What I'm doing instead of #13

[cosmolinguist]

Coming back from putting my laundry in the washing machine, I decided I was sick of my version of OpenOffice crashing and being weird. It's old enough that I know there's a better version, so I thought I'd attempt to install that. I went to the website and started to download it, and by my current calculations, it'll take about as long to finish as my laundry will take to get clean and dry. That's just not right!



WHAT DO YOU CALL:
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks? Creek ... and it's pronounced "crik."

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store? People call these something other than "carts"?

3. A metal container to carry a meal in? A lunchbox? My mom calls them "lunch pails" even though both hers and my dad's are insulated-bag things and not much like a pail at all.

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in? My family calls it a skillet, but I want to be like the people on TV and say "frying pan."

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people? Couch.

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof? Eavestrough (unless that's two words, "eaves trough"? I don't know; I don't think I've ever seen it written down before)

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening? Porch.

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages? Soda. Though again this is something I learned from TV; it's definitely "pop" around here. A girl in one of my classes once accused me of being from Wisconsin when she heard me say "soda."

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup? Pancakes!

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself? a sub

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach? swimming trunks

12. Shoes worn for sports? Tennies.

13. Putting a room in order? Cleaning.

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark? A fire fly

15. The little bug that curls up into a ball? What?

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down? Teeter-totter

17. How do you eat your pizza? Sometimes with my hands, sometimes with a fork. It depends on what kind of pizza it is (Pizza Hut, frozen, my mom's, etc.) and how hot it is. And what kind of mood I'm in, I guess.

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff? Rummage sale.

19. What's the evening meal? Another source of consternation where I come from ... my family is of the breakfast/dinner/supper persuasion, but at least as long as I've been in college, I've been a breakfast/lunch/dinner person myself. It makes sense to me--the food they feed you in school was called "lunch," after all, and my mom does say "lunch pail." To my family, it seems that supper is always what you have at night, but the midday meal is dinner if you make a nice meal and lunch if you're just having a sandwich or leftovers, especially if you're having it at work or school.

Comments

[chuck-lw.livejournal.com]

>I decided I was sick of my version of OpenOffice crashing and being weird. It's old enough that I know there's a better version, so I thought I'd attempt to install that. I went to the website and started to download it, and by my current calculations, it'll take about as long to finish as my laundry will take to get clean and dry.

I use OpenOffice, too. If you have a slow connection, it's best to use a download manager to acquire the thing in chunks.


>15. The little bug that curls up into a ball? What?

Otherwise known as a "roley poley."

http://whatknot.tripod.com/seventy/roley.html

I don't know what their real name is.

[cosmolinguist]

I do have a download manager. I don't have a slow connection, though; that's why I found it so curious that it was going to take so long. It ended up not working anyway; after 20 minutes or something it told me that it'd lost connection to the server and I'd have to try again. Bah.

Thanks for the bug info. :-) Having seen the picture, I now know what they're talking about. I don't know if I've heard them called that, but only because I don't know if I've heard them called anything.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Why the quiz? These are nearly all things with different words over here. In the UK.

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store? People call these something other than "carts"?

Trolleys!

3. A metal container to carry a meal in?

We would use a banana leaf to wrap up such a meal.

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people? Couch.

Or sofa or settee.

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof? Eavestrough (unless that's two words, "eaves trough"? I don't know; I don't think I've ever seen it written down before)

Drainpipe.

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?

Fizzy pop.

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?

"Is there an admiral's hat behind this?"

12. Shoes worn for sports? Tennies.

Trainers. You don't say 'sneakers'? Your films lie!

15. The little bug that curls up into a ball? What?

Woodlouse?

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?

See-saw.

19. What's the evening meal?

Tea!

[apotheon.livejournal.com]

Banan leaf? Are you serious? Nobody uses lunch boxes or brown paper bags?

Drainpipes are also called "water spouts", though the only time I've used that term is in that silly children's rhyme about the itsy-bitsy spider.

