Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zelphyr | Hacker News Reader

In America you say "elevator", in England we say "lift". In America you say "TV", in England we say "telly". In America you say "'erb", in England we say "herb" because there's a fucking "H" in it.

View on HN

And yet you say "alf" instead of "half".

Ha. I think it's actually impossible to generalise about British accents because there are too many of them. I definitely pronounce the H in half, though I'll agree that many don't.

And "Bri'ish" because replacing a 't' with a glottal stop is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Again, which British. We have more accents than you have states.

we have more accents than we have states too.

The only American pronunciation that stops me in my tracks is "nitch" for 'niche'. Whereas in the UK we'll pronounce it "neesh".

Wow. An example where the British chose the French pronunciation and the US is (a bit spottily) tending to Anglicize a word. I never can think of one when I try.

Thanks for that.

Coupé is my favourite - in the UK it is pronounced the French way whereas in the US it seems to be pronounced as "coop".

"Neesh" is taught as Correct in the US, though it's not universally used.

Here's the clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs5H7cgcpkg

In parts of the US we say herb too

I remember seeing a linguistic graph of the US showing how different regions referred to fizzy sweet drinks (here in Australia, that's 'soft drinks'). The predominant usage was 'soda', fair enough, I can see it. Then there was a fair area of 'pop', which sounds cute and archaic to my ears, but fair enough. The confusing one was a swathe of the US south where they're referred to as 'coke', regardless of the actual drink. I remember someone here on HN relating the story of being asked to get some coke, came back with Coke, and being told he got the wrong thing...

The Coca-Cola Company is based in Atlanta, in the South. It's where the drink has existed the longest. Still crazy, but maybe that gives some perspective.

And somehow that trademark is still not generic.

In the south, you almost always ARE getting a Coke product. Pretty much only at Taco Bell/KFC are you getting a Pepsi product.

The proper exchange is:

"I'll have a coke." "Which kind would you like?"

I live in Atlanta. It's no weirder than Xerox to mean photocopier honestly once you've noticed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com