This video is kind of fun, because British English and American English are not all that different, but the way we perceive certain words and phrases can be hard to translate. Not mentioned: that one word that is exceedingly offensive to Americans but just an everyday swear word in British English.
Friday, January 26, 2024
7 Harmless British Words Americans Might Find Rude
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10 comments:
Please do not assume that the bloke above in anyway reflects what English men are like or talk like.
I am one, although I live about as far from England as I can, these days.
I have friends that were born and raised in England and the United Kingdom, and their voices are not nasally whining assaults on the ear, neither are they, or myself, on the negative side of handsome.
Obviously I don't hear my own voice from the outside, so I do not rate it.
Cheers, I'll now go back and watch the video ... and try and put up with hearing him speak, so as to see what he is on about.
Again, my English friends and I are pleasing to the eye, ear, and intellect.
Nah, got as far as 2 minutes in and his eye movements annoyed me.
Rest assured, we have seen and heard English men before.
Lived next door to a English transplant for a few years. We had fun playing with the differences in the language. She came here with the prejudice that Americans are loud and self-centered to a criminal degree. She was amazed that the reality was very different, especially American generosity. Some of us are loud, some of us are not, like anything else; painting a monochrome picture of any one group creates a distorted picture. Lawrence has a particular schtick...we think it's hilarious but never for a moment would we believe one person represents the whole.
All Englishmen are funny alcoholics. Or perhaps that's a stereotype.
In the same sentence where he's criticizing the lazy pronunciation of the letter "T" as a "D" sound, he pronounces "YouTube" as "YouCHoob."
I don't think he was intentionally making an ironic meta-commentary.
So what is the "word that is exceedingly offensive to Americans but just an everyday swear word in British English"? Is that the word that was bleeped in this video? I have never understood why that word is bleeped in US TV shows - I just thought Americans must be particularly delicate if their ears would be outraged by it. But perhaps I have misjudged the situation. What makes it "exceedingly offensive"?
It begins with a c.
I don't know why there's a difference in how offensive it is across the pond.
c-r-u-d
(blushes deeply)
Oh, OK, so it is not the one that is bleeped in the video.
My comments still stand about the "s" word, but yeah, I don't want to hear the "c" word on TV either.
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