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That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us QUOTES

That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us QUOTES

1 " ... a health drink company called Fuel, founded by a former tank commander in the British Army and an extreme-sports enthusiast, offers a liquid fry-up combining the flavors of bacon, sausage, poached egg, fried tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms, toast, salt and pepper, and brown sauce. It's only 230 calories, and it packs twenty grams of protein (assuming you can keep it down). "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

2 " No place does home-turf nutjobs like America. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

3 " According to the United Kingdom Tea Council, 96 percent of tea is consumed in the form of tea bags (an American invention), 98 percent of people take milk, and 45 percent take sugar. Residents of the United Kingdom each consume 2.3 kilos of tea per year to Americans' 0.2 kilos. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

4 " But there is also the HUMPED ZEBRA CROSSING, which sounds like a zoo genetics experiment gone horribly wrong. (Really it's just a pedestrian right of way path with a sleeping policeman–also known as a speed bump–in the middle). "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

5 " Although 77 percent of US companies do offer paid vacations and holidays, a quarter of Americans get none at all. The typical worker gets just ten days per year, along with six public holidays - and this only after being employed by the same company for at least a year. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

6 " There is ample evidence that servers can increase their take by doing things like writing thank-yous and smiley faces on checks, kneeling next to tables while taking orders, and touching patrons gently on the shoulder-all of which emphasized their lower status and the extent to which their livelihoods depend on pleasing others. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

7 " E. B. White explained it well: To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

8 " The British claim that this tea has a negligible amount of caffeine. Don't you believe it. A couple of months after moving to London, convinced I was having panic attacks, I realized it was simply overcaffeination at the hands of generous friends and colleagues. Every cup of tea I was offered, I took–it seemed rude not to–to the tune of five of seven per day. The cumulative effects were heart-pounding, hand-sweating jitters that abated as soon as I learned my limits. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

9 " Americans are sociable and approval-seeking. They look for common ground with others and genuinely want to connect. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

10 " Philip Thody explains in Don’t Do It! A Dictionary of the Forbidden, "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

11 " A snowy winter is an anomaly, though famously, in 1991 after a snowstorm that halted most of British Rail’s trains, they put out a press release blaming the disruption on “the wrong kind of snow”—a phrase that has since become a British metonym for bullshit excuses. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

12 " avoid food products that make health claims. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

13 " the future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

14 " In English English, quite means “rather” or “fairly,” and is a subtle way of damning with faint praise. To an American, quite simply means “very,” and amps the adjective. No subtlety there. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

15 " words like rapscallionly, conbobberation, and helliferocious. Such words seem outlandish today only because of their unfamiliarity. Whether or not they were widely used in the Wild West, they made Americans seem badass. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

16 " The Americans have been obliged to invent a new verb for which we have no use over here—‘to enthuse.’ Why don’t we enthuse? And why, if we do conjugate this verb in secret, are we so afraid to let it be known? . . . We fear terribly to encourage ourselves or others. The people over there are not afraid. They let themselves go individually and independently over what they like or admire, and pour forth torrents of generous praise which we should shrink from voicing unless we were quite sure that everybody else agreed with us, or unless the object of our admiration had been a long time dead.” The English may detect a note of condescension here, but an American won’t. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

17 " What is an American interlocutor to do? Look no further for advice than Debrett’s, the self-proclaimed “trusted source on British social skills, etiquette and style . . . originally founded as the expert on British aristocracy.” Debrett’s warns against mistaking understatement for underreaction: “read between the lines and you’ll find the missing drama and emotion. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

18 " A majority of both Americans and English people describe themselves as middle-class. However, as we have seen, just because they use the same words doesn’t mean that Americans and the English are thinking the same way. In America, the middle class is more an economic category than a state of mind, and membership in it is not predicated on as many complicated and specific class markers. Where Americans shop, what they buy, and how they entertain themselves are only mild predictors of whether they will identify as middle-class. The same is not true in England, where membership in the middle class is more dependent upon being the product of specific types of families and schools, and the shared tastes that one develops as a result. "

― , That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us

19 " The English are great snafflers. To snaffle is to eat something quickly, and sometimes without permission. Snaffling is what you do with the last brownie in the breakroom, or the chocolate-covered biscuits that you bought “for the children.” Snaffling is to the kitchen cabinet what foraging is to the wilderness. "

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