191
Linguistic differences 19th Century History (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/historymemes@piefed.social
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

We call fries fries, we just don't call chips fries. It's useful to have a distinction between thin-cut and thick-cut potato rectangles.

Likewise, we call cookies cookies but we're don't call biscuits cookies. (And we don't call American biscuits anything, they're a total mystery to us.)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Now do jail/gaol.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Sure. We call jail jail.

    Both the US and the UK have at times used "gaol" in our histories, but it's super archaic in both places. You might be thinking of one of the other 57 countries for which English is an official language?

    (You're probably thinking of Australia, but they also generally only use "gaol" in a historic context, even though it's retained in some place names with that spelling.)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent