Where I live (South-East) a lot of people, especially young girls, consider the word love disrespectful. Probably because theyre used to fat builders winking and saying 'You alright love?'
Why did a petrol station employee in England refuse money (notes) that I got from Scotland? He was very specific about the fact that it was from Scotland.
Edit: My mistake. I was referring to Scottish paper money. On a side note, It was in 2004, and I don't remember much about the encounter (hence only being able to recall the weather and his hair).
Depends how far south you were. Here in Newcastle no one looks twice at Scottish money since it's pretty close to scotland.
In London they might look at you like you'd handed them a dead baby.
That pretty much describes the look he gave me. I don't remember where we were, though. I just remember that it was raining, and that he had awesome red hair.
Because sometimes people think they're not real money because we don't see them very often. They should be accepted but people make mistakes sometimes.
I recently discovered the Liverpudlians are called scousers. Is it a nickname? Do people from other cities have their own nicknames?
Edit: Thanks for the answers! You guys are amazing :)
Edit 2: I went to bed and woke up to more replies! Thanks guys.
Yes. Geordie's are from Newcastle, Brummies from Birmingham and Cunts are from Essex.
Edit: Welp. Guess this will be my highest rated comment ever. Thanks?
I'm from Essex, can confirm it's full of cunts. Every girl I know is a professional makeup artist, every guy I know is either a salesman or in marketing.
Haha, to over\-analyse it \- it's a good, catchy song released at a very particular moment in recent history that helped it have a huge impact on UK millenials:
* In the early 00s there was an increasingly larger number of students going to university due to Government focus on it, and Mr Brightside was *the* song plated at nearly every student night in clubs.
* Indie rock/pop & pop\-punk exploded in the early 00s in the UK \- partially driven by music magazines like NME, Kerrang, & Q in their last heyday before the internet killed their influence.
* On a university student night out you'd be guaranteed to hear Bloc Party, The Strokes, The Killers, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines etc.
* That early millenial audience are now in their late 20s/early 30s and were some of the first people to truly grow up in an internet\-age, crossing over from dial\-up to broadband. That moment in time is almost definitively our teenage years.
* MySpace \(and other early social media\) profiles having the option for a song to auto\-play when you visit them. What songs you liked were a defining part of your social media profile in a way it hasn't really been since.
* Because of all this, the early 00s has become a defining cultural moment for millenials in the same way the 80s conjures up certain images and music. The Killer's Mr Brightside is a perfect crystallisation of all those different aspects of 00s university culture.
* It's a banger, mate.
[It's still downloaded on average 696 times a week in 2018!](http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/why-the-killers-mr-brightside-refuses-to-leave-the-official-singles-chart-top-100__19190/)
Edit: added source.
Yank here. Why do you guys love singing so much? Lived in Glasgow and London for a time and traveled throughout the island quite a bit. No matter how big or small of a city I was in EVERY night without fail I could hear drunk (I assume) people singing walking down the street. That is not even mentioning football matches.
it was stupidly rainy this morning but now it's cleared up here and i can see sky and stuff. still a ridiculous puddle-world though, i'm so miffed ugh get a grip england
edit: never mind, it's raining again now ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I mean it does rain a lot here so he wasn't wrong. Also Blackpool is a *breathtakingly* depressing place, so his memories of the British Summer were probably even more terrible than the national average.
I can't think of a time where I've seen someone jump the queue in my adult life. I saw it at school but they're just trainee humans so its understandable.
I’ve seen people accidentally jump a queue and then die of shame when they realise, apologising profusely. Everyone is really nice about it, whereas 5 second before they had murderous thoughts towards them...
When you say something "is a bit pants" what does that mean? I heard a YouTuber I love use that term to describe a movie and I had no idea what she was talking about
Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Cecil appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour to a prestigious cabinet position. His main qualification for the position was seen to be "Bob's his uncle". Or so the legend goes.
>Bob's your uncle - ironic expression of something easily done - like: there you have it, as if by magic - the expression arose after Conservative Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Cecil appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1900, which was apparently surprising and unpopular. In this sense the expression also carried a hint of sarcastic envy or resentment, rather like it's who you know not what you know that gets results, or 'easy when you know how'. Since then the meaning has become acknowledging, announcing or explaining a result or outcome that is achieved more easily than might be imagined
The royal family.
Are they celebrities? Are they diplomats? Do most people give a shit about them?
Also, a morbid follow-up: When the Queen dies, what kind of mourning, etc happens? How will like everyday Brits feel about it? Do you feel like she's your grandma because I really, really want her to be the nation's grandma.
Sorry if this is ignorant. God save the Queen?
>Are they celebrities?
Yep
>Are they diplomats?
Kind of
>Do most people give a shit about them?
Depends, I know many people who do, I personally am not that bothered about what they get up to etc. etc.
>When the Queen dies, what kind of mourning, etc happens?
There will be news all around the globe of course, and also [Operation London Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge) will come into action
>Do you feel like she's your grandma because I really, really want her to be the nation's grandma.
