Brit Pickers' Guide
Ok, I know I'm taking the high ground but lots of people on here are trying to get British culture down, and failing. So this is just a little thing to help you along with common Americanisms and their British equivalents and also some of the more obscure things I found in people's stories and reviews. I'll probably add more as I come across them or get bored.
Like everywhere though Britain itself has numerous regional dialects and colloquialisms so what I write as being correct for Lancashire might confuse the hell out of a Geordie or Brummy.
Hope I don't come across as too patronising; although I guess it is now perfectly clear I want to be an English teacher when I grow up.
Common Translations
Bangs – Fringe
ATM – Cash Machine/Hole in the wall
Faucet – Tap
Drapes – Curtains
Chips – Crisps
Fries – Chips (unless they are the skinny kind which are called fries)
Cell phone – Mobile
Store – Shop
Candy – Sweets
Airplane – Aeroplane
ER – A&E/Casualty
Cookie – Biscuit
Subway – Underground
Sidewalk – Pavement
Math – Maths
Vacation – Holidays
Fall – Autumn (this one used to confuse me when I read Judy Blume)
Truck – Lorry
Highway – Motorway (all begin with M then a number, the M25 goes around London)
Mall – Shopping centre
Sneakers - Trainers
Phone booth – Phone box
Elevator - Lift
Movie house/theatre – Cinema/flicks
Obscurities
Britain has an NHS, it may be rather poor in places but we have to pay for very little in the way of healthcare this way. You don't need to pay to see your GP, if you turn up at A&E you don't need to pay on your visa. You do have to pay for dental and optical work but this is only if you are over 16 and not in full-time education (god bless the HC1 form)
999 is the number for Emergency Services in the UK. 1471 is to get the last number which rang you; 141ing a number stops this happening. 192 is the old directory enquires now changed to the 118 numbers, but only in the past 2 years (e.g. 118 118 or 118 888). Home phone numbers are 11 digits long and usually given in the format 0181 811 8181 (god, I miss Live and Kicking) or 01204 88 8752, the initial bit gives the area code, in this case London and Bolton respectively, the next set of digits refine the area a bit more.
We do not use dollars, our currency is pound sterling. US$1 is about GB£0.55, we have pence…most prices end in 99p. We have pennies, 2p (coppers), 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p pieces (silvers) and £1 coins (gold). We have £5, £10, £20, £50 notes. We don't know what a bill is, neither do we say bucks. We say quid and bob, although the latter is actually a reference to the pre-decimalisation days now some use it interchangeable with pounds. (e.g. six pounds six quid six bob…and the common phrase "as bent as a nine-bob note")
Great Britain is made up of three countries (England, Wales and Scotland); people get very upset if you forget about this. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but not Great Britain (Don't believe me look on the front of your passport).
The correct format of an address is as follows (ignore the double spacing) :-
Miss Emma Jones
375 Boulton Road
Selby
Lancs
HA7 3RD
HA7 3RD is an example of a post code, our version of a zipcode. Lancs is a county, it is short for Lancashire. This gets confusing because some counties shorten their names, others don't bother. I always right it out in full unless I know for certain.
You can't drive until you are 17, you can drink when you are 18.
The theory about Britain being addicted to tea is absolutely spot on, doling out cuppas actually got me 2 jobs over the summer. Anything tragic happens the automatic response seems to be "Put the kettle on". Without tea we would grind top a halt. We need our caffeine, which leads us onto ProPlus which are pills that keep you up through the night; very handy when it's exam season to fit in the last minute cramming. These are legal, and between that, tea and Red Bull we will soon have a permanent case of the shakes.
I don't know what the system in America is but most places in the UK the academic year runs from 1st September – Mid July with a 2 week holiday at Xmas and Easter and 6 weeks in summer. In the middle of each term is a half term holiday which is one week (yeah, I know these are not in HP so you can forget about them). Because of this your year is almost always people who are born in your academic year, not your calendar year. Semesters only exist at uni, and the occasional college. While I'm on this one we have years not grades and what they are called varies between schools (usually they are called years and go from reception to year 1-13, but some schools have different numbering e.g. Year one as lower infants and years 12 and 13 as upper and lower sixth). We do pre-school from 3-4, primary school from 4-11, secondary school from 11-16 and then college/sixth form from 16-18. After that comes the fun of university. Some secondary schools are called high schools, which people get upset about saying it is more corrosion of the English language…but I went to a school with high school in the name. I, along with everyone I know, do not know what Physics 101 is, we have SATs at 7,11 and 14, GCSEs at 16 and A-levels at 18 (this has been split into AS at 17 and A2 at 18…but that only happened in 2000). Almost all schools have a uniform, sixth formers usually escape this fate.
