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Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    From this morning 's Sydney Morning Herald (which in days gone by was a good, even great at times, paper, despite it's then conservative politics:

    Australia's supply of cheap rental homes are being eaten up....
  • The Mole Wrench used to be manufactured in Newport in South Wales. Newpo't. I can just about remember the signs on roads leading into the town which proudly proclaimed, 'Welcome to Newport, home of the Mole Wrench.'
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Eirenist wrote: »
    'The rest of the world has gone metric'? Try telling that to a Brexiteer! Thanks to the pusillanimity of successive governments, we in the UK are stuck most uncomfortably half-way.

    Oz went metric for currency on 14 February 1966 - those of us of a certain age will never forget the advertising jingle. For everything else, the process seemed a bit spread out over a year or so in the early 70's. The changes in speed limits, road distances and weather forecasts were the most noticeable. Complaints were met with the comment that the change to metric would help exports, a worthy aim with the UK ditching traditional trading partners to join the EEC. I don't know if we exported many new highways, but certainly our now-metric weather reports are sent to many more countries than in pre-metric days.
  • The US government authorised the use of metric units in 1866, so it seems odd that they still like a system that the rest of us call 'Imperial'. When I was much younger, I was told the resistance was due to the influence of the oil industry, and their enormous use of pipe and pipe fittings. It makes some sense when you think of the inventory of materials that they need to hold or obtain quickly. I've had plenty of occasions of my own where the difference has held up a job, or even wrecked a component that was discovered too late to be of the other persuasion. For the record, I much prefer metric fasteners.
  • On boiler suits ... perhaps there are differences in terminology between industries as well as regions. I've always thought of boiler suits as one-piece garments, a form of 'overall' ('coverall), and Churchill famously used to wear one in the War Rooms and around the house even though he wasn't scrambling through oily fissures or tweaking valves.
    Wasn't Churchill's called a Siren Suit?
  • Interestingly (for an anorak :smile: ) BSP and BSPT are still current standards for pipe fittings in the UK and Europe, though they're called something else ('G') to cover up the fact. And yes, GG, I see on my old Mole grips it says 'Self-grip wrench, Newport, Mon., Gt Britain'.

    (On a railway bridge over the Mumps roundabout Oldham it used to say 'Welcome to Oldham, home of the tubular bandage'. That was just next to Williamson's, a great place for a set of BA nut spinners or an Aldis lamp off a battleship - only recently gone, and much missed.)
  • On boiler suits ... perhaps there are differences in terminology between industries as well as regions. I've always thought of boiler suits as one-piece garments, a form of 'overall' ('coverall), and Churchill famously used to wear one in the War Rooms and around the house even though he wasn't scrambling through oily fissures or tweaking valves.
    Wasn't Churchill's called a Siren Suit?

    Gosh ... I never knew. Again, the Ship proves its educational value ...
  • Interestingly (for an anorak :smile: ) BSP and BSPT are still current standards for pipe fittings in the UK and Europe, though they're called something else ('G') to cover up the fact. And yes, GG, I see on my old Mole grips it says 'Self-grip wrench, Newport, Mon., Gt Britain'.

    (On a railway bridge over the Mumps roundabout Oldham it used to say 'Welcome to Oldham, home of the tubular bandage'. That was just next to Williamson's, a great place for a set of BA nut spinners or an Aldis lamp off a battleship - only recently gone, and much missed.)

    Wakefield used to have a sign on a railway bridge for W2 Shirts. I think it was 'W2' ...

    Local legend had it that the sign-writer missed out the 'r' on the first attempt.
  • 'In came the dollars and in came the cents,
    On the 14th February 1966.'

    We were £10 Poms and I remember that from just before we sailed home.

    My parents split up over there and I remember him waving us off at the quayside. He returned not long afterwards and they got back together for a while.

    'Louis the Fly ... Straight from rubbish dumps to you ... spreading disease with the greatest of ease ...'

    I remember that one too.
  • GG, Louie the Fly has popped up occasionally over recent years, in a much enhanced animation, but the same jingle.
  • 'In came the dollars and in came the cents,
    On the 14th February 1966
    something that could only approach rhyming status in an Antipodeal accent! (Although actually I think it would probably be a better rhyme for the Kiwi accent)

  • The song was, “In come the dollars, In come the cents,
    To replace the pounds, the shillings and the pence.
    So be prepared when the money starts to mix,
    On the 14th of February, 1966.” I may have some of the words wrong - it was before I was born- but those were the rhymes. As I recall, the accent was pretty RP, as were most TV accents back then.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Spot on Athrawes
  • Beer comes in kegs here, not casks. Lots of small breweries around. You can take in a growler and have it filled. A growler is a reusable glass bottle usually 1 L or 1½. Bottles of beer are measured in metric in Canada (or cans of beer), typically 340 or 341 ml which is 12 ounces, and 568ml which equates to 20 oz.

  • Ok. Anno Domini has marred my memory of the lyrics, but not the tune ... an old Australian folk tune if I remember rightly. I'm sure we sang it at school later on with the original words.

    I can't remember those but at the risk of an ear-worm epidemic a kind Aussie shipmate may be able to provide a link ...

