4 Ways American English is Pretty Weird | PART 1 

Use code lostinthepond at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: incogni.com/lostinthepond

English is three languages in a trench coat.

As an American, I think "I could care less" was supposed to be used sarcastically, but then a lot of people forgot/missed that particular memo.

FUN FACT: The words crayfish and crawfish came from French! In Standard French, the word for crayfish is écrevisse and is pronounced Eh-CRAY-veese, thus we get CRAY-fish in English. However, in the Deep South in Louisiana the French Speaking Cajuns spoke a different dialect of French that had a Southern Drawl and pronounced it more like eh-CRAW-veese thus we got CRAW-fish in Southern American English.

Only British readers will find this interesting... back in 1995 I had a roommate from the UK for a few months. As it happened, I had a sports car that was missing a piece of plastic from the fan- switch assembly which looked bad in an otherwise pristine car. So I stopped by the Nissan dealer to see if I could get the part. I left my number as the parts guy promised to look for it. Later on, finding a blinking light on the answering machine I pressed the play button with my roommate in the area. "This is Bob from Nissan calling for Brian about his knob." My roommate rolled on the floor and must have played that message a dozen times.

I grew up "waiting in line" for things, but a lot of people around me now say they are "waiting on line" and frankly, I don't like it. The first time I heard it, I thought they meant they were waiting in an online queue for tickets or something. It doesn't REALLY matter, I suppose, but it does kind of fill me with unbridled rage.

"The most common mistake is thinking English is a language. It's actually three languages in a trenchcoat, sneaking about and pocketing any loose vocabulary that looks unattended."

I love how there are like 500 different names for rolly pollies, and they're all adorable.

This was fun. Here in Boston I grew up with 'r's inserted where they didn't belong and dropped where they did. "I have an idear. Afta I pahk my cah let's eat a tuner fish sandwich while we use the warshing machine."

The r in the pronunciation of colonel comes from the fact the word was originally spelled coronelle. We just didn’t change the pronunciation when the French did.

I'm reminded of something once said by someone probably much wiser than myself... "The U.S. and Britain are two countries separated by the same language."

Another regional synonym: hoagies, submarines, grinders all refer to a type of sandwich.

5:52 - Saw a license plate recently that read “JZZ LUVR” and yes my mind went there. How could it not. 😬

The teacher explained that while 2 negatives (“I ain’t never been there”) makes a positive, no case exists where 2 positives make a negative. A Scotsman in the back said, “Aye, right.”

Old episode of “I Love Lucy”. Lucy and Ethel are in London and need directions to see the queen. They ask a stately looking gentleman with and umbrella and a bowler hat for directions. He rattles off something so fast, it’s unintelligible. They ask again and he replies in same. Finally Ethel says, “I’m sorry, we’re American….we don’t understand English.”

So my grandfather was born in 1909 and he got extremely upset at me one day in the late 1990's. I kept saying something was annoying. He didn't understand me. Then said I wasn't speaking an actual word. I argued back and he said that he had never heard annoying. But only was aware of something being an annoyance! This came to mind when you said you never heard of addicting before.

One that gets me is when someone says, “needs replaced” instead of, “needs to be replaced” or, “needs replacing”.

My kids drove me nuts with "on accident". It makes me insane! Things happen BY accident, but are done ON purpose.

Library is the one that gets me. "Li-bary" is so common it hurts. They pronounce it "lie berry". Definitely a pet peeve of mine.

"I could care less" annoyed me so much that I started saying "I could NOT care less" by default

and then there are the ones who are so rhotic they pronounce Rs in words that don't even have them. like people from "warshington"

“American humans, and children.” Ouch. Glad I’m not a kid anymore.

One thing I noticed being from the south (Texas), there are some accents where the word “forwarded” sounds exactly like “farted”.

Fun fact: The word for a place that sells pizza is spelled "pizzeria". (Switching to French, a person in charge at a restaurant is a restaurateur.)

1:59 Actually, in many states, the owner of a piece of real property is public information and can be found online; in summary, if you own a house, your address is online.

Suddenly remembered the Beverly Hillbillies episode where hippies descend upon the Clampett mansion upon hearing that Granny is smoking crawdads.

As someone who uses "I could care less," I've always said it sarcastically. It's like "we should all be so lucky," "may you live in interesting times," or "bless your heart." The meanings of which are different from their literal intention.

This is a great video. My B.A. major was in linguistics, so this fascinates me. I appreciate that you present your videos in a nonjudgemental, explorative, rational manner. It nurtures harmony and understanding rather than discord and intolerance. That is very important.

