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English vs English


deanb
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I find my language rubbing off on the side of the UK a wee bit more than usual as of late.

 

I watch too much BBC.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, BBC is just about the only thing I watch these days next to Food/Travel/Discovery Network.

 

Also, Donna Noble is a FAT UGLY COW (whether I'm talking about Catherine Tate is up to you to decide). That is all.

Edited by Pirandello
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I don't think "metro" is an American thing, I've only ever heard it used to describe subterranean train systems in other countries (particularly France). In the US it's just a subway.

 

Everyone in DC calls the DC subway system the Metro. When I moved from there to NYC it took some effort to start saying subway again. Generally, though, DC folks will call NYC's system the subway, Chicago's system the El, and so on.

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Well Chicago's is the El cause large portions of it aren't subways, they're elevated above ground.

 

I didn't mean though that no one in America uses the term "metro", just that that's not a general American term.

 

I always got the impression that here in the States each public transportation system has its own nickname. But I could be wrong. I've only lived in two places with subways.

 

But, yeah; USians may call foreign transit system "metro", but in the states I think it pretty much is limited to the DC system.

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Yeah, I guess what I was really trying to say is that "metro" isn't a generic American term. The generic term in America is subway. If any specific system has a different name than that, it's more of a proper noun, like the El in Chicago.

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Yeah, I guess what I was really trying to say is that "metro" isn't a generic American term. The generic term in America is subway. If any specific system has a different name than that, it's more of a proper noun, like the El in Chicago.

 

I've heard metro applied to public transit as a whole, not just for subways.

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Interesting thread.

 

I'm not a native English speaker, but I use English way more than my own language for writing and even speaking (my job is heavily English-based because most of my clients are foreign). It's funny because I only started speaking English when I was 16, and I learned it by myself because I had a lot of interest in it (blame my interest for American and British music, and English-sung music in general and also the fact that I used to read a lot of GamePro, EGM and other US magazines).

 

And also blame pop culture in general, because my accent is very American oriented. I really like to spot the differences between British, American and other accents such as Jamaican (a really fun version of English to my ears). I admit I had a hard time when I went to England for the first time, because I'm really used to the American accent, but after like 1 hour I was already used to it. It's cool to notice the different expressions used in both "versions" of the language. The same things happens with authentic Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese.

 

That said, one of the things I like the most about the British is their sense of humor and the expressions they use for cursing, which are really funny!

Speaking of differences between Portuguese. This Portuguese lady was saying that she fell on her Cu the other day and it was hurting. Well that means dick in Brazilian Portuguese so we were laughing pretty hard afterward.

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