Lots of schools have houses, not just the posh ones. My primary school had For us they worked exactly as in the books, but that is not always the case.
A full monty English fry-up of a breakfast does NOT contain mince meat. I don't know where I found this gem but trust me on this one. Sausage, eggs (poached, fried, scrambled), bacon, hash browns, fried bread, tomatoes, beans, spaghetti hoops, black pudding, mushrooms all may or may not feature.
Newcastle and Surrey are opposite sides of the country….to the person who suggested someone walked it in an afternoon I would like to see you try…we are talking probably 300 miles.
Yes, we have been metrificationised (Wow, so cocky I'm making up words) but most people still deal in imperial too, especially people of my age and above (I'm 19). We still go to the shop for a quarter of sweets, all road signs are in imperial and most people know their weight in stones and pounds and height in feet and inches.
Next to no one knows about Baseball, Basketball or American Football over here. Our sport of choice is usually football. The FA cup is the event most people watch, the big 3 teams are Chelsea, Arsenal and (spits) Man U.
We do not all sound like a bunch of upper-class twits. If you want proof of this I'll have an MSN conversation with you via the mics…good luck on trying to understand me. The whole UK does not use cockney rhyming slang. I do, but that's my half-southern Dad's fault. Most people actually don't have the slightest ideas about "Apples and pears", "Mince pies", "Trouble and strife" "Dog and bone" ect.
We DO use the word mad, to the silly reviewer who said we don't. We use it to mean crazy or angry.
In the British books Dumbledore is fond of Sherbet lemons (little yellow boiled sweets filled with sherbet which fizzes on your tongue….yum) but in the American he seems to have a penchant for Lemon Drops, which until very recently I thought were the same thing. They are not. Lemon drops are like pear drops, with the obvious difference.
The main supermarkets in the UK are Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Safeway. Corner shops are sometimes owned by firms such as Londis, Co-op or Spar. Up until a few years back we had never heard of Wal-Mart, although they have now taken over Asda and over the past year the occasional Asda-Walmart has sprung up. These are always hypermarkets.
Taco Bell don't exist over here (well, if they do there's none up north). We, like everywhere else in the world, have McDonalds (We have 3 of them within walking distance of each other) and Burger King. Pub Grub is served by pubs and is far better than fast food. British pub names all sound the same. My Village (note, village, less than 1000 people) offers 8 pubs.
Fire hydrants do not stick out of the ground.
I was going to talk politics here, but I can't do that without swearing a lot, calling Tony Blair a bastard, comparing John Prescott to Jabba the Hut and generally ranting about the ruling Labour party. I may come back to this. The Dursley's would vote Conservative (Tory), Sirius The Monster Raving Looney Party, Voldemort BNP and Hermione Liberal Democrat.
To own a TV you need a licence, costing £130 a year. This goes to the BBC, who therefore don't have adverts. Also we have 3 other terrestrial TV channels (ITV, Channel 4 and Five) which don't demand money and have adverts. BBC is public service broadcaster, meaning lots of news and documentaries but they also have some decent comedy (Have I Got News For You), soaps and the like BBC1 is mainstream and BBC2 arty. ITV1 is like BBC without the Government funding, so you get a better argument. Channel 4 loves it's American imports (Friends, Simpsons, OC, Smallville, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Six Feet Under) but also does some class programming of it's own (Wife Swap, Queer as Folk, Teachers, Green Wing). Four also put a lot of money into British film making, if you've seen a gritty film recently look out for the FilmFour advert at the start. They are not afraid of controversy. Channel 5 is the newest and only just found their feet, they have ditched the porn shows and bought CSI and Law and Order which is a good start.
British Humour – I beautiful thing. My particular brand is very sarcastic with the attitude that nothing is sacred. Visit for examples. That is the website to a satirical magazine in the UK. The editor is the most sued man in the country (Ian Hislop, I salute you)
Ok, that's all for now. I will probably add more as I go along. Feel free to review with stuff to include or if you want to ask any questions or slate me saying "Well, you dirty Northerners may say that but we…." Ect.
Cheers unlikely2, I knew that but my phrasing didn't come across too great. M-day was when I was in my last year at primary school, even though we got taught in metric it wasn't until 1996 that the EU enforced it for buying goods. (I remember that because I well impressed my teacher with my knowledge of politics and got 5 house points – my record)
Who me? No one – Thanks for the lemon drop thingy. Never head of them in my life. Makes sense though, they sound like pear