30 Things British People Say Vs What We Actually Mean.

[Beowulf]

Honestly, the news out there these days is miserable and this made me laugh so I just thought this was funny and wanted to share. Is it accurate?

Maybe ones can add to the list?

http://www.tickld.com/cdn_image_article/a_739_20140802153425.jpg

[GUT]

I've got a great one somewhere on Australian.

One of my favorites is

Excuse me - means I'm about to rip you a knew ....

'scuse means sorry or may I get past you.


When I was a kid calling some one an "Old Bastard" was a term of mateship, calling them just "A Bastard" was a terrible insult.

[Robert]

Something that Americans always say in films : "Let's get outa here."

Two things that Americans always assume in films :

AMERICAN ON PHONE : Right (hangs up)
He has no means of knowing if the person at the other end had something else to say.

AMERICAN POLICE : (KNOCK ON DOOR AND THEN FIVE SECONDS LATER : "No answer. Let's try round the back")
They have no means of knowing if the person within is asleep, or in the bath, or a slow mover, or simply fed up with answering the door. They simply assume that there's no one in, or the householder has been brutally murdered, or is holed up with a gun ready to stage a siege.

[Ginger]

AMERICAN POLICE : (KNOCK ON DOOR AND THEN FIVE SECONDS LATER : "No answer. Let's try round the back")
They have no means of knowing if the person within is asleep, or in the bath, or a slow mover, or simply fed up with answering the door. They simply assume that there's no one in, or the householder has been brutally murdered, or is holed up with a gun ready to stage a siege.

To be fair, in movies, those assumptions are usually good ones.

[Mayerling]

To be fair, in movies, those assumptions are usually good ones.

That's because in movies the scriptwriter usually can guess that certain actions will be going on in a moment that vindicate the statement being made (or not, depending on how good the scriptwriter is).

Sometimes a line comes out that has portentious entra meaning to the viewer of the films that belatedly occurs to the characters in the movie.

In "Union Pacific" (directed by Cecil B. DeMille) Barbara Stanwyck asks the hero where their friend (I think it is Robert Preston) is. Preston has just been killed by the villain (Brian Donleavy) before Donleavy himself is killed. The hero says with a strain in both his voice and his face: "We'll see him at the end of the line!" Stanwyck suddenly looks at the hero quizzically as the film ends.

An entire course on bad script writing might be based on De Mille's films (even his best, like "The Ten Commandments" with Heston and Brynner). In the film "The Plainsman" (1937), the film begins with a cabinet meeting in the White House on April 14, 1865 and Lincoln (whom we hear but don't see) makes the comment, "As the war is now ending, our next matter of importance is this: The frontier must be secure!" That idiotic comment (this film was made in the 1930s, so the current immigration mess was not on anyone's mind), pursues the characters repeatedly. Gary Cooper (as Wild Bill Hickok) repeats it like a mantra. By the fourth or fifth time I heard it I started thinking, "Yes, and Millard Fillmore feels we should have three square meals a day!!"

Another favorite line of sinister note in westerns or films set in jungles: "It's quiet. Too quiet!!"

Jeff

[Amanda]

Why? ...

Something that Americans always say in films : "Let's get outa here."

Two things that Americans always assume in films :

AMERICAN ON PHONE : Right (hangs up)
He has no means of knowing if the person at the other end had something else to say.

AMERICAN POLICE : (KNOCK ON DOOR AND THEN FIVE SECONDS LATER : "No answer. Let's try round the back")
They have no means of knowing if the person within is asleep, or in the bath, or a slow mover, or simply fed up with answering the door. They simply assume that there's no one in, or the householder has been brutally murdered, or is holed up with a gun ready to stage a siege.

I've always wondered whether Americans saying 'Right' and hanging up is just something in movies or is it the usual custom?
Do Americans say 'goodbye'?
I know us Brits make such a kerfuffle of ending the conversation.

Will share a few sayings used by my other half:

1. Let's open our presents later (meaning : crap I forgot our anniversary and need to dash out & buy something)

2. I cleaned the kitchen this morning (meaning: I emptied the bin)

3. I fed the cat dear (meaning: the little **** was biting my nose at 5am, so I gave him food to get some peace)

4. No I Haven't (meaning: Oops, yes I have)

5. They were nice but.....(meaning : don't ever make me cheese & pickle sandwiches again)

Amanda

[GUT]

I've always wondered whether Americans saying 'Right' and hanging up is just something in movies or is it the usual custom?
Do Americans say 'goodbye'?
I know us Brits make such a kerfuffle of ending the conversation.

