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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

I live in Sweden (and have for 11 years), a lot of the "charm" in my speech has been filed away, I speak in a very neutral accent (which barely registers as british anymore) and I use americanisms a lot, avoiding "false friends".

(IE; I never use the word "chip" to mean crisps or fries - I will instead use "Crisps", despite it being british, and fries, despite it being American; in order to avoid ambiguity.)

The more difficult one is "pants", I would say underwear or trousers.

It's interesting how I only notice how much it's contrasted when I go back to the UK and hear others, I notice people using words that I've put a mental "X" on, and its only then that I realise that I've put the mental "X" on the word... because it no longer feels natural to hear it.

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I don't do the "chips" one, because it's usually clear enough from context, and the people I speak English to generally know me and my foibles. But I do religiously say "half past 6" now, instead of shortening it to "half six". In Germany, you count towards the next hour, so our "half past six" is their "half to seven".
To avoid ambiguity, I always say "half past" in English so that Germans (and I!) remember to compensate for the language barrier. Unfortunately "half to" isn't really a thing in German, so I can't do the opposite when I'm speaking German.

It's more complicated than this and how you say "quarter to eleven" is A Whole Thing in Germany, but everyone agrees on the half hour at least

> (IE; I never use the word "chip" to mean crisps or fries - I will instead use "Crisps", despite it being british, and fries, despite it being American; in order to avoid ambiguity.)

In Australia we don't care about ambiguity or clarity and refer to both the thin sliced cold things and freshly fried rectangular ones as "chips"

I live in Denmark, and for such basic words (crisps, trousers, maths, aluminium, football, quid, couldn't care less, fire engine, motorway, petrol, public transport, railway, tram) I use my native British words.

People occasionally comment that it's a British word, but being misunderstood is so unusual I can't remember a recent example. Essentially everyone has read/watched Harry Potter, Dr Who or Midsomer Murders, and Europeans are probably ten times more likely to have visited the UK as the USA.

Wait, "couldn't care less" is British?

Many/most Americans say something like "I could care less about the World Cup".

British people say "I couldn't care less about the World Cup".

Both are saying they have no interest at all in the World Cup. I don't know why Americans phrase it that way.

To give a documented example, the lyrics of Teenagers by My Chemical Romance:

    They said, "All teenagers scare the livin' shit out of me"
    They could care less as long as someone'll bleed

Ah, I'd heard that latter one, but I thought that was just a mistake in the sense of "could of". TIL!

I always assumed the American version was using "could" ironically. Now I'm wonder if is an unintentional neologism.

I think everyone says “couldn’t care less”. But Wiktionary does say “could care less” is “American, nonstandard, proscribed”, so I guess only Americans have that (defective) alternative phrase.

There are a few things like that which stand out when I'm watching/listening to American media.

Another is 'on accident'.

Fire engine and railway aren't specifically British. There are much better words like boffin, or my favorite, bellend.

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