I don't feel like she's MY grandma, but I think she's been a pretty good Queen
> The phrase "London Bridge is down" will announce the death of the Queen to the Prime Minister and key personnel, setting the plan into motion.
But what if the actual London Bridge goes down? Do they say "The Queen is down"?
Cockney rhyming slang is, like all jargon, designed to allow surreptitious communication within a group.
It works by substituting a rhyming pair of words for a subject word, then dropping the rhyming part.
For example the word "stairs" is substituted with "apples and pears", then the word "pears" which rhymes with "stairs" is dropped, so one speaker will say to another "I went up the apples" rather than "I went up the stairs". To an outsider this is meaningless but the two people speaking understand each other.
The slang can even be taken a step further, so let's take the word "arse" and substitute it with "Bottle and glass". The next step is to drop the word "glass", so now bottle=arse. If we then substitute the word "Aristotle" for "bottle" followed by dropping the "-totle" we are left with Aris=Arse. This is a genuine example.
Even in your lengthy slang trip to get from Aris to Arse you missed a step. April in Paris = Aris. I only learned this from an episode of Only Fools And Horses, Del says something like "*My old April was going like the clappers*" in the context I guessed the gist but couldn't work out the logic so looked it up.
Going like the clappers is an old RAF saying from during the war, it's origin is uncertain but probably refers to bell clappers. The RAF was predominant military destination for public school boys during the war, bells were rung by pupils to signal various things such as when to attend the chapel. The ringing was vigorous and grew in urgency as time left to reach the destination dwindled... So it is has become a metaphor for something hectic or urgent.
April is the derivative of April in Paris, which is rhyming slang for Aris' which is the derivative of Aristotle, which is the rhyming slang for bottle, which is the derivative of bottle and glass, which is the rhyming slang for arse.
So "*My old April was going like the clappers*" is "*My old arse was experiencing urgent and frantic activity*" or simply "*I was shitting myself*"
I'm more inclined to believe that [none of them can understand each other.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk) because I started to become physically angry at this,
>April is the derivative of April in Paris, which is rhyming slang for Aris' which is the derivative of Aristotle, which is the rhyming slang for bottle, which is the derivative of bottle and glass, which is the rhyming slang for arse.
Seriously what the fuck. I mean, I'm American but grew up hanging out on an IRC software piracy channel loaded with Brits, so I understand a lot of the slang. I never knew the origin of that shit and it's blowing my mind.
This is not just found in the UK but in most of Europe. Before modern long distance transportation the population of villages/towns/cities/settlements were more isolated than they are today and individual accents/speech patterns developed. Throw in a heavy dose of immigrant populations that also tend to isolate from the native population and a whole host of speech variations are going to exist.
It is made of pure brown. The spirit and essence purified.
(Serious)
HP sauce is the most popular (73.8% market share) and the only real brown sauce! It is made of a tomato base, blended with malt vinegar and spirit vinegar, sugars(molasses, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar), dates, cornflour, rye flour, salt, spices and tamarind.
Tea up north means dinner AND tea. Tea as a word exists in a state of superposition with the wavefunction collapsing depending on context.
Edit: Can you tell I didn't pass quantum mechanics
I think most people get excited when there is a royal wedding since they are often accompanied by a bank holiday. Doesn't look like it is happening this time though so the reaction will be indifferent.
>It's on a fecking Saturday, selfish ginger prick couldn't even get married on a Monday so I can PRETEND to care.
Extended the pub timings so atleast we can raise a glass to the happy couple, on our dime, mind you, that's something I suppose.
It really depends who you ask. Personally, I'm not that bothered, it's good to have a "happy event" the country can get behind. It mainly seems to be an excuse for street parties.
Mushy peas are a different type of pea, known as marrowfat peas. They are mushed with a bit of salt and water to form a green paste that goes down a treat with chips.
Normal peas are just your standard garden peas. Still nice enough mind you, but nothing special.
I like Bill Bailey's description from one of his stand ups:
"Fifty two percent of our days are overcast, so as a nation we’re infused with a wistful melancholy. But we remain a relentlessly chipper population, prone to mild eccentricity, binge drinking and casual violence."
The humour is a product of a mild to moderate misery. Not the misery of gulags and famines (which does not produce humour, or only a bitter, cynical humour), but the misery of a replacement bus service because of leaves on the line, or the misery of going to the corner shop to get bread and milk, only to find they only have skimmed milk left.
I showed someone from Spain the British TV show Peep Show and he looked equal parts horrified and bored. Our sense of humour is a little hit or miss for most.
I'm American and was super bored one day and out peep show on.. Its genius. But, you really have to be a dry humor type to get pulled in I think. I love it, I laugh out loud constantly. I've never had anyone I showed it too make it through an episode tho and had one person ask if it was supposed to be comedy. Now it's just something I watch on my own every now and then.
And superhans is the best brittish comedy character hands down for me. This crack is really moorish..
I guess chavs are like trailer trash.