I'm constantly either amused or annoyed with people that get their panties in a twist over what to call a carbonated soft drink. It's "soda pop", in long form. Either "soda" or "pop" is a perfectly acceptable short form. I've habitually used both, each at different times in my life. These days, I definitely lean toward "soda", because of the relative ease of confusing "pop" with other uses of that phoneme (homonyms). Most of the time, I just refer to them (stiffly/formally) as "carbonated beverages", or by their respective brand names, or in some vague fashion that avoids the controversy because, frankly, I'm fed up with people getting so goddamned worked up over regional variations in nicknaming.

"Sneakers" is another term for 'em. It depends on who you're talking to, and often involves variations based on what region of the country you're in. "Tennis shoes" is what I grew up with. "Atheltic shoes" is more accurate, I think, and I tend to lean toward that or "sneakers" (because "sneakers" doesn't imply one specific sport).

The "roly-poly" (better spelling without the Es in it) is also known as a "pillbug", and I'm inclined to go with that term. There are actually several different species of bug that falls into this category, so the "official" name is actually several names. They get lumped together as "pillbugs", "roly-polies", or other names (such as, for some reason, a complete misapplication of the term "potato bug").

I tend to use see-saw. It's what I grew up with. Teeter-totter works fine for me, too, though.

I call the evening meal "dinner" because, again, I grew up with it. Besides, "supper" doesn't work so well with "lunch", and I won't cease using "lunch" any time soon, and "dinner" derives from "dine", which is indicative of the evening meal, not of a noon meal. "Supper", by way of "sup", also works for the evening meal, but implies that "dinner" should be used for the noon meal, which (based on "dine") I tend to have issues with, so that's pretty much out.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Banan leaf? Are you serious? Nobody uses lunch boxes or brown paper bags?

When banana trees line every street, and it's the matter of a few moments to borrow a stepladder from one of the many roaming acrobatic troupes and clamber up to grab a leaf, why would we bother with lunch boxes or brown paper bags? I didn't even see a lunch box until I was eleven, and that was on an episode of Kids of Degrassi Street. The only trouble is stopping the monkeys from nicking your corned beef.

[apotheon.livejournal.com]

I see. How odd.

[cosmolinguist]

I heard it explained once that "dinner" is the name of the big meal of the day (which makes sense in relation to "to dine" ... and it makes sense with what "to sup" is supposed to mean, too). Which means my family is getting it wrong, actually: the necessities of farming dictate that you eat a lot more at night than you do in the middle of the day.

But "lunch" is really a separate entity in rural Minnesota; it is the name for the random instances of coffee and bars and maybe sandwiches (for instance; other foods or drinks can be substituted, but these are typical) that you eat at midmorning or midafternoon ... or when you have company, or whenever else you feel like it, really.

[apotheon.livejournal.com]

I've lived a few years of my life in Minnesota, and have a lot of family there, and somehow never picked up the habit of using "lunch", "dinner", and "supper" like that.

[cosmolinguist]

It's not a uniform thing; like most language idiosyncracies it most likely persists in rural places and among the people who live there. And even so, being such a person is no guarantee that you'll speak this way. I also remember reading about such things in Howard Mohr's How to Talk Minnesotan. Further--and better--explanations of the names of the local cuisine can be found within.

[cosmolinguist]

So why do you like "lunch" so much? Why does "dinner" seem like an evening meal to you? Isn't it just the biggest meal of the day? Some people do eat that at noon, or thereabouts. Just wondering. :-)

[apotheon.livejournal.com]

Lunch is a word that just needs to be used. Yep. It's a good word. Besides, at schools and jobs they always have "lunch" breaks.

I've never had a regular three-meals-a-day eating schedule in which the middle meal was the biggest. Never. I guess that helps explain why "dinner" doesn't work for lunchtime for me.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I say "sneakers".

Then again, I'm odd.

