Ris with a spoon:Reese Witherspoon

Grammar Man says:

I don’t know what else to call them.

So I think this is just a case of American English having a word that we don’t have in British English. So Philip Hall in Nottingham: ‘You’ve learned a word, right? You should be happy. Right, moving on to

Number 18:

And this is from Simon Ball in Worcester.

I think we’ve heard from Simon Ball before. Well, anyway! Simon Ball from Worcester complains:

Take-out rather than take-away!

So take-out rather than take-away. So he thinks we should say takeaway and he gets annoyed when he hears people say take-out.

So, if you go to a restaurant, let’s see, if you go to a ‘starbox’ and you order a coffee, you can either drink the coffee in or you can go out with the coffee. A take-away! Right? You get a take-away coffee in the UK. And in America it will be a take-out, maybe a take-out meal or take-out coffee or something like that.

But Simon, come on, what’s the problem? Take-away, fine. It’s clear. You take it, you take it away from the place where you bought it. You don’t eat it there. ‘Take-out’, but that’s clear, too, isn’t it, Simon? ‘Take-out’, I mean you take it out of the restaurants. I am not gonna eat it in, I’m gonna take it out. I think that’s fine. You can’t say the take-away exclusively is the only way to explain that and that take-out is wrong. I think take-out is fine. It’s just another word to say the same thing.

Grammar Man says:

Well, it’s Six of one, and half a dozen of the other.

Okay, well. Half a dozen means six, okay. A dozen means twelve and that’s like sort of a traditionell word which would have been used by – like people who sold things in shops. You buy a dozen eggs for example and I mean it’s twelve eggs. So six of one and half a dozen of the other just means six of one and six of the other is basically saying – it’s just the same. It’s just the same way to say two things. Six of one, half of a dozen of the other means that there is no real argument. It’s just a, you know, American say take-out, Brits say take-away and they are not really that different.

Number 19:

This is from Bob in Edinburgh and he says rather positively: I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner?

Right, what’s the tongue-in-cheek manner? What does that mean to use something in a toungue-in-cheek manner

Well, tongue-in-cheek just means when you do it sarcastically or ironically, okay? So if you do something tongue-in-cheek you do it ironically. So, let’s see. . ..tongue-in-cheek, okay for example, if I was to win an award, I might do a kind of tongue-in-cheek speech, which is were I’d say: ‘I like to thank everyone for.. voting for me in the awards, I like to thank Father Christmas for all the help that he has given me over the years delivering gifts, I don’t know how you do it, Santa, I really don’t. Well done so and you know thanks for keeping the dreams of millions of children alive so that they could then grow up happy, happy enough to vote for Luke’s English podcast in the future. So thanks a lot Santa.’

That’s gonna be a tongue-in-cheek acceptance speech. Because I am not really being serious. You do something without being too serious. You do it a bit ironically. You do it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Right? So he is saying: I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect, even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner. So he things that some American people use Americanisms as a kind of joke, like a word joke, maybe. For example: ‘That statement was the height of ridiculosity.’

Ridiculosity, in fact it’s ridiculousness. But you do have some nouns that end in …osity, like velocity, virtuosity. So what he is doing, he is taking the word ‘ridiculous’ and he is putting a different suffix on it. So it’s not ridiculousness, but it’s ridiculosity. And that’s quite funny because if you think about it the word ‘ridiculosity’ is somehow more ridiculous than the word ridiculousness.

velocity:Geschwindigkeit, Schnelligkeit

air velocity:Luftgeschwindigkeit, Luftstrom

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 962