Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

1969799101102119

Comments

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    A bakery of my youth had emblazoned on its vans - 'Famous for Baps'. The Belfast Bap is a fearsome thing; the size of half a loaf, crusty and filled with fried things (The Pan being the other Ulster culinary mainstay).
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Teacake, yes, but it may be a different beast. Cob at bread shops.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Huffkin, Kentish bap, or bap of Kent, distinguished by a thumbed depression in the middle.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited January 20
    Enoch wrote: »
    The one clear and sensible conclusion to draw from this is that if you live in the Anglophone world, whoever or wherever you are, if you talk to someone from a different part of that world about a garden or a yard, the other person will get the wrong end of the stick. They will assume you mean something different from what you think you are talking about.

    Except that Australians, in our usual bidialect way, will probably quite happily use either 'garden' or 'yard' to mean much the same thing. Only half-satisfying both Brits and Americans.

    EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
  • Not forgetting that "baps" can also be used as a euphemism for someone's breasts.
  • Herb has a voiced h whether the name or some plant stuff. Said "erb" grates on my ears.
    The plants are “erbs” here (American South)—the h is not voiced, and it’s the voiced h that sounds very odd to my ears.

    As I understand it, the voiced h is the more recent pronunciation, the word having come into English through French. My understanding is that the shift to a voiced h in British pronunciation happened in the 19th Century, so this is an instance where the American usage is the older one. Perhaps Canadians get a mix of the two?

  • We usually say erbs as a joke. But in my defence, I did have an American wife several centuries ago.
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Not forgetting that "baps" can also be used as a euphemism for someone's breasts.

    Can they? You learn something new every day :astonished:

    In the North East of England they also have stotties, which are the size of a medium dinner plate.
  • Karl mentioned oven bottom cakes, well, round Manchester you get oven bottom muffins, baked at the bottom of the commercial oven, quite large and flat, and delicious. Some big companies try to make them, horrible.
  • edited January 20
    I've no idea what a teacake and a fair number of these other things are. We get:
    -buns (usually for putting something in, like a hamburger patty),
    -rolls (smaller and not sweet, intended to be eaten along with other food)
    -doughnuts
    -muffins
    -English muffins, which may actually not be English, don't know (thinking french fries, which are frenched potatoes not from France)
    - things that are distinctly unmemorable, like scones
    -various flat breads, like nan, tortillas, pitas and thicker ones like bannock.
    -various other things which would have another word in front, e.g., cinnamon buns. Which is actually a roll of dough with cinnamon and brown sugar.

    (not suggesting this is exhaustive, but it may be close?)
  • In my part of the world (American South), a tea cake is a kind of cookie. Tea cakes have always been a standard Christmas cookie in my family.

  • Dafyd wrote: »
    But I believe most UK people would have trouble sort out regional distinctions between baps, rolls, etc.

    Yes - words for bread products are very regional, and there can be fierce arguments about what defines each particular product.

    Personally, I'd expect a bap to be large, fairly flat, and probably floury, whereas a roll is smaller and probably not floury. A bun is definitely sweet (and might be a sticky bun if it's got icing on it).

    Baps are also, of course, one of the many slang terms for female breasts.
  • I have never heard the anatomy definition for bap either. Breasts normally. Tits in less formal company and depending on how said, rude.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    A teacake in my usage is a large bun in which somebody has put insufficient currants et al.
    The US usage in which a muffin is an oversized cupcake has made inroads via coffee shops, but a proper muffin is a flat circular roll meant to be cut in half and toasted. (I have heard conflicting rumours on whether it is or isn't the same as an English muffin.)
    A scone is a tallish sweetish bread product often with either cheese (why?) or currants. It is raised, but unpleasantly dry unless used as an excuse for eating jam and clotted cream, which is its real purpose.
  • I have never heard the anatomy definition for bap either. Breasts normally. Tits in less formal company and depending on how said, rude.

    There are a huge number of slang terms for breasts, many of which found frequent use by the comedians of a generation ago. I'm quite certain that, for example, Ronnie Barker as Arkwright in "Open all Hours" made any number of "nice baps" jokes whilst clutching bread products.

    I think "baps" has a little of an air of lads in the pub talking about particular women with "massive baps" to it, and carries the implication that the breasts in question are of above average size. Whether it's more or less rude than "tits" is rather context-dependent.

    (At the more polite end of the spectrum, boobs and boobies are common, and significantly more polite that tits. Very few people say "bosom" any more.)
  • I have never heard the anatomy definition for bap either. Breasts normally. Tits in less formal company and depending on how said, rude.