[cosmolinguist]

I put "tennies" because I grew up saying that, but I kind of like "sneakers" and say it more now. I've already commited other acts of rebelliousness like saying "soda" instead of "pop" and "ca-ra-mel" instead of "car-mel," so I guess I have nothing left to lose! And sneakers sounds better to me, anyway (which is the same reason I make those other changes: I like some words better than others!).

[firni.livejournal.com]

I also get bent out of shape when people say "cah-ri-bee-ahn" instead of "care-uh-bee-an".

BTW, what is your journal's background picture from? Looks sorta Everquest-ish, almost.

[cosmolinguist]

Why the quiz? These are nearly all things with different words over here. In the UK. You just answered your own question. This is interesting (to me, anyway) because these are precisely the things that would have different names in different places. And, having just talked in my grammar & language class yesterday about the differences among Englishes (in Jamaica, Ireland, Africa, India, England, America, etc.) and of course many variations in each of those large geographical regions. People who live in slightly different parts of my own country could answer these questions very differently, and that's why it interests me so.

And since when are there a lot of banana trees in England? ;-)

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Since 1933. Some seeds came over in a reel of King Kong.

So are there types of words that are more likely to vary by region and country?

As well as region there is class, of course. Eg. with meals over here, breakfast/dinner/tea is vaguely thought of as working class, breakfast/lunch/supper is kind of middle/upper. 'Supper' still sounds incredibly posh to me. But then in the north east, 'scran' can mean any meal or just some food. No idea where that came from.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes. So just because I don't say "sneakers" doesn't mean that all American films are lying to you (though that's another one, film! around here, if you say "film" it means you are a snob; most people say "movie").

It took me a long time to get that a meal could be named after a drink, so I didn't know "tea" meant food there. :-) But then, tea is a lot more common in Britain than America, and I imagine by this point a meal called "tea" might not even necessarily have much to do with tea. Or maybe it does; I have no idea.

It's interesting that you'd say "supper" sounds posh to you (we talked about "posh" in grammar & language yesterday, too; I like the word because I don't know an American word that means quite the same thing), because I associate it with rural people. Hicks have dinner and supper; sophisticates have lunch and dinner. I don't even know why I think this--when I came to college I started saying "lunch" more becuase everyone around here does, and this is even more in the middle of nowhere than where I'm originally from--but I think it anyway.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

(though that's another one, film! around here, if you say "film" it means you are a snob; most people say "movie")

Yes - if you said 'movie' here, people would generally think you were trying to be American. Which I did used to try when my best friend was American and he had hundreds of cool toys. Some people pronounce it 'fil-um', too. We sometimes just 'go to the pictures'.

It took me a long time to get that a meal could be named after a drink, so I didn't know "tea" meant food there.

I guess it's a contraction of 'teatime'. Traditionally, four o' clock (see Asterix in Britain for more on this).

But then, tea is a lot more common in Britain than America, and I imagine by this point a meal called "tea" might not even necessarily have much to do with tea. Or maybe it does; I have no idea.

Not necessarily, and certainly not with me. I hate the stuff. People don't really say 'tea' that much in referring to a meal nowadays, though I did when I was a kid and my dad still says it.

(we talked about "posh" in grammar & language yesterday, too; I like the word because I don't know an American word that means quite the same thing),

"High-falutin'"?

All this talk of meals is making me hungry. Do you have elevenses?

[cosmolinguist]

"High-falutiin' " is quite a regionalism (or classism, if that's a word ... actually, it is a word, but it doesn't mean what I want here, it means treating people differently because of their class, whereas what I want here is a word that means "something spoken by people in a certain class" ... oh well) itself. It's not affected by people who didn't grow up with it, because it's not a prestige dialect. On the ohter hand, people who like to sound, well, posh will say things like "posh" because for some reason it's cool to be British.

The only reason I'd heard of elevenses is because I've read about hobbits, so I Googled it and found that it's actually a real thing that corresponds with what I spoke of, in some other comment here, as "lunch." Once again, though, I think your word is cooler (and it also has the merit of being less confusing!).