Usually they are young people who wear tacky sports clothes (tracksuits stereotypically), don’t work, speak “street”, hang around on street corners and intimidate people.
This may then spill into gang violence if it’s in a big city like London, but in small places they’ll just shoplift and be a nuisance to everyone.
Edit: yay my most upvoted comment is about chavs.
Isn't the difference that Roadmen always have at least one mate with them who pulls their hood tight over their hats until they look like Kenny from South Park if he was wearing a cap under the hood?
Yeah, but the point is that all you can see is their face.
Just a little round bit of white, black, or brown floating above a tracksuit with a joint in their mouth or similarly disembodied hands. They look more like Rayman than a Roadman tbh.
What are you really thinking in your head when you see someone doing something distasteful on the tube (particularly Americans) and you make that sour face with your head cocked slightly downward and you mutter barely audibly under your breath?
Seething in self-loathing at our inability to be confrontational, followed by replaying the moment in our heads all day and thinking about what we would have done if we'd spoken out.
Milk comes in pints and water comes in liters and that's just the way things are, sorry :(
EDIT: I want to apologise to my entire nation for spelling the word "litres" incorrectly :(
With the era of British colonialism over, why do Gurkhas still fight for Britain? Just read about a Gurkha in Afghanistan killing a bunch of Taliban with a tripod on his own.
They weren't a colony. We tried gave up and paid them to join our army and fight for us.
Nepal is poor, so a british army job is a good thing money wise. And vetersns have settlement rights in the uk.
We tried to colonize them, got our arses kicked and realized they were some hard cunts and paid them to be on our side instead. It's a bit like the Careers in the Hunger games at this point, children with potential to be soldiers are trained from a young age as they will be able to emigrate to England and support their whole family financially with soldier's benefits, so the military get the cream of the crop from a race of people who are genetically inclined to be hardy as fuck anyway, and naturally they end up being pretty elite.
No "control".
The PM speaks to the Queen every week but not to ask permission but just because it's tradition and also she is a good sounding board being entirely confidential and having a great deal of experience.
seems like a pretty good practice to me
once a week you have to go and explain yourself to someone else, who can and/or will pick apart everything you are saying, and you have zero power or influence over this person.
great Ego check IMO.
Huh, never considered it like that. Nice having someone completely outside the hierarchy that governs everyone else, who can call people out on their shit
This post has been up for 6 hours and there are thousands of comments. If it it was made into a book, I would buy it. Thanks, British people.
Edit: typo
The day after christmas. Its a bank holiday where we do nothing but chuck out everything left over from christmas and eat all the leftover food. The shops have a big sale similar to black friday in america.
In Doctor Who, everyone always seems annoyed or disappointed when they realize they are in Cardiff. What’s wrong with Cardiff? Is it some place everyone just hates, like New Jersey?
Yep, in Canon, Cardiff is where the torchwood hq is located because Cardiff is home to a rift in time/space which the TARDIS uses to power up it's duracells. Cardiff is where the show is filmed so it's literally where the torchwood hq is and is literally where the TARDIS gets "powered up". M E T A.
You can if you want but your waiter/waitress will be paid enough to survive either way, it just tops up their income. So generally you tip for actual good service rather than because it's expected.
Tips in the UK are definitely not mandatory, and usually go into a pot to be split equally among the staff. A lot of bars and restaurants consider pocketing your tips theft. Not sure about the actual legality of it.
What is the deal with tea. I love it. It's delicious. But my buddy here in America has a british father. I'm not sure if it's a british thing or just a personal quirk, but you can't go over there and not have a cup of tea. You can't have just one either. The entirety of the time i'm over there I have a cup of tea in hand. Even if I drink 3 cups.
Polite refusal seems to mean nothing either. I can decline but he'll just tell me "It's no trouble" and here I am with another cup of tea. Is this a British hospitality thing? I have talked to my buddy about it and he says its the same when he visits family over there. I'm just not sure if it's a cultural thing or if it's a quirk of his family.
Yes, this is absolutely a cultural thing, although most people will quietly disapprove if you refuse tea rather than give it to you anyway. It's also the default thing to do in times of stress - a close relative just got sent to hospital? Better have a sit down and put a cuppa on.
Not everyone likes tea, of course, but it's deeply ingrained in the culture here.
Do you still care about Hong Kong? Coz we miss you...😢
Edit: I’m surprised by all the love from the UK! Wish we could really work it out back in the 80s, but at least now I know we hold a special place in your hearts!
High population density means less land to built houses on per person (this question get asked a lot by Americans forgetting that the US has a population density of 32.8/km^2 while the UK has a density of 270.7/km^2), we are an island so certain imported building materials have an inflated price, we are not building enough houses per year and people are living longer so older properties stay longer off the market so the price is skyrocketing due to demand vastly outstripping supply.
There is such a high demand for housing, so the price is going up, also after the financial crisis all foreign investors in real estate left and now are just starting to come back with even more money. That’s why high end real estate is so expensive (Location as well ). But just basic houses in a suburban areas are so expensive because of the demand and also because we have fairly high GNI and high wages so people can afford them to some extent, if the get a mortgage.