    I don't remember the accent sounding particularly RP, but it may have done to Aussie's born and bred rather than to Ten Pound Poms. I remember it as mildly Australian sounding but certainly not a strong accent.

    Perhaps it was sung in a more RP sounding way to signal the passing of an era ...?

    The Louie the Fly jingle was sung in a more pronounced Aussie accent if I remember rightly.

    I'm tempted to ask what it tells us about a nation whose outstanding cultural icons consist purely of an animated health warning, Barrie Humphreys, R*lf H*rr*s, one hit wonders Men at Work (cracking hit though), Sidney Nolan and the late and very much lamented Clive James ...

    But I hope to return to Australia for my first visit since 1966 sometime in 2020 and want to ensure I receive a cordial welcome ...

    (Seriously, if I do get there I'll very much look forward to seeing how much it accords with my hazy memories - skinks, blue-tongue lizards, big spiders, gum-trees and wallabies, bungalows and clapboard houses with water-butts. I've heard the town we lived in has expanded and has seen better days.

    If I do go I'll be in the Adelaide area staying with relatives and then going over Melbourne way. If Shipmates have any recommendations of places to go and things to see near either place then let me know. Whether I'd be able to get up to Queensland to see a cousin remains to be seen.)
  • ECraigR wrote: »
    Ignorant American: What does an accent sounding RP mean?
    Helpful American: Received Pronunciation

  • A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.
  • I tried to find out why a cooking stove is sometimes called a range. In so doing I came across this list of the top ten words of the year that Americans had to look up.
  • Beer comes in kegs here, not casks. Lots of small breweries around. You can take in a growler and have it filled. A growler is a reusable glass bottle usually 1 L or 1½. Bottles of beer are measured in metric in Canada (or cans of beer), typically 340 or 341 ml which is 12 ounces, and 568ml which equates to 20 oz.

    I think the usual growler here (SW Ontario) would be 1.9l, or half a US gallon, and I have mine filled at the local brewery. It's usually from an aluminium keg and tap under gas pressure, but once in a while it comes from a wood cask when the brewer can be persuaded to run a cask conditioned ale. Liquid happiness!
  • Amen to proper cask conditioned ale, but I'd feel uncomfortable if we ever ditched the pint - which I only found out recently differs in volume slightly from the US pint measure.

    Slightly? A US pint is 16 ounces. UK pints are 25% bigger.

    For those of you wanting slight differences, I invite you to consider the difference between the standard foot (0.3048 m) and the US survey foot (1200/3937 m, a whopping two parts in a million longer). The difference almost always doesn't matter, which just makes it all the more likely that someone will get it wrong when it does.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Ok. Anno Domini has marred my memory of the lyrics, but not the tune ... an old Australian folk tune if I remember rightly. I'm sure we sang it at school later on with the original words.

    The tune was "Click go the shears". The RP description of the pronunciation is correct as long as you read that as received in Oz not England (not even UK).
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited December 2019
    Beer comes in kegs here, not casks. Lots of small breweries around. You can take in a growler and have it filled. A growler is a reusable glass bottle usually 1 L or 1½. Bottles of beer are measured in metric in Canada (or cans of beer), typically 340 or 341 ml which is 12 ounces, and 568ml which equates to 20 oz.

    Dead, lifeless beer, often pasteurised and filtered to remove any remaining signs of life, comes in kegs and is dispensed with added CO2. Live, real ale with its own natural life comes in casks.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    Mixing up your Imperial (English) and metric measurements can come expensive. Witness this Mars mission: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/1999/09/english-metric-miscue-doomed-mars-mission
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.

    We call our cooker a stove - I believe that Stove was an original make of cooker
  • I'm tempted to ask what it tells us about a nation whose outstanding cultural icons consist purely of an animated health warning, Barrie Humphreys, R*lf H*rr*s, one hit wonders Men at Work (cracking hit though), Sidney Nolan and the late and very much lamented Clive James ...

    But I hope to return to Australia for my first visit since 1966 sometime in 2020 and want to ensure I receive a cordial welcome.

    Good to see it’s not just pond wars you try to start.

  • @Gamma Gamaliel "Yield not to temptation..."
  • Zacchaeus wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.

    We call our cooker a stove - I believe that Stove was an original make of cooker

    Not so.
  • Stove and oven are interchangeable where I live. The word cooker is never used.
  • rhubarb wrote: »
    Stove and oven are interchangeable where I live. The word cooker is never used.
    Not quite interchangeable where I live, in that the oven is a specific part of the stove. One cooks food on the stove, but in the oven.

  • mousethief wrote: »
    Zacchaeus wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.

    We call our cooker a stove - I believe that Stove was an original make of cooker

    Not so.

    it was in the uk though

    https://www.stoves.co.uk/
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    Zacchaeus wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.

    We call our cooker a stove - I believe that Stove was an original make of cooker

    Not so.

    Tangent: Thanks for sharing the etymology dictionary, mt. It was love at first sight!
  • Zacchaeus wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Zacchaeus wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    A "stove" burns things. Funny. Nearly every American calls the appliance upon which we cook our meals a stove. Once in a while, the term "range" is used.

