yup LOL

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Want some Woody??
"Love to live and live to love"

=p =b =p =b =p =b =p =b =p

Is it in England that the term "loo" is used for bathroom?

Yeppers, you got it

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Want some Woody??
"Love to live and live to love"

=p =b =p =b =p =b =p =b =p

OMG....Now ya got me started!

Not only do I live in America...the land where the language is so screwed up that the Brits are confused and iffin you want to learn the language you have to be born somewhere else cause we (Americans) still don't understand all the slang............but.........I also reside in Pa. Dutch country..........bear with me here.....I am gonna try and explain!

In Pennsylvania Dutch country they make a statement such as......"Throw the cow over the fence.........some hay". I am assuming they want me to pick up the friggin cow and throw her over the fence on some hay...right?

OR..........

"Throw momma down the steps..........her purse"....Self explainitory, right?

Or..........

What does....."Yamma yea fadump" mean? I mean....I can barely hang on to the friggin cow and now you wanna dump it????? Dump her where??? What the hell is Yamma Yea???????

OK....If you can beat this in the language barrier category...I bow to you! And don't think this is the end of Pa. Dutch language......their questions are more like statements!!!!.....IE: Going to the store.= Are you going to the store? Coming with.= Are you coming with me?....I could go on and on .....as is the "Original Jersey Girl" in me.....but I yeild the floor to the next language problematic person!!!!!!

Mrs. Lix

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VENI, VEDI, VELCRO (I came, I saw, I stuck around)!

love_2licku - i'm pretty sure it's a biscuit (as opposed to bisquit).

come to Australia, then you'll learn that some things we say mean the opposite to what it sounds like we're saying. hehe, we just like to confuse poor Americans.

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"I am so smart! S-M-R-T!" - Homer Simpson

The sun is gone, but I have a light - Kurt Cobain

~I love Nikki~

Can i clarify the r in arse question?

It is nothing to do with what is permissible on certain sites. We have always spelt it like that. And that is because we pronounce it like that. Arse is a bottom - ass is a donkey!!!!!!

Biscuits are in deed what our Atlantic cousins call cookies, but i think what you lot call biscuits we call scones. However the word biscuits comes from the french meaning "cooked twice" - because apparently that's what you do with proper biscuits (never made anything other than cookies myself - you see we have those too!)

And i hate to get technical on you all, but as for making words up as we go along - i think you'll find that the Americans are the ones who do that!!! After all, it's called English, not American isn't it??!! Lol.

Vive la difference! That's what i say!:yellghst:

Oh I completely agree.....American ingenuity is alive and well. I think that by far, our language evolves more than any other. We basically speak different regional languages within our borders as well. example........ You - you all - ya'll - yous

The only twice baked cookie I make is biscotti, chocolate almond...So damn yummy!!!!

I am so glad we all are so different....we have so much to learn from eachother.....

oh and here a shag is an ugly carpet where in the UK it is down right yummy So basically we could shag on the shag

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The practice of putting women on pedestals began to die out when it was discovered that they could give orders better from there.~ Betty Grable

If I wanted your opinion, I'd remove the duct tape and ask you for it.~ Me
<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>
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Australians having evolved from a british colony use a lot of the same expressions. A bum is an arse not an ass which is a donkey.

We have biscuits not cookies and call what north americans term candy, lollies or sweets. We call petroleum or gasolene, petrol not gas, we use the term gas for gaseous substances such as LPG (propane).

Its amazing how these differences have evolved. The term pissed in Australia means drunk not annoyed. If you are pissed off you are annoyed and if you have pissed off means you have left. How bloody confusing he he. American spelling has taken the letter u out of words like colour and honour.

The other thing that comes to mind is the last letter of the alphabet. English/Australian pronounciation is Zed. American is Zee. With kids seeing Sesame Street before going to school there is a bit of trouble getting the kids to conform to our pronounciation.

It is interesting and I agree - viva le differance !!!!

Can anybody of the americans give me advice how that works with million, billion, milliard and these other huge numbers? I always wonder where you have learned counting, aren´t your ancestors europeans?
European counting:
thousand million milliard billion billiard trillion trilliard.
Now you!

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If every material thing is gone, my smile and my tears stay left.

we use billiard. ask Minnesota Fats.

Stop That Rev!!!!!!!!....Steve is being serous, damn it!.....LOL!

Steve..............ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions.......and after that......Bill Gates!!!!!.......A money monger with a fortune more than a body has a right to! Oops.....another 10 seconds......Bill just made several million!

Mrs. Lix

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VENI, VEDI, VELCRO (I came, I saw, I stuck around)!

Hehehe!

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If every material thing is gone, my smile and my tears stay left.

Bill Gates is to money what Wayne Newton is to raw sex appeal-- they've both got a dangerous amount of it.

I always assumed that "arse" became "ass" from the Brit tendancy to soften the "r", which of course New Englanders still do...when the rest of America quit doing that, somehow the memory of hearing it pronounced "ahss" combined with seldom seeing it written led to confusing is with the term for a donkey...well, that's my idea, anyway, I can't prove it right, But you can't prove I'm wrong, either...

Mrs Lix, I know what you mean about the PA Dutch...used to know some guys from PA (German extaction) ...once one of them expressed surprise that down here we say, "push the door to," something he thought only the Dutch said...also had an ashtray w/ the words, "outen the smoke"...

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Plug me into somethin'

If the theory does not conform to the facts, then the facts must be discarded.

No good deed ever goes unpunished

Never argue with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, & beat you with experience.

LOL, GermanSteve, this was an invitation!
Would the Reverend not have taken it already, i couldn't have resisted to it,
melikes playing Billard with language, too!

(Serious now) British, Australian, NewZ folks, how is the proper wording for 10^6 (million),10^9, 10^12, 10^15, 10^18, 10^21, 10^24, etc.? I know American call 10^9 a billion, 10^12 and a trillion, but i have no idea how the British for example call it.

Length dimension units: 1 mil seems to a 1/1000 of an inch whereas 1 micron seems to be 1/1000 of a millimeter. Confusing. Well, don't ask engineer Bernhard about American style how to dimension components, tap pitch, gear pitch, whatever. Confusing.

In Germany it is meanwhile almost standard to have English skills, atleast basic level. Nevertheless the language barrier is high, a German person with good English skills often can judge from the choice of words and the weird, all too familiar looking grammar that the originator of those lines is "a bloody German". Mrs.Lix, to me the grammar of the examples from Dutch PA you posted looks very familiar, Dutch grammar and sentence contruction obvioulsy is very similar to German one.

Moreover, quite some terms exist completely ununderstable to native speakers.There are a few terms i hesitate to use as i have received blank stares from native speakers, using them. Do you know what a "handy" is? a mobile phone, a cell(ular) phone. And what is an "outing"? I am not sure what this term meaning in English; in German it is used as noun and as transitive verb and means that one person volunteers another person's slippery secrets, e.g. being homosexual or BDSM-oriented drug-addicted or being a snitch or whatever; part of the game is that either the pubilc or the "outed" person or both have not agreed to the "outing" and are ...hmmh... not particularly happy with it. The "outing" person however does not care. Of course, the person can "out" him/herself, again, not caring whether the others want to hear it.

native speakers,
Q1: How is this sort of behaviour called in English?
Q2: what other English terms were not understandable to you (from Dutch, German, Finnish, Japanese people etc., list is incomplete)? as i would like to add them to my list.

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Greets,
Bernhard