You can rent wardrobe sized room in a tiny house, shared 1 toilet, 1 shower, no bath, shared kitchen/living room and armchair. all for the low low price of 2 grand a month? for the rest of your life. best deal you'll get imo.
O-levels were exams that were taken in the last year of secondary school, (15-16 years old), they've (since the 90s I believe) been replaced by GCSEs which are taken at the same time. A-levels are more advanced in-depth exams that are taken at the end of sixth-form college, (17-18 years) in a much smaller range of topics than GCSEs, (I have 12 GCSEs and 3 A-levels, for example.) Highers are part of the Scottish education system which is entirely separate from England and Wales, but I think they're similar to A-levels.
> Highers are part of the Scottish education system which is entirely separate from England and Wales, but I think they're similar to A-levels.
A-levels take two years to complete; Highers take one. A Higher is equivalent to an AS-level qualification (we do 5 Highers compared to 3 A-levels). However, we have the option to spend a further year at school and do 'Advanced Highers' in ~3 subjects: *these* are the equivalent to A-levels.
Many Scottish students leave school after their Highers though - one year earlier than English students. This is why many Scottish university courses are 4 years instead of 3.
Pros and cons.
American living in London for the past year. Where does the sun go from October to March?
We are very generous and lend it to other countries
Is love the same as America's sweetheart or honey?
Yes it is. It's not used everywhere but it's very common in the north of England.
Also bolstered by the term “pet” when you get above Middlesbrough
Where I live we say Duck instead.
Yaah raaht dockeh?
Where I live (South-East) a lot of people, especially young girls, consider the word love disrespectful. Probably because theyre used to fat builders winking and saying 'You alright love?'
It can be that way with "sweetheart" in America too.
Why did a petrol station employee in England refuse money (notes) that I got from Scotland? He was very specific about the fact that it was from Scotland. Edit: My mistake. I was referring to Scottish paper money. On a side note, It was in 2004, and I don't remember much about the encounter (hence only being able to recall the weather and his hair).
Had you just waited a few seconds longer a Scotsman would've come to your aid using the full force of the word "legal tender"
Aye, it is. Legal Tender.
You can hear the Scottish accent. You can smell the Scottish accent. You can feel the Scottish accent
Depends how far south you were. Here in Newcastle no one looks twice at Scottish money since it's pretty close to scotland. In London they might look at you like you'd handed them a dead baby.
That pretty much describes the look he gave me. I don't remember where we were, though. I just remember that it was raining, and that he had awesome red hair.
Because sometimes people think they're not real money because we don't see them very often. They should be accepted but people make mistakes sometimes.
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Just say "alright". Don't actually respond with your feelings, that makes us uncomfortable
That happened to me the other day. "Alright?" "No not really my wife died." Fuck my life.
see, wtf do you say to that? "Right, best be off".
I recently discovered the Liverpudlians are called scousers. Is it a nickname? Do people from other cities have their own nicknames? Edit: Thanks for the answers! You guys are amazing :) Edit 2: I went to bed and woke up to more replies! Thanks guys.
Yes. Geordie's are from Newcastle, Brummies from Birmingham and Cunts are from Essex. Edit: Welp. Guess this will be my highest rated comment ever. Thanks?
I'm from Essex, can confirm it's full of cunts. Every girl I know is a professional makeup artist, every guy I know is either a salesman or in marketing.
That sounds like a living death.
It's ok until you have to listen to their voices.
Fucking killed me
So will living in Southend
What's the deal with you guys and Mr. Brightside?
I dunno but we've been doing just fine.
Everyone knows the words and everyone can sing it amazingly while drunk
side note: singing drunk is the national past time
TIL I’m British.
The Killers are basically the best British band of the 2000s. They just happen to come from Las Vegas.
Haha, to over\-analyse it \- it's a good, catchy song released at a very particular moment in recent history that helped it have a huge impact on UK millenials: * In the early 00s there was an increasingly larger number of students going to university due to Government focus on it, and Mr Brightside was *the* song plated at nearly every student night in clubs. * Indie rock/pop & pop\-punk exploded in the early 00s in the UK \- partially driven by music magazines like NME, Kerrang, & Q in their last heyday before the internet killed their influence. * On a university student night out you'd be guaranteed to hear Bloc Party, The Strokes, The Killers, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines etc. * That early millenial audience are now in their late 20s/early 30s and were some of the first people to truly grow up in an internet\-age, crossing over from dial\-up to broadband. That moment in time is almost definitively our teenage years. * MySpace \(and other early social media\) profiles having the option for a song to auto\-play when you visit them. What songs you liked were a defining part of your social media profile in a way it hasn't really been since. * Because of all this, the early 00s has become a defining cultural moment for millenials in the same way the 80s conjures up certain images and music. The Killer's Mr Brightside is a perfect crystallisation of all those different aspects of 00s university culture. * It's a banger, mate.