    On the euphemistic scale, baps is towards the "inoffensive" end, similar to boobs. It's the kind of thing women might say to their friends: "Hey! Your baps are looking good today!"
  • Stotties are, apparently, similar to the sort of bread the Romans might have eaten at the east end of Hadrian's Wall, where they are to be found. The pubs between Sunderland and Newcastle serve filled stotties as their sandwich equivalent. Personally I suspect that the flour would have been just a tad more wholemeal than any I ate in the region, but that's just me carping.

    @Dafyd cheese scones are for eating with soup or a savoury dish. You can have my share of the sultana version, but the local Tesco's occasionally sell cherry scones and them I like. I'd agree the plain is only worth eating with cream and jam (or jam and cream).

    Did anyone add butty to the bread options? Chip or crisp butties are a standard in some areas.
  • Stotting is what antelope do. They stott by jumping in the air. Pronghorn, native the the Canadian prairies will stott.

    What is "butty". Is it butter?

    Do you eat bannock? Fried baking powder dough flatbread. I make it periodically at home, it's a staple on canoe trips cooked over a fire. You can put it around a fat stick and roast it too.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited January 20
    A butty is a sandwich.

    A chip butty is therefore chips (UK sense) in a sandwich, preferably a breadcake/cob/balm.

    I live about six miles south of the cob/breadcake isogloss.
  • Why would anyone want potatoes in a sandwich? Very strange. A cob means a corn cob to me. Balm is a lotion. Breadcake?
  • Why would anyone want potatoes in a sandwich?

    'cause chips go with everything. They've got to be proper chunky chips, though - not the spindly things that McDonalds sells. You've probably never had a crisp sandwich either.

  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Is it ‘balm’ or ‘barm’?
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Why would anyone want potatoes in a sandwich?

    Thick, hot chips with salt and vinegar on a slice of dense white bread and a layer of cold butter deep enough to show the teeth marks. What's not to like?

    And paps rather than baps. You don't hear reference to the Baps of Jura.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Barm being yeast.
    Teacakes are a sweet dough flattish bun with dried fruit. They are intended to be split open, toasted and buttered. Possibly then having jam on, but we never did.
    Crumpets are made from a yeasted batter cooked in a ring on a griddle. Bubbles form and rise up forming tubes through the structure. They are later toasted and buttered - the butter running down into the tubes. Like muffins (our sort), they used to be toasted on a toasting fork against an open fire. Now, under the grill. Muffins were split before toasting.
    I would class any bread product used for holding a burger as more like a roll than a bun - buns being made from sweet dough in my life experience.
    I haven't see a bridge roll for ages. They were small, about 3 inches long, and narrow, like mini sub rolls, and used as party food with interesting (?) toppings.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Not in my area there are thin things like crumpets called pikelets.
    Scones are a baking powder raised dough, made with a very light hand, cut out of rolled dough, about an inch thick, and cooked quickly. They should be eaten the day of baking, still warm, buttered and jammed, and if possible clotted creamed. Unless made with a cheese dough. Shop scones are bigger and do not go dry and inedible quickly. I gather that scones are what are called biscuits in America. Scone dough can be used as a topping of a meat dish, if savoury, or of a fruit filling is with sugar. These dishes are called cobblers.*
    There are other teacakes, nothing whatever to do with yeast. They are a biscuit - a flat dry cookie - on which is a dab of jam and a dome of marshmallow, the whole thing then coated in chocolate. In a factory.
    *Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.
  • Welsh cakes. With currants and a little sugar in top for tea. Withou currants, sorinkled with salt and eaten alone or part of a "proper" breakfast - delicious.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Why would anyone want potatoes in a sandwich? Very strange. A cob means a corn cob to me. Balm is a lotion. Breadcake?

    If you'd been paying attention you'd know a cob is a bread roll.

    Why wouldn't you want chips in a sandwich?
  • (At the more polite end of the spectrum, boobs and boobies are common, and significantly more polite that tits. Very few people say "bosom" any more.)

    Boobs and boobies are common here, also. Most post-pubescent women have them to some degree or other.
  • Embonpoint.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.

    Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".
  • Stotting is what antelope do. They stott by jumping in the air. Pronghorn, native the the Canadian prairies will stott.

    What is "butty". Is it butter?

    Do you eat bannock? Fried baking powder dough flatbread. I make it periodically at home, it's a staple on canoe trips cooked over a fire. You can put it around a fat stick and roast it too.

    Bannock is definitely a North American thing. Never came across it in the UK.

    The best bannock I have had was at a little First Nations cafe in West Kelowna. It was so good, Mrs Claypool and I went many miles out of our way to make a return visit.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I have read a Scottish folk story in which the heroine entreats her mother to bake her a bannock... I thought it was Scottish.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    Selkirk bannock is, a sweet yeasted dough with fruit. Delicious. We had some at Christmas, sliced, toasted and buttered.

    I bow to the authority of any Scots on board, though.