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

The only reason I'd heard of elevenses is because I've read about hobbits, so I Googled it and found that it's actually a real thing that corresponds with what I spoke of, in some other comment here, as "lunch."

Elevenses isn't lunch, it's between breakfast and lunch - at 11:00 (though it's definitely not brunch). It's a cup of tea and a biscuit. Or cookie. No-one really says it any more, though. Although they may well enjoy a quick snack at that time.

[cosmolinguist]

Elevenses isn't lunch ...

I know. Lunch isn't lunch where I grew up, either. Here's what I said about it: 'But "lunch" is really a separate entity in rural Minnesota; it is the name for the random instances of coffee and bars and maybe sandwiches (for instance; other foods or drinks can be substituted, but these are typical) that you eat at midmorning or midafternoon ... or when you have company, or whenever else you feel like it, really.'

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see now. Sorry!
So could you have two or more Minessotan lunches? Cos we would have elevenses, then lunch. If we missed lunch, we'd be furious.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that no. 15 is a woodlouse. You always get to these matters before me!

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

The Australian language is pretty flexible... or maybe it's absorbent, it seems to adopt the lingo of a lot of cultures.

1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks?Creek or stream.
2. What the thing you push around the grocery store?Trolley, although cart is not unheard of.
3. A metal container to carry a meal in?Can you still get them in metal..? Lunchbox is what people take their lunch in. It's usually Tupperware or Decor or some such thing.
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in?Frying Pan.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people?6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof?The bit around the edges that catches the water is called a gutter, and the vertical bit is called a downpipe.
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening?Porch or veranda. A veranda doesn't have to be on the front, whereas a porch always is.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?Softdrink mostly.
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup?Pancakes. Though I've never had them from breakfast.
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?Sub, or sometimes a roll. I think the sub name is thanks to subways introduction into Australia.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach?Speedo's if they're like jocks, or else board-shorts if they're shorts.
12. Shoes worn for sports?Runners, joggers or sneakers.
13. Putting a room in order?Tidying or cleaning.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark?Firefly.
15. The little bug that curls up into a ball?Slater. I used to play with them when I was in year 1 and 2. There was a heap of them under some rocks near my school.
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?See-Saw.
17. How do you eat your pizza?I've recently grown quite fond of putting one slice upside-down on top of the other, and eating them like a sandwich. It saves making a mess, and losing toppings and stuff.
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?Most often a garage sale.
19. What's the evening meal?This one depends more on age. Most people call it Dinner, but my Nanna calls it Tea, and the midday meal she calls dinner.

[parakleta.livejournal.com]

Damn me and my typo's, and damn LJ for not letting me repair them after the fact...

Anyway, what I originally came to say, is you appear to have missed two...

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?Basement
21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places?Bubbler, although this varies quite a lot across Australia.

And I have two questions I want to add, just to see what other people's responses are...

22. What do you call the single serve fruit juice cardboard boxes?Poppers, although, like bubblers, this appears to be a regional name. Others call them fruit boxes or Prima's (after the brand).
23. What do you call the large rectangular trash receptacles?Hoppers, although some people call them dumpsters.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

1, WTF are tennies?
2, Breakfast, Elevenses, dinner, tea, supper, midnight feast. ;)

[cosmolinguist]

Tennies is short for tennis shoes. I don't call them that any more ("trainers" is one of those Britishisms I really like but that somehow I can't actually use most of the time without sounding like a phony, unless I'm speaking to someone who'll be confused if I don't use their familiar words, in which case I do say — for instance — trainers, tea (for a meal), wellies, or autumn.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

There's another word for wellies?

[cosmolinguist]

Not really. :) That's one of the things I like about wellies; it's one of the times Bringlish has a word for something that Ameringlish doesn't. There's still the thing, in America, just not really a word for it. We have to call them just boots, or rubber boots. I guess they'd be "rain boots" in my family. But I'd still just call them "boots" if I wasn't around people to whom it's expected that they are wellies.