I was just chatting with someone about what England *was* like in the early 80s. Some of the stuff that I found particularly funny at the time:
1) Fast food Wimpy burgers made with quasi meat (many fillers), lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers.
2) The fact that we have the same words for completely different things. For instance, the English really don’t have American pickles. But they do have a “Ploughman’s Pickle” which is more like a relish. Oh, here’s an online description:
A brown sauce based pickle with chunks of crisp vegetables used to accompany meats, cheeses, pies on the plate or used to kick up the flavour in a sndwich.
Here’s an American pickle:
How about jelly?
This is British Jelly (which we call Jello):
This is American Jelly – which is sort of close to a jam or marmalade without the bits of fruit in it. It’s made only from the fruit juice.
You see how confusing it can get?
3) Trying to understand a fast-talking, dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire butcher at the base store. OMG… LOL… I was trying to find you a YouTube snapshot of what Yorkshire sounds like, and I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u89rOI8z8Oc&feature=related.
I actually liked this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1keD1pHQQ&feature=related. More of an academic view of the dialect.
And here’s an interesting blog on’t: http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2008/07/true_yorkshire_1.php#more
Anyway, enough for one morning, me ducks. 🙂
Tirrah