Dissimilation is when a phoneme changes into something else because it sounds too similar to a neighboring sound. The r-dropping you talk about at 5:08 linguists would call elision, not dissimilation. You also said that Americans add an 'r' to some words like colonel. Ironically, this actually comes from dissimilation, and not from intrusive-r. Sometime during the evolution of Spanish, if there were multiple Ls or multiple Rs in a word, one would change so they weren't making the same sound over and over. Latin arbor > Spanish árbol. Where Italian has colonello, Spanish has coronelo. We actually borrowed this pronunciation, but spell it like the French word. The pronunciation with L is a spelling pronunciation that happened later.

Drink driving is a bizarre way to say drunk driving.

I grew up in the Anglo section of Louisiana, where "woodlice" was an old-folks work for termites. We called the terrestrial crustaceans that your depicted by the name "pill bugs."

I am an American. I was in London England several years ago. A woman approached me and a friend from Nottingham. I could only make out a word or two of what she was saying. I whispered to my friends, "What language is that?". He responds, "English, but she's Scottish.". Fortunately, he begins to whisper translations to me. It turns out she was offering sex for money, and asking for a cigarette. I blushed, handed her a cigarette, and walked away. So even within the confines of a relatively small nation, such as the UK, English is a complicated language.

"I'm always sometimes right." Words to live by.

6:02 interestingly enough, in the original Star Wars: A New Hope, the music that they are playing in the Cantina is called “jizz“. Just going to show that like most writers, George Lucas should’ve asked a 14-year-old to read his script and check for giggles and snickers.

As an American married to a South African, don't even get me started about: 1. the meaning of 'now' (as in just now/nownow to mean some time in the future or maybe never) 2. the meaning of 'robots' (as in the thing that turns green and tells you to start driving again) 3. 'howzit' vs 'how's it goin'' (as in I don't actually care about your well being--I'm just making pleasantries) 4. 'sweet' vs 'lekker' (which mean the same thing, both in the denotative and connotative)

"But it's also completely and utterly a little bit bonkers." Great line, Laurence.

A doodle bug is actually usually referring to an antlion. Antlions capture ants in a sandy concave trap, which slides the ant right towards the antlion hidden in the center. I call the isopods roly-polies.

These little linguistics videos are kinda my favorite.

The US military apparently uses missles while the UK uses missiles.

Ohhh Lawrence / Laurence (I don't know) did you know that in the south of the US, people say "on today" and "on tomorrow" as in, "I have an appointment on Monday", then when Monday comes, they say "I have an appointment on today." I'd never heard that usage before I moved to the south.

A really strange term I have heard here in the Philadelphia area was "plugged up" for something being plugged in to the wall for power. Not having grown up in the area to me plugged up is something a drain does, usually at the worst time.

ZZ Top is from 'zig zag top quality rolling papers.' They spun one, and that's what it read on the side. Now you know.

4:40 A good example of this that goes very unnoticed is the word photographer. I hear a lot of people pronounce it like "fertographer".

“I couldn’t care less” says that you are at the bottom of caring. “I could care less” is a threat to giving up current care levels to a lower care level. This phrases is most commonly used as a threat to giving up on something like an idea, news, or people.

4:36 Those pockets of the US don't "remain" non-rhotic like most of England. When the US was first settled, most of Britain was rhotic, at least somewhat (the R sound had been weakening for some time, but was still much more prominent than it is today). Those are the pockets that have evolved their own non-rhoticity.

"Familiar" is a word that gets an **extra** R. I typically hear it pronounced 'firmiliar/furmiliar'. Someone recently told me that "could care less" is now an acceptable form of that phrase because something something something blah blah blah . . . I can't remember his argument because I briefly blacked out on white-hot rage. "I couldn't care less" is non-negotiable based on WORDS HAVING MEANINGS. What one is saying when they use it is, "I already care so little about this topic that it would be impossible for me to care any less." And don't even get me started on irregardless.

So glad you brought up ‘forward’. Drives me a little nutty when I hear someone say ‘foward’

We just laid one of my favorite coworkers. I am from Texas and he is from London literally two blocks from the O2 arena. I miss him very much and watching your videos is very awesome.

6:00 it actually 100% is what we're thinking about. That's why it was called jazz music, it's music you jazz to. 'vitality or essence' is a euphemism. And amusingly, we know this from old homemade comics depicting characters doing sex and referring to it as 'jazzing'

I love that you said catamount. I've lived in many places in America, places where those cats are called pumas, cougars, and mountain lions but until today I only ever saw catamount in dictionaries. Thank you.