Will share a few sayings used by my other half:

1. Let's open our presents later (meaning : crap I forgot our anniversary and need to dash out & buy something)

2. I cleaned the kitchen this morning (meaning: I emptied the bin)

3. I fed the cat dear (meaning: the little **** was biting my nose at 5am, so I gave him food to get some peace)

4. No I Haven't (meaning: Oops, yes I have)

5. They were nice but.....(meaning : don't ever make me cheese & pickle sandwiches again)

Amanda

your other half a very sensible person to me.

[Robert]

Hi Jeff

To be fair to writers, though, isn't it true that a writer's script isn't necessarily his own? He starts with his script, and he ends with someone else's. A writer can put in a script and by the time a director has 'improved' it, perhaps aided by his actors especially if they are superstars, a writer might feel happy just if his name stays on the script so that he'll get paid.

[lynn cates]

agreement

Hello Barbara. Quite. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

We have a way of making 'not bad' have two completely different meanings. If we say 'not bad!' it means 'very good.' But if we say 'not bad' it means 'it's OK, but nothing special.'

[GUT]

We have a way of making 'not bad' have two completely different meanings. If we say 'not bad!' it means 'very good.' But if we say 'not bad' it means 'it's OK, but nothing special.'

Or even not bad, totally rotten.

[Mayerling]

I've always wondered whether Americans saying 'Right' and hanging up is just something in movies or is it the usual custom?
Do Americans say 'goodbye'?
I know us Brits make such a kerfuffle of ending the conversation.

Will share a few sayings used by my other half:


5. They were nice but.....(meaning : don't ever make me cheese & pickle sandwiches again)

Amanda

Hi Amanda,

I know Brits like beans on toast, and I can accept that, but what in heaven's name is cheese & pickle?

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff

To be fair to writers, though, isn't it true that a writer's script isn't necessarily his own? He starts with his script, and he ends with someone else's. A writer can put in a script and by the time a director has 'improved' it, perhaps aided by his actors especially if they are superstars, a writer might feel happy just if his name stays on the script so that he'll get paid.

Hi Robert,

You do have a point. If you peruse movies on the IMDb website you will find many have more than one or two names on them for the screenplays. There was a classic one which was for the 1929 sound version of "The Taming of the Shrew" starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (then married). The credit for the screenplay was something like "William Shakespeare and Sam Katz". It would have surprised Shakespeare (or Bacon or Oxford or Marlowe or whomever it was).

One film I recently looked up is a 1973 version of "Treasure island" that starred Orson Welles as "Long John Silver". The screenplay was originally written by Welles, because back in 1962 or so he signed a contract to star in "Treasure Island" as Silver, using his screenplay (and probably directing). But the funding was not reached so the project got shelved. In 1973 the funding got reached, and Welles was contractually bound to appear in the film. No problem, except that the script was redone (no issue now about him possibly directing the work). He hated it, especially as there were several different voiced editions for Europe, and the actor dubbing him appears to have been a drunk. In the end, Welles got permission to have his name dropped from the credits, and replaced by "O.W. Jeeves", which was a kind of homage to his old friend W.C. Fields, who wrote a screenplay for a comedy as "Mahatma Kane Jeeves". So in the credit no "Orson Welles" appears for the script with the other four names. Just "O.W.Jeeves".

Jeff

[GUT]

Hi Amanda,

I know Brits like beans on toast, and I can accept that, but what in heaven's name is cheese & pickle?

Jeff

Can actually be one of a couple of things:

A slice of cheese, sure even Yanks know what this is? with either and I know POMS people who eat both and call it the same thing [I think it depends on where in UK they are from].

Pickled onion [a bit like cocktail onion but usually a larger onion] sliced up : or

Mustard Pickles [basically a mix of vegetables prepared in a mustard sauce and bottled] also often eaten with meat, both hot and cold, of various types.

A sandwich is two slices of bread, often with butter, with a filing between them [in most places not a roll as Americans seem to often use and still call a sandwich, on a roll you would have a cheese and pickle roll].

[GUT]

Oh and I love baked beans on toast, just my arthritis doesn't.