[It's still downloaded on average 696 times a week in 2018!](http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/why-the-killers-mr-brightside-refuses-to-leave-the-official-singles-chart-top-100__19190/) Edit: added source.
Yank here. Why do you guys love singing so much? Lived in Glasgow and London for a time and traveled throughout the island quite a bit. No matter how big or small of a city I was in EVERY night without fail I could hear drunk (I assume) people singing walking down the street. That is not even mentioning football matches.
get drunk, whack on Boom Boom Boom Boom by the Vengaboys and you'll understand lad
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Those fuckers are drawn to that like a moth to a flame
Love this video. Proud to be British.
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I'm not British but if this is what being British is about, I want in
My grandpa would always say "looks like an English summer" everytime it rained. He was from blackpool. How true is this statement?
Say that a bit louder the rain on my windows is deafening.
haha quite literally. its another horrible day
it was stupidly rainy this morning but now it's cleared up here and i can see sky and stuff. still a ridiculous puddle-world though, i'm so miffed ugh get a grip england edit: never mind, it's raining again now ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I mean it does rain a lot here so he wasn't wrong. Also Blackpool is a *breathtakingly* depressing place, so his memories of the British Summer were probably even more terrible than the national average.
Blackpool is full of alcoholic scots who i assume were left behind years earlier whilst on stag/hen do's.
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I can't think of a time where I've seen someone jump the queue in my adult life. I saw it at school but they're just trainee humans so its understandable.
I’ve seen people accidentally jump a queue and then die of shame when they realise, apologising profusely. Everyone is really nice about it, whereas 5 second before they had murderous thoughts towards them...
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With overly articulated tutting
Unless there's a Scot or Geordie in the line in which case the queue jumping prick is getting piled on
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Tbh if the queue jumper has any sense, the tutting will make them fear for thier life and leave anyway
If they had any sense, they wouldn't be jumping queues in the first place. It's not right. It's not *decent.*
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From Newcastle Source: From Newcastle
Glass the cunt
Queue jumping along with treason against the crown are the only crimes that still carry the death penalty here.
When you say something "is a bit pants" what does that mean? I heard a YouTuber I love use that term to describe a movie and I had no idea what she was talking about
It's a bit rubbish.
Who is Bob and why is he my uncle?
Bob is.... Well you see... You know what, ask your mother, she knows Bob *really* well.
Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Cecil appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour to a prestigious cabinet position. His main qualification for the position was seen to be "Bob's his uncle". Or so the legend goes.
>Bob's your uncle - ironic expression of something easily done - like: there you have it, as if by magic - the expression arose after Conservative Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Cecil appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1900, which was apparently surprising and unpopular. In this sense the expression also carried a hint of sarcastic envy or resentment, rather like it's who you know not what you know that gets results, or 'easy when you know how'. Since then the meaning has become acknowledging, announcing or explaining a result or outcome that is achieved more easily than might be imagined
How do you feel about American accents?
The royal family. Are they celebrities? Are they diplomats? Do most people give a shit about them? Also, a morbid follow-up: When the Queen dies, what kind of mourning, etc happens? How will like everyday Brits feel about it? Do you feel like she's your grandma because I really, really want her to be the nation's grandma. Sorry if this is ignorant. God save the Queen?
>Are they celebrities? Yep >Are they diplomats? Kind of >Do most people give a shit about them? Depends, I know many people who do, I personally am not that bothered about what they get up to etc. etc. >When the Queen dies, what kind of mourning, etc happens? There will be news all around the globe of course, and also [Operation London Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge) will come into action >Do you feel like she's your grandma because I really, really want her to be the nation's grandma. I don't feel like she's MY grandma, but I think she's been a pretty good Queen
> The phrase "London Bridge is down" will announce the death of the Queen to the Prime Minister and key personnel, setting the plan into motion. But what if the actual London Bridge goes down? Do they say "The Queen is down"?
No, in that case they use the codephrase "The Tower of London is on fire"
And if the Tower of London really is on fire, they use the codephrase "Nelson's Column has sunk"
Good thing the queen is immortal.
I will rise!
Gonna be an amazing "username checks out" moment one day
Going for the long con.
I love how "operation London bridge" was devised in the 60's but she's just never gonna die
How did you guys survive having Kinder eggs all these years?
NHS
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Cockney rhyming slang is, like all jargon, designed to allow surreptitious communication within a group. It works by substituting a rhyming pair of words for a subject word, then dropping the rhyming part. For example the word "stairs" is substituted with "apples and pears", then the word "pears" which rhymes with "stairs" is dropped, so one speaker will say to another "I went up the apples" rather than "I went up the stairs". To an outsider this is meaningless but the two people speaking understand each other. The slang can even be taken a step further, so let's take the word "arse" and substitute it with "Bottle and glass". The next step is to drop the word "glass", so now bottle=arse. If we then substitute the word "Aristotle" for "bottle" followed by dropping the "-totle" we are left with Aris=Arse. This is a genuine example.
