British vs. American vocab

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Well then my american friend you have enlightened me, I'm not one for history of much except extremely violent things, war always did make history interesting, its funny to hear your response on the top gear thing though, Its nice to know i'm not the only one who doesn't want to go there

Me too...I never thought he'd break out of that image of him dressed in drag, from "Blackadder Goes Forth", but he's totally redeemed himself with "House"!

Anyways, forgot to add with my last post in this thread...whenever an American comedian, even if it's one I love, makes what I think is an INSULTING attempt at a Cockney accent, I immediately equivocate them to the level of POND SCUM! Add double damning points if they say the often uttered 'spot of tea' line. The next comedian who says 'spot of tea' I hope he gets STABBED IN THE EYES!

Of course it insists on it; since when has 'dialogue' been spelt 'dialog'?

The British pronunciations (the characters may not show for some people):
Aluminium - ,æljʊˈmIniəm
Jaguar - 'ʤægju:ə

Tights are made from a thin fabric (usually or often nylon?), usually include the feet (don't have holes in the bottom) and are worn with skirts and dresses.
Leggings are usually thicker and opaque (although tights can be opaque too) and can be worn on their own. They cling to the legs like tights.

Tights and underwear can be called 'lingerie'.

A bit extreme there, but I agree in principal. I don't understand why Yank actors are so reluctant to hire a coach to help them with the accent.

In the US if they're sheer they're call pantyhose, and if they're opaque they're called tights.

In Ireland, 'cacks' means underwear...
so the phrase 'relax the cacks' means don't get your panties in a bunch.

"Spot of tea" is still funny to us in the Americas.

Just like "Shaganappi" is still funny to you Brits.

But we don't say 'spot of tea'. At least the majority of us don't (unless we're putting on a mock upper class/posh accent).

And why in American films when someone's pretending to be English do they say 'sweet pea' and 'old bean'? ARGH! Those are (possibly out-of-date) upper-classisms).

Ha ha yeah i get you there, its agony to hear Americans trying to do a british accent, espeshialy cockney.

I moved to Detroit when i was 18 from the UK, im not there now but for ages i was trying to figure out why the accent was so diferant.
Well i came apon a idea, im not saying this is the answer but it makes sence. I think its somthing to do with your understanding of the alphabet.
No dont shoot me, im not saying your dumb it just always seemed to work out on this experiment i did.

What i would do while was over there, id say to (an american) can you tell me the alphabet and after each letter tell me the sound it make as though it was just in a simple word.

Well every single time (and i tryied a good 20 odd times) they would get a couple letter wrong in the sounding. The main ones being O, U. There was a few other that didnt know like Q, I and X but every single time they got stuck on O and U for some reason. I dont know what your taught in school but the first thing we are thought after knowing what the letter is, is the sound it makes.

Has there EVER been a Hollywood movie with a Yank doing an even passable Cockney accent??

Brits are just as bad when they try to do American accents. They always sound like they're either in an twenties gangster movie or doing a bad Texan accent.

British English/Vocab is horrendous. An absolute mess/disaster.

We do it so much better.

True, I've seen some pretty horrible imitations of the American accent.

Aside from John Cleese in A Fish called Wanda, I've never heard any Brit doing an American accent.

Oh, Spanish slang? The only one I know is if you want eggs, say

Hay Juevos?

Saying 'tiene jueavos' means a certain part of a male organ, and the typical answer is 'Si, Dos Grande'...

From what I've been told, a British person can tell you exactly where you come from (in the UK), and likely what class you're from, and possibly even what you do for a living. I also get the impression that there's no faster way to tick off an English person than to try to do an English accent (being from the South, I lay it on the cornpone with a trowel...

There's a lot of British accents...Orkneys (sp?) to the 'Beautiful South'. One thing that does tickle me was there was a BBC TV show about Glasgow, which was (I'm not making this up) supplied with English subtitles... It was for British audiences, too...

...and there seems to be an unwritten rule that the only accent Americans ever try to do is Cockney. The Rhyming slang takes a long time to master; try watching the 3rd Austin Powers movie and not read the subtitles when they do it...

POSH - Port outward, Starboard home. A class of ship ticket from England to India and back. It (pretty much) guaranteed you wouldn't get too much sun. Another useless fact from Pakled.