probably American misconception and outdated stereotypes (honestly the only person who talks like the Queen is the Queen)

If you like you could send that list my way, and then we could really compare (I'm nearly 19)

And yes it's barefoot over here too. Good to know we agree on something.

 

Well on the wings front, I suppose next you'll be telling me that theatres, palaces, football teams, military divisions and birds don't have wings either. The trouble with American "english" is that you've taken a lot of words, stuck them in just the one context and then forgotten what their original meaning is. Smart, does not mean clever - it means tidy. It has come to mean clever in america because someone who dresses smartly looks like they've been educated and therefore have a bit of nous - but it doesn't REALLY means clever. Same with mad - mad means insane. If a person gets angry, of course they're going to act like a raving loony but really they're not mad, they're just angry. A wing is just the wide point of something, it doesn't have to be an aerofoil wing like that on a bird or an aircraft.

And by the way they're called Aeroplanes!

While we're on the subject, Real and Good are adjectives, not adverbs, a Billion is ten to the power twelve (it's a million squared - hence the bi prefix, bi meaning 2) and curse you all for introducing the verb "to be like" meaning to say. I could go on but let's get back to talking about smelly feet instead!

By the way, we have a thing in Britain called Irony, which means none of what I've just said is a serious pop at the yanks, and there's no need for you lot to go up in arms because I'm not attacking your very way of life in the slightest

Incidentally, I'm aware of one or two changes in the harry potter books. Apparantly the first book had its title changed from Philosopher's stone to Sorceror's stone. My British chums informed me that this is because Americans have no idea what a Philosopher is, but I find that damn near impossible to believe - surely you've all heard of Socrates! But anyway, It makes no difference whatsoever, because a Philosopher's stone is a Philsopher's stone, it's a mythical artefact that Alchemists were searching for for a long time in the middle ages - you dont' need to know what a Philospher is to know what a Philsopher's stone is. Well at least, not in Europe, where the history comes from. I suppose subsequent books had titles such as "Motel Room of Secrets", "Prisoner of Alcatraz" "Souvenir Mug From The Grand Canyon Of Fire", "Order Of The American Bald Eagle" etc. etc. ?

Oh and a crumpet is a sort of circular savoury dough-waffle sort of thing that you can toast and put butter and stuff on. It's not NORMALLY part of the traditional English tea, but it's normally had a tea-time with a pot of posh tea, and all the rest of it. I've done a google image search to show you what one looks like:




(of course I've had to be careful with my search here because crumpet is also a slang term - when one says "a nice bit of crumpet" one is usually talking about totty )

 

blackie- just to help you get a picture (well, you already have a picture of some..) but crumpets taste like english muffins without all the saltiness. they are really good. (i tasted them in australia)

 

By theatre I mean the place with a stage where plays and musicals are performed. A theatre is a theatre and a cinema is a cinema (where they show films). And when I say football I mean football, but if you insist on calling it soccer then i probably won't be able to stop you. The welsh call Rugby 'football' and you lot seem arrogant enough to think that American football is the original football so you dont' bother to call it American football. Well that's fine, as long as you remember that there are other countries who invented football long before America was discovered, and we're not changing the names of sports for the benefit of the johnnycomelatelies. you do KNOW there are other countries, don't you? (joking, really!- although your news services don't bother to tell you much about them, I've noticed).

If the queen invites you over for crumpet she'll ask you to come over for "tea and crumpets". If someone offered you "a bit of crumpet" and meant the food, they'd be the stingiest person on earth - a crumpet isn't very big, so a piece of one would hardly constitute entertaining a guest.

 

i went to the movies tonight, barefoot.

 

Glad you appreciate irony, Blackie


If you invade us I just hope you don't bring the American anti-barefoot policies with you!

Yeah, I've been barefoot to the cinema a few times. Had no problems with that - after all, why should there be a problem?

 

ok i think it should be called lolly doodlin

 

In England they call a Truck a Lorry
a garbage can is a dustbin
a cigarette is a fag
The fire company is the fire brigade
people go to the films not the movies
They call it the toilet rather than washroom(I,ve only heard called the "Loo" on t.v)
dinnertime is teatime
a jerk is a berk
girls are called birds
potatoe chips are called crisps
tomatoes are pronounced "Tomartoes"
T.V is called Telly(I,ve only heard "Loo" mentioned on t.v)
sweaters are called pullovers
a sofa is called a setee
police are called bobbies
candy is called sweets
the school principal is the headmaster
french fries are called chips


I was born in England and left when I was eight years old.

 

Sorry.Loo wasn't in reference to telly.Somehow that wound up there,
I thought Id cut it out.

 

Oh yes People often go to the pictures instead of the films
They eat kippers instead of herring
Bangers insteads of suasages
I could just go on and on

 

*rubs hands together* - I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

Fire company? Bloody hell - in Britian our emergency services are just that - they're not privately owned companies. Anyway Fire company sounds like an organistaion that sells fireplaces and gas fires, rather than stops fires.