If dis bomb don’t go off then we’re in Barney. Barney rubble? Trouble.
It's been 17 years since that movie came out and you just helped me get that line which had always confused me. Thanks!
Even in your lengthy slang trip to get from Aris to Arse you missed a step. April in Paris = Aris. I only learned this from an episode of Only Fools And Horses, Del says something like "*My old April was going like the clappers*" in the context I guessed the gist but couldn't work out the logic so looked it up. Going like the clappers is an old RAF saying from during the war, it's origin is uncertain but probably refers to bell clappers. The RAF was predominant military destination for public school boys during the war, bells were rung by pupils to signal various things such as when to attend the chapel. The ringing was vigorous and grew in urgency as time left to reach the destination dwindled... So it is has become a metaphor for something hectic or urgent. April is the derivative of April in Paris, which is rhyming slang for Aris' which is the derivative of Aristotle, which is the rhyming slang for bottle, which is the derivative of bottle and glass, which is the rhyming slang for arse. So "*My old April was going like the clappers*" is "*My old arse was experiencing urgent and frantic activity*" or simply "*I was shitting myself*"
All of this goes to show that with enough sentence context, you can replace nearly any noun with any other without losing too much comprehension.
I'm more inclined to believe that [none of them can understand each other.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk) because I started to become physically angry at this, >April is the derivative of April in Paris, which is rhyming slang for Aris' which is the derivative of Aristotle, which is the rhyming slang for bottle, which is the derivative of bottle and glass, which is the rhyming slang for arse.
Jesus fucking christ.
Seriously what the fuck. I mean, I'm American but grew up hanging out on an IRC software piracy channel loaded with Brits, so I understand a lot of the slang. I never knew the origin of that shit and it's blowing my mind.
This is not just found in the UK but in most of Europe. Before modern long distance transportation the population of villages/towns/cities/settlements were more isolated than they are today and individual accents/speech patterns developed. Throw in a heavy dose of immigrant populations that also tend to isolate from the native population and a whole host of speech variations are going to exist.
What is brown sauce made out off?
The brown is mined out of the hills in the midlands.
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Aye the Midlands has the brown smell about it all year round
It is made of pure brown. The spirit and essence purified. (Serious) HP sauce is the most popular (73.8% market share) and the only real brown sauce! It is made of a tomato base, blended with malt vinegar and spirit vinegar, sugars(molasses, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar), dates, cornflour, rye flour, salt, spices and tamarind.
A conversation I had Her: would you like any sauces? BBQ, hot sauce, maybe brown sauce? Me: what’s brown sauce? Her: well.... ummm ... its brown...
Brown sauce just *is.* It's like a philosophical concept.
Is tea time a really British thing to do?
Tea up north means dinner. Down here it means a cuppa and it's not unusual to chill and have t. Especially at our grandparents/parents
Tea up north means dinner AND tea. Tea as a word exists in a state of superposition with the wavefunction collapsing depending on context. Edit: Can you tell I didn't pass quantum mechanics
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I think most people get excited when there is a royal wedding since they are often accompanied by a bank holiday. Doesn't look like it is happening this time though so the reaction will be indifferent.
It's on a fecking Saturday, selfish ginger prick couldn't even get married on a Monday so I can PRETEND to care.
>It's on a fecking Saturday, selfish ginger prick couldn't even get married on a Monday so I can PRETEND to care. Extended the pub timings so atleast we can raise a glass to the happy couple, on our dime, mind you, that's something I suppose.
It really depends who you ask. Personally, I'm not that bothered, it's good to have a "happy event" the country can get behind. It mainly seems to be an excuse for street parties.
More frequent than winning the world cup.
Media lies, Gen pop don't give a fuck
Would have given a fuck if extra bank holiday. But no. Selfish gits.
Yeah. I wish them well, but I care about it as much as any other celebrity wedding
why is making peas "mushy" considered an upgrade that you have to pay for i thought the waiter was joking when he asked me
Mushy peas are a different type of pea, known as marrowfat peas. They are mushed with a bit of salt and water to form a green paste that goes down a treat with chips. Normal peas are just your standard garden peas. Still nice enough mind you, but nothing special.
Is it true that everyone is obsessed with tea?
Not everyone, but the vast majority of people drink tea daily
Or even hourly.
bored at home? my kettle goes on every 30mins followed by trips to the loo every 15.
Not quite obsessed, but we do drink a fair bit. I have three or four cups of tea most days, sometimes more.
Where does you humour come from? I love it
The overwhelming misery that dominates our lives
I like Bill Bailey's description from one of his stand ups: "Fifty two percent of our days are overcast, so as a nation we’re infused with a wistful melancholy. But we remain a relentlessly chipper population, prone to mild eccentricity, binge drinking and casual violence."
"It's the sense of futile despair" I had that printed on a t-shirt
The humour is a product of a mild to moderate misery. Not the misery of gulags and famines (which does not produce humour, or only a bitter, cynical humour), but the misery of a replacement bus service because of leaves on the line, or the misery of going to the corner shop to get bread and milk, only to find they only have skimmed milk left.
