Oct 03 2009

Dropping A Vest On The Sidewalk, Whilst Vacationing

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 3:17 am

Writing that last post reminded me that my use of the English language is slowly becoming slightly Americanized, partially because it means I’ve a greater selection of words to use when trying to beat my old boss Kate at Scrabulous on facebook, but also because what little TV series and films I see over here tend to be American, and a good friend here also hails from that side of the Atlantic. So our flat has slowly become an apartment, this years cancelled holiday to Britain for Christmas almost became labelled a vacation, though I’ve not found myself calling the new tarmac outside our flat a sidewalk, instead of pavement, or calling a waistcoat a tuxedo vest. Most likely as they don’t tend to figure a great deal in my day to day life 🙂

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2 Responses to “Dropping A Vest On The Sidewalk, Whilst Vacationing”

  1. Alex C says:
    October 3rd, 2009 4:49 am

    Lol, that’s funny. As you know it’s fairly Americanised in Australia too in that they pronounce a lot of things the American way instead of the British way. For example, pasta becomes pAHsta, yoghurt becomes yOHghurt, vitimins is vEYEtimins etc etc. I haven’t found myself pronouncing things differently thank goodness (sorry Walton, no offence intended you understand, just trying to maintain my British roots) but I haven’t escaped from the different words. Occasionally I find myself saying “pants” instead of “trousers” and “chips” instead of “crisps” which always makes me laugh when people then have to specifiy “hot chips” to mean what us British just call good old fish and chippy “chips”.

    The freakiest one which I’m using more and more often has good and bad points – “Far Out!”
    It can be seen as a good thing because it is slipping out increasingly more often in replacement of where I would normally say “F*%! it!” However, it has me cursing on the inside everytime I realise my slip just because of the pure non-Britishness of it 🙂

    I wanted to try and train myself to say “Rats” instead because it’s a word my dad uses and, for a non-offensive curse, I like it. However, I think “Far Out” rolls off the tongue so easily because it also starts with F, plus I consciously don’t want to say it so my subconscious is messing with me!

  2. ChrisM says:
    October 4th, 2009 10:44 pm

    re. the swearing, I’ve found myself trying to tone it down/replace it with innocuous words when Anna is around. Scrubs has given me frick for situations where fcuk just isn’t allowable 🙂