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Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

I'm a native English speaker and I've never heard most of those, probably because I didn't grow up in the UK.

When I went to university in Lancaster, I didn't know what a "bacon bap" was (it's a plain bread roll with bacon inside, maybe butter if you're lucky). People ate them for breakfast.

If someone said "batch", I'd probably be confused with "bach" (NZ slang for a small apartment, which is pronounced as if it has a "t" in it).

To save time reading the article, here's the list.

bread roll, blaa, batch, barm, teacake, currant teacake, muffin, bun, cob, oven bottoms, scufflers, breadcakes, barm cake, soft bap, crusty cob.

And a pun. How did the baker get an electric shock? He stood on a bun and a currant ran up his leg.

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I grew up in the UK (Midlands and South) and have heard of all of these except blaa and scufflers.

It took longer (late teens / early twenties) to come across the northern words, since my family hardly ever visited the North.

Barm was always barmcake when I were a lad. So in Manchester it would have been a bacon barmcake. Barm' was an occasional abbreviation from over-busy shop workers.

As someone who's travelled around some with work this can get confusing real quick. You just want some sort of bread with bacon, egg and black pudding on your way to work without recruiting an interpreter. That's quite apart from ending up in uncivilised parts that don't feel black pud is necessary. :)

I have regular arguments with my SO over the technical differences between barmcakes and, what I call all small round bread, bread rolls. Never heard barm until I came to Lancastershire but it’s probably my favourite synonym for it. Get funny looks when ordering a bacon barm in London, however.

I best stay out of that one other than to observe there are differences. :D

What got me in Ireland was the difference between a sausage roll and a breakfast roll. You’d expect them to be roughly the same, but not at all.

Not just Ireland my friend, that's all of the UK.

Although a hot sausage roll[1] is perfectly acceptable as a breakfast food, it is not a breakfast roll. :)

Edit: Mis-read 'Ireland' as Northern Ireland (Oops!), which is of course not part of the UK!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sausage_roll

No haha both evoke two very different images.

Sausage roll: puff pastry filled with sausage meat (no skin).

Breakfast roll (with clarity for non-Brits): half a full English on a roll i.e sausage (with skin, perhaps halved for convenience), bacon (back not streaky) and fried egg ("sunny side up" and "over easy" - a fried egg not done this way is very poor form).

My SO manages a popular bakery chain store down south. Being from Lancastershire when someone asks for a sausage roll she always has to ask for clarification (‘bread or pastry?).

I hadn't heard of "teacake" - I think that up in Scotland it's not so common, people would associate the word with Tunnock's Teacake: http://www.tunnock.co.uk/products/teacakes

Confusing thing is: that's still a teacake round here! Easiest way I've found is to say "you know, a non-squashed wagon wheel"

Another native English speaker that grew up as an expat here: similarly I’d only recognise ’bread’; a ”bacon bap” was a thing unto itself, as were teacakes (as far as I am concerned). And yet I know words such as ’slovenly’, ’incardinate’, and ’adipocere’ (off the top of my head) so my vocabulary isn’t poor.

> And yet I know words such as

anyone who had to do their SAT or GRE would have probably crammed these 500 or 1000 word lists. it's much less common to have to learn words for bread or bread rolls. if you complicate things by putting stuff between bread or bread rolls then you have yet another massive list of words like baps, cobs, rolls, subs, butties, sarnies, sangers, sliders, stotties, or and other names for sammies. these words are so region-specific that English speakers around the world don't see 99% of these words.

> I'd probably be confused with "bach" (NZ slang for a small apartment,

Which part of NZ did you grow up in? To me (Auckland, ext. family from various places on the South Island), bach doesn't mean small apartment, it means not-very-classy holiday home. This aligns with what wikipedia thinks[1], including disagreeing with your later assertion about bach being short for bachelor pad (which I also have not heard before and doesn't sound right to me)

This is super interesting really, for the same reason the study is. Even in a tiny country like NZ we can think local words mean different things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_%28New_Zealand%29

Oh, you have to be careful. You can't just go anywhere and call it a bap. That's because it's a barm.

We joke about regional differences in names with mock defensiveness. In Manchester, my area at least, it's a barm and that's that. Even if it isn't technically a barm (not made with barm and is actually sold as a bap).

Oven bottoms are awesome. Those are called barms too. A cob, roll generally means the crusty variety, freshly baked.

A teacake to us is always a barm with currants toasted.

Funny that. I'll need to explore - I didn't realise!

Also from Manchester/North Derbyshire. Nobody is going to complain if you call it a barm, a bap, a roll or even a cob - people will know what you mean.

Teacake has your definition unless you're from Burnley, in which case what you're describing is a fruit teacake. Without the fruit it's what I call a bap or a barm. Look at the study cited in the article.

No hahaha. It's a common joke. Often see things like this making the rounds on social media:

https://images1.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED18/5089de622790...

If I post that, I can guarantee there'll be mock debate along with a few Americans scratching their heads. It is, for better or worse, a joke.

For such light hearted jest - it's bread - I wouldn't have expected so much seriousness for an equally light hearted regional perspective.

You also have to keep in mind that “baps” can be slang for breasts as well.

Oh yes. A lady I knew from Chadderton called them that. Always wondered if they called a barm, well, a barm.

You also have to be careful in some places when asking for a mince pie. You might get a sweet christmas treat or a pie filled with mince.

Never had that problem. Clearly not explored enough!

I like both so a pie filled with mince would be a pleasant surprise.

As it says in the article, you go to the cob shop and get a cheese cob, bacon cob, sausage cob, chip cob, pork pie cob (with peas).

I grew up in the East Midlands.

“Bach”, as in short for bachelor pad?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_%28New_Zealand%29

People have thought this, but they are usually family holiday homes so it doesn't really make any sense. However, no one really knows where it came from at this point.

Yes, that explains the pronunciation.

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