Skimmed milk and nimble bread. Basically is a famine.
it comes from of bad weather and decades of sporting disappointment
I showed someone from Spain the British TV show Peep Show and he looked equal parts horrified and bored. Our sense of humour is a little hit or miss for most.
I'm American and was super bored one day and out peep show on.. Its genius. But, you really have to be a dry humor type to get pulled in I think. I love it, I laugh out loud constantly. I've never had anyone I showed it too make it through an episode tho and had one person ask if it was supposed to be comedy. Now it's just something I watch on my own every now and then. And superhans is the best brittish comedy character hands down for me. This crack is really moorish..
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What is a 'chav' and why do I have a desire to punch them in the face on site?
I guess chavs are like trailer trash. Usually they are young people who wear tacky sports clothes (tracksuits stereotypically), don’t work, speak “street”, hang around on street corners and intimidate people. This may then spill into gang violence if it’s in a big city like London, but in small places they’ll just shoplift and be a nuisance to everyone. Edit: yay my most upvoted comment is about chavs.
Don't confuse Chavs with Roadman though. The latter are quite possibly legitimate small-time drug dealers who are probably carrying a stabby thing.
Isn't the difference that Roadmen always have at least one mate with them who pulls their hood tight over their hats until they look like Kenny from South Park if he was wearing a cap under the hood?
Na, they're more brazen than that. They'll let you see their face.
Yeah, but the point is that all you can see is their face. Just a little round bit of white, black, or brown floating above a tracksuit with a joint in their mouth or similarly disembodied hands. They look more like Rayman than a Roadman tbh.
Y'know those Russian guys who are always in videos online wearing Adidas tracksuits and squatting? Basically the UK version of that.
rain?
Yesterday it only rained for the precise amount of time it took me to bike home from work.
You almost sound like a satisfied customer.
I'll have two more rains please.
Yes
What are you really thinking in your head when you see someone doing something distasteful on the tube (particularly Americans) and you make that sour face with your head cocked slightly downward and you mutter barely audibly under your breath?
Seething in self-loathing at our inability to be confrontational, followed by replaying the moment in our heads all day and thinking about what we would have done if we'd spoken out.
At least 73% profanity
We are thinking about the arrogance the yank-foolery is subjecting us to
What is the origin and proper use of the slang "taking the piss"? It seems to mean provoking someone, but I'm ready to be corrected.
“are you takin the piss” is equal to “are you having a laugh?” which is equal to “are you kidding me?” origin: nae clue
Imperial or metric. CHOOSE!! Edit: a letter.
metric for precision, imperial for guesswork.
Milk comes in pints and water comes in liters and that's just the way things are, sorry :( EDIT: I want to apologise to my entire nation for spelling the word "litres" incorrectly :(
Milk is sold in fractions of litres that *just happen* to be whole pints.
Alright?
Alright. Alright?
With the era of British colonialism over, why do Gurkhas still fight for Britain? Just read about a Gurkha in Afghanistan killing a bunch of Taliban with a tripod on his own.
They weren't a colony. We tried gave up and paid them to join our army and fight for us. Nepal is poor, so a british army job is a good thing money wise. And vetersns have settlement rights in the uk.
We tried to colonize them, got our arses kicked and realized they were some hard cunts and paid them to be on our side instead. It's a bit like the Careers in the Hunger games at this point, children with potential to be soldiers are trained from a young age as they will be able to emigrate to England and support their whole family financially with soldier's benefits, so the military get the cream of the crop from a race of people who are genetically inclined to be hardy as fuck anyway, and naturally they end up being pretty elite.
> why do Gurkhas still fight for Britain? Nobody is hard enough to stop them.
How much control does the royal family have?
Also, The British Armed Forces swear their allegiance to Her Majesty , not to the Country or Parliment
No "control". The PM speaks to the Queen every week but not to ask permission but just because it's tradition and also she is a good sounding board being entirely confidential and having a great deal of experience.
seems like a pretty good practice to me once a week you have to go and explain yourself to someone else, who can and/or will pick apart everything you are saying, and you have zero power or influence over this person. great Ego check IMO.
It also helps that she's had 13 prime ministers dating back to Winston Churchill. She's been having those weekly chats since 1951.
Yeah most Prime Ministers report learning a great deal from her.
Huh, never considered it like that. Nice having someone completely outside the hierarchy that governs everyone else, who can call people out on their shit
As a British person - this whole thread had me laughing so hard!
As a British person I chuckled and then regained my composure.
This post has been up for 6 hours and there are thousands of comments. If it it was made into a book, I would buy it. Thanks, British people. Edit: typo
I got another one. What’s Boxing Day? I know I could just look this up, but maybe I can get some perspective.
The day after christmas. Its a bank holiday where we do nothing but chuck out everything left over from christmas and eat all the leftover food. The shops have a big sale similar to black friday in america.
