Across the Pond

[HossC]

Recently, I've been watching a lot of "Americans React to" videos on YouTube. In the ones I watch they're mainly reacting to British/Irish TV shows and stand-ups, but a few are more general videos looking at the differences between us, i.e. two nations divided by a common language. It appears that while the Brits and Irish have been consuming US TV shows (Dukes included) and cultural reference points for decades, the exchange doesn't get far in the opposite direction. Many British TV shows just get remade for the US market with widely varying results. Sometimes it seems that only Peppa Pig is flying the flag!

The result appears to be that British/Irish TV shows and culture often leave Americans baffled with phrases which simply haven't crossed to the US. I thought I'd post some of the source videos, with this first one just being about how we say and use numbers differently (and it doesn't even mention Americans writing dates the wrong way around! ). Look out for a brief Dukes reference about 2/3 of the way through.

BTW. To count seconds I was taught to say "a thousand and one, a thousand and two" etc. I've also heard of the "one Mississippi, two Mississippi" method, but none of the others in this video.

[RogerDuke]

My granddaughter loved Peppa Pig when she was little (she's 14 now) and because of that she always pronounced George with a British accent. So anytime she would say George she would say it with that accent, not knowing it was an accent. It took us awhile to figure out she wasn't faking the accent but really thought that is how it supposed to be pronounced (here).

[HossC]

I obviously hear so many US voices that I don't really notice the difference in pronunciation with the name George.

I saw some short videos yesterday of young Americans returning to the US after brief visits to Europe, and the most important thing they could find to say was that in "The Land of the Free" they could remove the caps from their soda bottles. For the last couple of years our plastic soda and water bottles have had caps which remain tethered to the bottles so the whole lot can get recycled. In Ireland we also pay a deposit on each bottle (15c or 25c depending on size) which we get back when they are returned to a store for recycling. The caps can still be separated easily if it's really too much to deal with, but you get used to them pretty quickly. I find it particularly odd that this should be such an issue for young Americans since when I visited the US in the early 80s you guys had soda cans with ring pulls which stayed attached while on our cans they were still separate and were often just thrown away!

This video is now two years old, but the comparison of food prices and availability is still valid. The lady in the video spends six months of the year in the UK and six months in Texas, and the comparison is between Tesco in the UK and Kroger in the US.