American things

1. biscuits & gravy
2. rodeo
3. smores or smore’s or smore(s)
4. “a super bowl”
5. stoops
6. speakeasy
7. “high school prom”
8. cheese in a can
9. dr pepper

smore

wtf?

Steely Dan
The Beat Generation

10. "democracy"
11. mac 'n cheese
12. sherrifs

It's s'mores and it's short for some more.

13. those varsity jackets with a big letter on the front
14. propeller beanie hats

15. grits

16. Shriners

https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/shriners-little-cars-1200x800.jpg

monster trucks

bison
bass fishing tournaments
Yellowstone Park

Looney Tunes cartoons

22. tipping

Mate,

https://i.imgur.com/kjgsMLQ.jpg

I mean, don't forget 23. Indigenous Genocide, but, you know.

if we're going down that route let's not forget 24. slavery

and of course 25. egg creams

slavery has existed everywhere for all recorded history. hardly confined to America, although we certainly embraced one of the most brutal forms of it for a couple centuries.

26 white ppl
27 mayonnaise
28 conway twitty
29 all the bad things
30 no good things

31 guns guns guns love guns need guns
32 sabermetrics
33 god

(Holland surely king of mayonnaise though, for better or for worse)

34. (With drawl) PICKUP TRUCK. GIDDY UP COWBOY.

35. 99.9% of all "cultural appropriation"

36. $$$

37. Road Trips
38. Self Help
39. Seminars on how to flip properties with no money down

40. Hawaii

41. Grand slams

42. Brian Wilson

43. drive-in cinemas

44. john cena

(19)45. the atomic bomb

(19)46. Donald John Trump

Just sayin some of these things aren't exclusively American. They're everybody's!

47. Superhero movies for "grownups"

48. jack kirby

49. jack ruby

27 mayonnaise

27 "ranch"

ranch-style houses

Ranch might be the most american word there is. The sound of it, the meaning, the house style, the dressing. It's 100% American.

https://i.imgur.com/IOlj6Lw.jpg

51. Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedy series and comedians no-one's ever heard of.

... no-one else, that is.

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

I mean there are all these british comedians called "Jimmy Pram" or "Tolliver Whelk" or whatever that the britishers on the board seem to reference a lot.

52. happy endings
53. late night shows
54. hyper-capitalism
55. "football"
56. "soccer"

Italians
Irish

57. Barack Hussein Obama
58. Velveeta

Misuse of the collective clause when referring to sports teams

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

Saturday Night Live is b-list?

'Math'

American comedy is painfully unfunny. There's no real bite, no real cynicism, it always has to be nicey nicey in the end. A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

today, sure. I think SNL at its best (maybe 80s-early 90s) was good exactly because it captured and spoofed that wide-eyed lack of cynicism. Kevin Nealon comes to mind, and all of the fake commercials. Since at least Will Ferrell and maybe going back to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler though the style of comedy has been very "I AM BEING FUNNY RIGHT NOW! DO YOU SEE ME BEING FUNNY!"

Pronouncing Leslie as Lesslie and Les as Less... at least they did so in the episode of King of Queens I saw this morning.

I. . . don’t know how else it would be pronounced?

/American

Les pronounced lez, as in lesbian.

I had no idea!

I've never thought about it, but I pronounce it lez-LEE.

But Les is Less.

So then, are we to conclude that the 'Lez' said, the better?

https://networkonair.com/3939-large_default/sez-les-volume-4.jpg

I assume that Les in the US is more commonly short for Lester, in which case pronouncing it Less would make sense?

Actually I've just watched a YouTube of Howard Stern talking about Lez-lie West.

In Acadia, they pronounce Leslie, "Lay-Lay".

Or not.

Sir Lay Patterson

i pronounce it lezlie. for les i'm kind of halfway between s and z tbh

lez for everything

except for
wkrp’s les nessman ie buckeye newshawk
and leslie knope
the only “less”es that i recognize

Knope is a lezlie in my headcanon tbh. Like I think I have autoreplaced it on hearing, in the moment, on the fly

lol

High-fructose corn syrup

https://www.ohio-put-in-bay.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Barbershop-Quartet.jpg

Wait, so you're saying that in other nations you get your hair cut without corny-ass a capella singing in four-part harmony?