    MMM
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    My understanding was that a bannock is a form of unleavened oat bread. The OED says barley, pease, or maybe wheat in Scotland, but possibly oats in northern England (thicker and softer than oatcake in both instances). It then adds that local usage varies.
  • There is Selkirk Bannock which is rich with dried fruit, and is baked in an oven.
    But ordinary bannock was what my grandmother was brought up on. No oven in the working poor family’s house (her father was a coachman, her mother gatekeeper, for a small estate in Fife) and so the “bread” was bannock which is a kind of scone, but not made with expensive ingredients like egg and sugar, and is baked on a girdle (English say griddle) over the fire.
    Because she was proud of “bettering” herself Granny would never make bannocks for her family. But her girdle scones were the best in the world.
  • edited January 20
    My bannock is 1 tsp baking powder per 1 cup flour. 1 tsp of a fat (oil or butter) per cup of flour. That's it. Water to make a dough you can handle. squish out into rounds (say 3, 4 , 5, or 6 inches, fry at 3/10.

    Everything else optional: Oat flakes, seeds or nuts, raisins, spices like cinnamon, sugar, salt., chili or curry powder. Or another direction is cheese. Basically what you've got on hand.
    Childhood memories of frying up a can of Tulip (1 lb of bacon) and then deep frying bannock in the grease. Sets up a day of high intensity activity in the snow.

    We have the understanding that the fur traders modified it from the Scots and French. iIdigenous peoples, plus French and Scots* - combined cultures and languages to become the Métis nation in Canada (said may-tee; languages Bungi and Michif), which are legally recognized (to a degree, e.g., hunting and fishing rights) . Bannock is traditional fare.


    *Scots re fur trading, Canada and Métis. Had the understanding that it was mostly from Orkney as the thought was that the people from there were already weather tolerant.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    I gather that scones are what are called biscuits in America.
    Similar, but not quite the same. Scones, at least in my experience, are a bit richer. Biscuits are generally neither particularly sweet or savory, though sometimes you’ll have cheese biscuits. Fruit is rarely baked into the biscuit, though I have encountered blueberries or raisins in biscuits. But usually a biscuit is a vehicle for other sweet or savory things, or at least for butter.

  • Ain't no bannocks in these parts (Pacific Northwest). Proper biscuits are made with very soft flour, lard, buttermilk, and leavening, and float off the plate. Nothing I've ever had that was called a scone floats. Indeed if I dropped one on the floor I would jump backwards for fear of injuring a toe.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    But usually a biscuit is a vehicle for other sweet or savory things, or at least for butter.

    Or gravy.
  • Do you eat bannock? Fried baking powder dough flatbread. I make it periodically at home, it's a staple on canoe trips cooked over a fire. You can put it around a fat stick and roast it too.

    Not done if for ages, not since I was a Girl Guide myself, but that mix I make into a ribbon, twist round a stick and cook over the fire on the stick. And that I call a damper. It's possibly something that could be made to achieve the Backwoods Cooking interest badge nowadays
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    But usually a biscuit is a vehicle for other sweet or savory things, or at least for butter.

    Or gravy.
    Quite true. I was counting gravy—whether sausage or red-eye gravy—as among the savory things biscuits can be a vehicle for.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    British biscuits, British scones,
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited January 20
    American biscuits. And, at least representative of my experience, American scones.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Not forgetting that "baps" can also be used as a euphemism for someone's breasts.

    Can they? You learn something new every day :astonished:

    In the North East of England they also have stotties, which are the size of a medium dinner plate.

    I imagine they would be very difficult to support, and uncomfortable.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    BroJames wrote: »
    Is it ‘balm’ or ‘barm’?

    The bread would be barm, but I've not heard it in use here for 50 years or more. Even then, it was older women in country towns.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.

    The scone we're talking about here has a short "o"; Scone, the town, is pronounced Scown.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Here's one

    If GH can stand for P as in HICCOUGH;
    If OUGH can stand for O as in DOUGH;
    If PHTH can stand for T and in PHTISIS;
    If EIGH can stand for A as in NEIGHBOR;
    If TTE can stand for T as in GAZETTE;
    If EAU can stand for O as in PLATEAU,

    Then the correct way to spell POTATO is

    GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU.

  • john holdingjohn holding Ecclesiantics Host, Mystery Worshipper Host
    Gee D wrote: »
    BroJames wrote: »
    Is it ‘balm’ or ‘barm’?

    The bread would be barm, but I've not heard it in use here for 50 years or more. Even then, it was older women in country towns.

    Ah but if "here" is the Ship, it's not so many years ago that there was a whole thread about barmcakes and where they were to be found.
  • Canned bacon is a thing? !!! ????
  • Canned bacon is a thing? !!! ????

    Packed in pure beautiful white lard. A thing of wonder. Before we knew anything much about nutrition. It was thought you could eat anything if you exercised it off.
Sign In or Register to comment.