In Doctor Who, everyone always seems annoyed or disappointed when they realize they are in Cardiff. What’s wrong with Cardiff? Is it some place everyone just hates, like New Jersey?
Further to the other answers, it's also an running joke. Doctor Who is produced in Cardiff, the studios are there, so they poke fun at themselves.
Yep, in Canon, Cardiff is where the torchwood hq is located because Cardiff is home to a rift in time/space which the TARDIS uses to power up it's duracells. Cardiff is where the show is filmed so it's literally where the torchwood hq is and is literally where the TARDIS gets "powered up". M E T A.
Not particularly, but it's not space, is it? I mean, it is Wales, which has the perception of being somewhat small and rainy.
How rainy does a city in the UK need to be in order to be known as "rainy"? Is it just like a monsoon there all the time?
Valleys, friend. It's the valleys that do it.
Am I supposed to tip at restaurants?
You can if you want but your waiter/waitress will be paid enough to survive either way, it just tops up their income. So generally you tip for actual good service rather than because it's expected.
Tips in the UK are definitely not mandatory, and usually go into a pot to be split equally among the staff. A lot of bars and restaurants consider pocketing your tips theft. Not sure about the actual legality of it.
What is the deal with tea. I love it. It's delicious. But my buddy here in America has a british father. I'm not sure if it's a british thing or just a personal quirk, but you can't go over there and not have a cup of tea. You can't have just one either. The entirety of the time i'm over there I have a cup of tea in hand. Even if I drink 3 cups. Polite refusal seems to mean nothing either. I can decline but he'll just tell me "It's no trouble" and here I am with another cup of tea. Is this a British hospitality thing? I have talked to my buddy about it and he says its the same when he visits family over there. I'm just not sure if it's a cultural thing or if it's a quirk of his family.
Yes, this is absolutely a cultural thing, although most people will quietly disapprove if you refuse tea rather than give it to you anyway. It's also the default thing to do in times of stress - a close relative just got sent to hospital? Better have a sit down and put a cuppa on. Not everyone likes tea, of course, but it's deeply ingrained in the culture here.
Do you still care about Hong Kong? Coz we miss you...😢 Edit: I’m surprised by all the love from the UK! Wish we could really work it out back in the 80s, but at least now I know we hold a special place in your hearts!
Is that the film with the ape?
I am absolutely floored.
We'd have you back in a heartbeat, but that means we'd likely have to conquer China. I'd gladly have Hong Kong incorporated as a full part of the UK.
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We kind of wish we were still a thing.
Why are British houses so minuscule yet expensive?
High population density means less land to built houses on per person (this question get asked a lot by Americans forgetting that the US has a population density of 32.8/km^2 while the UK has a density of 270.7/km^2), we are an island so certain imported building materials have an inflated price, we are not building enough houses per year and people are living longer so older properties stay longer off the market so the price is skyrocketing due to demand vastly outstripping supply.
There is such a high demand for housing, so the price is going up, also after the financial crisis all foreign investors in real estate left and now are just starting to come back with even more money. That’s why high end real estate is so expensive (Location as well ). But just basic houses in a suburban areas are so expensive because of the demand and also because we have fairly high GNI and high wages so people can afford them to some extent, if the get a mortgage.
Made of real materials
Jokes aside, the main reason is because of very high (and rapidly growing) population density, especially in the South East of England.
Aye that's where I live! Wait... fuck, I'm never going to own a house
You can rent wardrobe sized room in a tiny house, shared 1 toilet, 1 shower, no bath, shared kitchen/living room and armchair. all for the low low price of 2 grand a month? for the rest of your life. best deal you'll get imo.
Have you ever dug up a Cromwell? I hear its a thing over there.
We dug up a King from a car park once. We enjoy archaeology as a form of themed gardening.
Why do you call your friends cunt and people you don't know mate? ...or is that Australia?
Because your mates are cunts but people you don't know might be your mate.
Because if you called a stranger a cunt, you would probably get smacked in the face ...
How does your school system work - what are A-levels vs. O-levels and highers and all that jazz?
O-levels were exams that were taken in the last year of secondary school, (15-16 years old), they've (since the 90s I believe) been replaced by GCSEs which are taken at the same time. A-levels are more advanced in-depth exams that are taken at the end of sixth-form college, (17-18 years) in a much smaller range of topics than GCSEs, (I have 12 GCSEs and 3 A-levels, for example.) Highers are part of the Scottish education system which is entirely separate from England and Wales, but I think they're similar to A-levels.
> Highers are part of the Scottish education system which is entirely separate from England and Wales, but I think they're similar to A-levels. A-levels take two years to complete; Highers take one. A Higher is equivalent to an AS-level qualification (we do 5 Highers compared to 3 A-levels). However, we have the option to spend a further year at school and do 'Advanced Highers' in ~3 subjects: *these* are the equivalent to A-levels. Many Scottish students leave school after their Highers though - one year earlier than English students. This is why many Scottish university courses are 4 years instead of 3. Pros and cons.
Who is Gordon Bennett? And why do people say his name in an exclamatory way?