People do not go to "the films". We go to "the cinema" or "the pictures" or we go to see "A film". We're not so lazy that we'll sit on our arse and watch more than one film in any sitting.

We call it the toilet rather than the "bathroom" in fact. A bathroom must have a bath or at least a shower in it, otherwise it's not a bathroom. A room with a loo and nothing else in it, can only be called a toilet, or a loo.

Dinnertime, teatime - we have both. But only on posh occasions do we actuall have both meals on the same day, so the terms in that case become interchangeable.

A jerk is not a berk. Berk means idiot. If we want to carry the meaning of jerk, we'll use, git, wanker, tosser, twonk, or something a bit naughtier.

Birds doesn't mean just girls - in fact it means women. You don't use 'bird' when talking about a child.

yep, we have packets of crisps. They're called crisps so as not to be confused with chips, which are COMPLETELY different from fries. And why they're called French Fries I'll never know. Then again most germans I've met are rather perplexed as why traditional american heartattack food is all named after German cities.

Tomatoes are Tomatoes - yep, they don't rhyme with Potato. To an English person, spelling them phonetically as Tomartoes would probably work, but since Americans, Scotsmen, and some Irish pronounce the letter r differently, best to think of it as "Tomahtoes".

Yep. Telly is short for Television (which by the way is what T.V. stands for).

"Sweaters" have been called Pullovers but it's an old word. We call them Jumpers far more often, or occasionally Sweatshirts.

It's Settee- but again, rarely used. We use Sofa more often.

You refer to a policeman in this country as a "bobby" and you will be laughed at. That term hasn't been used since the 1940s. These days they're Coppers (where your term "cops" came frome), or if you want to be derogatory, PC Plod, or PC Jobsworth.

Yep, Sweets. Personally I think a collective term for sweets only encourages gluttony - we like to be able to eat just the one sweet. The word "sweets" can all so mean dessert - or pudding.

Yep, Headmaster, Headmistress, or Headteacher.

I've covered Chips already so won't go into that again. I must say though, you lot really dug yourself a hole with that name, then you found you didn't like the french any more so changed the name AGAIN to Freedom Fries. I do have to say though that you've got a lot of cheek having a go at the french. That's our job. Britain and France have been old foes/chums dating back to 1066, and you lot are the johnnycomelatelies and yet a lot of Americans were acting as though they'd hated the French all their lives just over one pointless war.

As for sausages - we occasionally refer to them as Bangers, in one context and one context only - the popular english children's dish - Bangers and Mash - which is Sausages and Mashed Potato.


Ok, so I think I'll add to the list.

we abbreviate Mathematics as Maths - since mathematics is plural we keep it plural. Maybe in America they can only do one sum at a time.

Apparantly if you were to tell an american to "get on the pavement, there's a lorry coming" he'd step into the middle of the road and get himself killed because pavement means road over there and a lorry is a type of bird (oiseau, pas femme) which he thought you were pointing out for him to view more closely.

If you want to say pavement in America say "sidewalk". (how quaint!)

There is one American term I quite like because it coveres the meaning so well. They call Personalised Registration Numbers "Vanity Plates" which is exactly what they are.

This whole Fanny thing is strange though -to you it means Arse, but it comes from the word Vagina and that's what it means to us.

Oh and Arse over in america is spelt and pronounced Ass - which is great because you get a lot of americans trying to pretend they speak spanish on message boards, so you end up with a few sentences fresh from Babel fish translator or what have you, saying things like "I'm going to kick your donkey!" The word Arse was used as a polite word (just as we say "bottom" or "bum" now) in Tudor times (16th century).

Aluminium is just that. I don't know where the second 'i' fell off in america, but oh well.

Oh and I need to point out a few pronunciation issues. Words such as Derby, Clerk and Berkely - are pronounced "Darby, Clark, and Barclay" - just something you have to get used to. You've managed keeping up with other words such as "through", and "people", so no need to get caught out here, either. Next, and this is important, DO NOT GO UP TO A LONDONER AND ASK FOR DIRECTIONS FOR A) "Lyechester Square" B) "Totten Ham Court Road" C) "Bucking Ham Palace" D) "Green Witch" etc. They're pronounced Lester Square, Totnam Court Road, Buckingam Palace, Grenidge, etc.

One more thing, a lot of Americans seem to go on about how much they like or hate the "British Accent." There is no such thing. In Britain there are Hundreds of Different accents - it'd be like me saying somethign about that single accent they have in Tennessee and New York - it's a nonsense.

Even just withing England you've got cockneys, janners, wurzels, brummies, midlanders, norfolk farmers, scousers, tykes, geordies and the rest who all speak completely differently. Then jocks (scotsmen) paddies (irish - among whom I count myself even though I've got a west london accent), and taffies (welsh - who have this funny habit of stopping in the middle of words) all have plenty of accents between them as well. And yet we're all British.

 

I love 'aluminium'. When people here in the states hear that one, they think it is some fantastic new space-age metal alloy.