Like what, you just get your hair cut in SILENCE?

Like SAVAGES?

I've seen and heard barbershop quartets in all sorts of places in the U.S. - and sang in one myself for a few months - but have never heard of one in an actual barber shop.

Like what, you just get your hair cut in SILENCE?

Man, I wish!

One of Enoch Powell's most famous quips was prompted by an encounter with the resident House of Commons barber: a notoriously chatty character, who enjoyed treating captive clients to his views on politics and the state of the world. When Powell went in for a trim, the barber asked the standard question: "How should I cut your hair, Sir?" "In silence," was Powell's instant riposte.

Even Powell's political enemies have usually admitted, a bit grudgingly, that this was a rather good joke. But what they haven't realised is that it has a history going back more than 2,000 years. Almost exactly the same gag features in a surviving Roman joke book: the Philogelos (or Laughter Lover), a collection of wisecracks probably compiled in the fourth or fifth century AD. As with most such collections, some of the jokes included were already decidedly old by the time they were anthologised. In fact, we can trace the "chatty barber" gag back to Archelaus, a fifth-century BC king of Macedon. The "how should I cut your hair?" question was standard even then. And Archelaus is supposed to have replied to his own garrulous barber, "In silence."

Row Houses. (Which are terrace houses?)

Yes, they are terraced houses.

But why are they called "rowhouses" when they're in cities but "townhouses" when the same type of structure is in a suburb?

That is answered at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townhouse

Yeah rowhouses are a specific thing and are (subtly) distinct from townhouses. It's not just about where they are - I have lived in places where both exist in close proximity.

I have spent time in both and can feel the difference, but there is a bit of "I know it when I see it."

The thing is, some urban rowhouses, like these in Washington DC, don't meet the Wikipedia definition of what constitutes a rowhouse rather than a townhouse, even though they look like rowhouses and would likely be called that. I have no idea whether they share a foundation or have double walls between addresses, but they certainly have townhouse-style separate roofs and facades that don't look like your neighbor's. It does seem to me that old/pre-automotive era = rowhouse, newer/larger = townhouse. And usually that correlates with city vs. suburbs.

Now that I think of it, what makes it feel "townhouse" to me is a parking lot out front, and the homes usually being in a development often with a name for each one. Rowhouses don't have parking lots out front (and usually not to the side or rear either), just a one or two lane street with parallel parking (if there's parking at all). But that has nothing to do with the buildings themselves, and again it correlates with city vs. suburbs.

near-random seeming combinations of foods that usually involve melted cheese, bbq sauce, and too many other fat and salt sources combined in one place but are also supposed to sound vaguely creative or sophisticated

"Try our roasted-red-pepper-pesto-ranch bbq chicken and jack cheese flatbread pizza!"

Aka Guy Fieri cuisine

ZEE

there's a moving van I drive past at least once a week in Cambridge called "EEZEE Movers" and it just makes me sad, did they use to be called "EZ Movers" but then had too many people saying "why are you called EE ZED? hur hur"?

dj EZ to thread ("dj ee-zed")

QRS!
TUV!
W, X, Y AND
......
zed

will note that I have seen verified English people referring to their birthday as a "b-day" recently, which spins my brain around something rotten, maybe they just haven't heard of bidets? no other explanation comes to mind.

in China the alphabet song goes

A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q R S T U V
W X Y and Z

which is wrong

b-day rhymes with DJ, not g'day.

UK vs US pronounciation of bidet

So does bidet? Unless that's another American thing?

(xp) LOL

I'm usually up on US/UK English usage and pronunciation differences, but didn't know about BEEday. Note to self: don't contract "birthday" when i'm in the UK.

Conversely, if you travel to the US don't say to your hosts "I gotta use the toilet" - sounds a bit crude to Americans where a toilet is only the commode itself, not the room its in.

"Where's the bog?"

That'll work in America; not sure about Australia...

“Where’s Rob?”

“He’s in the toilet”

American thing: flying to Dallas because you heard on Facebook that JFK Jr will miraculously come to life make an important announcement at the AT&T Discovery Plaza.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/joe-biden-mispronounces-glasgow-glass-25355010

That's J.B. for ya... Dunkin' on your big Glasgow and then getting out of there.

First the farting and now this, is there going to be a war?