Britishisms sneaking into American vernacular

[kiwilrdg]

When I lived in Scotland there were always lots of jokes about the dialects. A friend was very amused when she was given a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates.

 

[dhermann1]

That seems bizarre to me! Tea in a mug, almost strong enough to stand the spoon in, is a "man's drink" to me. Coffee, delicately sipped from a dinky little coffee cup, is a "woman's drink". I will probably always think of tea as a basic everyday hearty hot drink, and coffee as a slightly effeminate, office-drone-rather-than-manual-labour namby pamby substitute.

I love both, by the way, and I don't really think there is a gender divide or should be one. Those are just my frivolous surface impressions

Well, as Shakespeare said, there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

BTW, did you hear about the cannibal who gave his wife a box of farmers' fannies?

 

[Doctor Strange]

It seems The New York Times wants in on this discussion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/fashion/americans-are-barmy-over-britishisms.html

 

[Big Bertie]

When I lived in Scotland there were always lots of jokes about the dialects. A friend was very amused when she was given a box of Fanny Farmer chocolates.

:eeek:
I haven't come across these yet. It's a strange name in British English too, quite pervy.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I haven't come across these yet. It's a strange name in British English too, quite pervy.

It is a outdated name in America but I am surprised that anyone would name someone Fanny in England, unless they were also celebrities in America.

 

[Big Bertie]

It is a outdated name in America but I am surprised that anyone would name someone Fanny in England, unless they were also celebrities in America.

No one would, whether or not they were American celebrities. It just seems a thoroughly inappropriate (if not off-putting) name for a box of chocs. If anything, the name is probably more so here than in the USA.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

It seems like Fanny was also a very popular Jewish name in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Sadly, in a great deal of my reading about the Holocaust the name crops up quite a bit.

 

[dhermann1]

It was very popular in general. Felix Mendelssohn's sister was named Fanny. And of course there's the great 18th century novel Fanny Hill. (What, you say you haven't read it? Yeah, right.)
Fannie Farmer was a teacher of cooking in the late 19th century, and wrote one of the first really decent cook books to gain wide spread use. The candy company was named in her honor (or to capitalize on her name) four years after her death in 1915.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Farmer

 

[kiwilrdg]

It just seems a thoroughly inappropriate (if not off-putting) name for a box of chocs.

It does not draw any attention here. Part of that is the language and part is that it is such an old company so it is not anything that would seem odd.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fanny or Fannie was once a very common nickname in the US for women named Frances or Florence, but the British meaning was far from being unknown. Look up a popular song from 1935 called "Annie's Cousin Fanny," and listen for all the backside/bathroom puns.

 

[kiwilrdg]

Look up a popular song from 1935 called "Annie's Cousin Fanny," and listen for all the backside/bathroom puns.

Er,... The British meaning is close, but not quite the same. I will leave it at not being the backside.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Oh yes, we have other words for that. Look up a certain song by Harry Roy and his Orchestra.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I heard about (and was involved in) many interesting and amusing misunderstandings due to the problems in translation from American to English.

It helped in my later travels when I could help some of the guys from my ship figure out what they really said.:eusa_doh:

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

George Formby -- Fanlight Fanny (1935)

[video=youtube;5d4mY5W-FcE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d4mY5W-FcE[/video]

Up the West End, that's the best end
Where the nightclubs thrive
Down into a dive you'll go
There's a jazz queen, she's a has-been
Has been Lord knows what
Every night she's there on show
She dances underneath the magic spell
She's full of charm and beer and stout as well

She's 66 but looks 16
Her friends don't know her
Now her face is clean
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen
See her glide around the floor
Then glide around
Into the pub next door
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen

She looks swell in the lime
A queen all the time
You get your money's worth
By day you'd say
It's the second time on Earth

She waltzes in the West End shops
Then waltzes out
In between two cops
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen
She's a peach but understand
She's called a peach
Because she always canned
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen

When she's dressed
She's like Mae West
She wears two saucepan lids upon her chest
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen

She looks swell in the lime
A queen all the time
You get your money's worth
By day you'd say
It's the second time on Earth

Every morn at the break of day
They call for the empties
And they cart away
Fanlight Fanny the frowsy nightclub queen

 

[wgnovak]

It might be and possibly also of a certain generation. i've always used "book a room" as well as "autumn" as have my parents.

 

[Nobert]

A couple of British phrases I really like and wouldn't mind making a part of my vernacular if I could pull it off:

"How rubbish is that?" and "Who's he/she/it when he/she/it's at home?"

 

[GHT]

Are there any British expressions, that have slipped into everyday American parlance, that really grate on the ears?
One Americanism that I cannot abide is: The get-go. I don't hear it too often these days, so maybe it's losing favour.
By and large, most expressions don't need translating, although I didn't realise that Americans didn't use the term: Fortnight.
That would take a bit of working out, unless you were a crossword fanatic. Fortnight means fourteen nights, hence, two weeks.
The French have a strong word police who hate any Anglocisms creeping into their Latin derived, pure language. They hate
Le Weekend, yet it's in everyday use. Without their own word for weekend, use someone else's.

 

[GHT]

A couple of British phrases I really like and wouldn't mind making a part of my vernacular if I could pull it off:

"How rubbish is that?" and "Who's he/she/it when he/she/it's at home?"

You might like: "Or what?" You tack it onto the end of a sentence when you want to add emphasis.

"Is that a load of rubbish, or what?"

 

[vintage.vendeuse]

I haven't read through this entire thread so these have probably already been mentioned but I used to love hearing my English grandmother say she was going to "spend a penny", lol! And, when I was a horse-mad 12-year-old, I once got very excited when my grandfather said he was "going to see a man about a horse".

 

[Nobert]

Are there any British expressions, that have slipped into everyday American parlance, that really grate on the ears?
One Americanism that I cannot abide is: The get-go. I don't hear it too often these days, so maybe it's losing favour.
By and large, most expressions don't need translating, although I didn't realise that Americans didn't use the term: Fortnight.
That would take a bit of working out, unless you were a crossword fanatic. Fortnight means fourteen nights, hence, two weeks.
The French have a strong word police who hate any Anglocisms creeping into their Latin derived, pure language. They hate
Le Weekend, yet it's in everyday use. Without their own word for weekend, use someone else's.

One thing that's always bothered me, I'm not sure why, is when Americans use the epithets "wanker" or "bollocks," especially in written form (although I confess to a sneaking admiration for the term "tosser"). Maybe it's because you simply can't pull them off without a U.K. accent of some sort and writing it down just feels like cheating. Most Americans would refrain from using words like "fortnight" for fear of coming off as pretentious. Because if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that foreign villains always speak with English accents, no matter what their actual nationality.