    We call our cooker a stove - I believe that Stove was an original make of cooker

    Not so.

    it was in the uk though

    https://www.stoves.co.uk/

    It was a brand name, but that the brand was named after the item, rather than the other way round, was I think MT's point.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    I tried to find out why a cooking stove is sometimes called a range. In so doing I came across this list of the top ten words of the year that Americans had to look up.
    How we use the words in western Canada.

    The range is the top of the stove where you put things in pots and pans and heat them from beneath. A range top is installed into a counter (or counter top) with no oven underneath. I believe a skillet is a frying pan. Not sure.

    The oven is the heated part with a door that you open and put in things you want to bake.

    The whole appliance is a stove. They are almost all electric these days, mainly because, I think, electricity is cheaper than natural gas. I have a convection oven which is also steam injectable. I bake using cup, teaspoon and other measures. When I bake bread, I weigh the amounts of dough in grams if I need uniform size loaves. 680g is a 1½ lb loaf.
  • Kittyville wrote: »
    I'm tempted to ask what it tells us about a nation whose outstanding cultural icons consist purely of an animated health warning, Barrie Humphreys, R*lf H*rr*s, one hit wonders Men at Work (cracking hit though), Sidney Nolan and the late and very much lamented Clive James ...

    But I hope to return to Australia for my first visit since 1966 sometime in 2020 and want to ensure I receive a cordial welcome.

    Good to see it’s not just pond wars you try to start.

    I do my best to be equitable ...

    ;)

    If I do get to go I would very much look forward to revisiting and getting to know the place for the first time ...
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    It was a brand name, but that the brand was named after the item, rather than the other way round, was I think MT's point.

    Cheers.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    rhubarb wrote: »
    Stove and oven are interchangeable where I live. The word cooker is never used.
    Not quite interchangeable where I live, in that the oven is a specific part of the stove. One cooks food on the stove, but in the oven.

    Basically the same here. But there are slow cookers.
  • Crock pots.
  • I believe "Crock Pot" is a brand name for a slow cooker, which has come to be used generically.

    A "crack pot," however, is something totally different. :wink:
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Crock Pot is a brand name, which is why I used the generic slow cooker.

    A tangent. A friend talked about cooking a terrine in a large oval slow cooker. Make your mix as usual and put into a heatproof dish that will fit into the cooker. Some water to come halfway up, just as you'd do in an oven, and turn it onto low heat. Leave 6 to 8 hours. Saves using an oven in hot weather.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    NpNp: "They are almost all electric these days, mainly because, I think, electricity is cheaper than natural gas."

    Perhaps in Canada, but in SoCal I do much better with a natural gas stove and heating systems than my friends do with all-electric homes.
  • It is so much easier, for me at least, to cook on a gas stovetop.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    We have a gas stovetop and electric ovens. The stovetop is easier to control than an electric one - you get an instant response to raising or lowering the heat. Given the solar panels on our roof, it makes sense to use electricity for the ovens where there is not the same need for an instant response.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    We have a gas stovetop and electric ovens. The stovetop is easier to control than an electric one - you get an instant response to raising or lowering the heat. Given the solar panels on our roof, it makes sense to use electricity for the ovens where there is not the same need for an instant response.

    Same here. My wife grew up using gas and never liked electric stoves, so when we bought our current house we installed a gas stovetop, but the space for an oven was too small for a gas oven, and we had to opt for an electric oven.
  • That's the best combination in my opinion.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    'Stovetop'? What about 'hob'? They are perpendicularly adjacent in my kitchen, but are in fact different appliances. The hob is gas, the grill/oven and (fan) oven electric.

    A range would be something which combined the two, and be powered by either electricity, gas or solid fuel.
  • Never heard "hob" in the states. As far as I know it's strictly a British thing.
  • Where I live we all know what a hob is - its a male ferret.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    We have a gas stovetop and electric ovens. The stovetop is easier to control than an electric one - you get an instant response to raising or lowering the heat. Given the solar panels on our roof, it makes sense to use electricity for the ovens where there is not the same need for an instant response.

    We have solar panels too and use a totally electric cooker that does offer instant control on the stovetop and also much easier to keep clean than gas burners as it's a totally flat surface. It's called an induction cooker. Are these not popular in the USA? The only downside is you need particular types of pans so we needed to replace some of ours when we got it. I wouldn't want to cook on anything else now!
  • edited December 2019
    Natural gas is used here for home heating and water heating. Far cheaper than heating with electric. In locations like our's with very cold winters it's far cheaper to heat with gas (-32°C today). Where natural gas lines run it is required to use it, and illegal to use oil. Rural gassification brought it everywhere in this Siberian part of Canada. We've one government run natural gas utility, no private companies are interested in gas, electric, internet, cable TV, phones, water provision except in lucrative city markets so they're not allowed. We're also required have very well insulated houses. Furnaces are very efficient also.

    I haven't seen the numbers for a while but if memory serves the efficiency of modern electric stoves is very high- convection oven, induction burners.
  • Where I live we all know what a hob is - its a male ferret.

    :lol:
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