The purpose of “I could care less “is correct it is implying you could care less more than it already “appears” you don’t. It’s a “salt in the wound” saying if you would. It’s the equivalent of asking someone to repeat themselves and after they start you go “HUH?” real loud…

Just discovered this channel, and as an American who moved to the UK as a kid, I absolutely love it. It's so cathartic seeing a British person give American English its own space to exist and acknowledging that British English falls into a lot of the same behaviours. For my entire childhood, I was insulted by practically everyone around me, as none of them respected that American English is a different dialect- instead just viewing it as "they can't admit that they speak the language wrong". I was regularly called r*tarded (usually several times a week for my entire adolescence), simply because I would sometimes write "color" instead of "colour". People didn't understand that the United States has had more influences than JUST the UK- most noticeably, influences from Hispanic cultures where "color" is the correct spelling. I tried explaining it to people and they would just call me r*tarded again. I had people who I considered friends berate me and my entire nationality by saying that Americans are mentally disabled because instead of using fancy Latin-derived words like biscuit/autumn/film (amusing because the last is not Latin in origin), "Americans use stupid simplified words like cookie/fall/movie. Hurr durr you cook it so it cookie, leaf fall so it fall, it move so it movie". I had one teacher who would give me 0 on any essay I turned in that had even a *single* American English phrase or spelling, even though SPAG was only meant to account for a small portion of marks and she wouldn't give the same treatment to British students who wrote things like "would of". That's not even getting into the fact that everyone used to call me obese, or insult me over politicians that I didn't elect and couldn't even vote on because I was a minor. And then people are confused when I say I hate the UK and British people.

Sometimes, after a long day, we all just need to watch Lawrence freak out about the mind breaking number of “Zeds” in the US.

Laurence has mentioned this before as if it were an American thing but I have yet to find an example of a Brit saying "colonel" without an R unless they're specifically using the pronunciation for a French officer. Sometimes the R is softer than how an American would say it but it's still there. Even the Cambridge Dictionary shows an R sound in both the American and UK phonetic codes.

Actually people in Louisiana and Texas also call the crayfish “crawdads” and growing up in the Midwest and Great Plains I think it’s also called both “crawdad” and “crawfish”.

So, potato bugs, to my mind, are actually Stenopelmatus fuscus, aka the Jerusalem Cricket. Some other words that you could explore are creek, coyote, root beer. Regional differences on what carbonated soft drinks are called, or the difference between a valley and a holler, are also potential topics. The big one that I can't adapt to, here in the midwest, is dropping the infinitive phrase "to be." So, instead of saying that lightbulb needs to be replaced," they say "needs replaced." Same with "needs fixed." It's such a small thing, and yet, drives me crazy. Maybe I needs therapy. Cheers.

From California, it's weird that potato bug gets referred to the same insect as rolly pollies, pill bugs, etc. I've always grown up using potato bug to refer to the Jerusalem Cricket, a completely different insect.

I’m from Indy and your wife’s accent is a very good example how we talk here.

From what I understand, you guys sounded more like us until recently and that it is your accents that changed

Did you know that it's possible to live with huge portions of the brain missing. People who say "on accident" are testament to this.

I only came here to say: once upon a time ago I wrote work instructions. Some of those work instructions I inherited and needed to rewrite, were a tad bit... overzealous. They had a foreword (for some reason), but my predecessors weren't exactly English wizards and titled them "Forward" instead of "Foreword". When I first started rewriting those instructions, I would retitle that section foreword. It took me a couple years experience to realize, it's a work instruction, if it needs a foreword, you probably don't need to read it, and just deleted the section.

Lawrence, your house sale is a matter of public record. Anyone can look up your address if they know your general location and last name. Your address and name are recorded in the local tax records usually along with the sale history of your house, the tax assessment, tax value, Sq footage, acreage, any mortgages, # of rooms and # of bathrooms.

Of course, language is a dynamic, living thing. It evolves constantly. When you consider that British and American people have been separated by an ocean for centuries it's a wonder the usage isn't even more different. Portugal and Brazil speak the same language but very differently.

idk why the algorithm brought me here but this may be my new favorite channel

I'm from Connecticut and I was so confused as a kid when I first started hearing "crawfish". By the time I got "crawdad" I was able to make the jump but I thought crawfish were distinct from out crayfish for years. Addictive vs addicting... In my experience "addicting" is like a softened more positive form of it. "you should try snowboarding, it's addicting" vs "heroin is addictive"

The few that get me is that in parts of the US words like Coke (which is a brand of soft drink) means any type of soft drink and in other areas Soda or Pop are used. Another one is Vacuum discribing a machine used to clean your carpets and in some parts of the UK, Hoover (which is a brand of Vacuum) is used to describe Vacuuming your crapets.!

9:37 My father used to say, "I may not be right, but I'm never wrong" 😅

In Louisiana, those terrestrial crustaceans known as woodlice are called "armadillo bugs," likely on account of their similarity to the nine-banded armadillo, including rolling into a ball for defense. After all, the taxonomic family name is Armadillidiidae (which sounds like a lyric from a song from a children's TV program-ar-ma-dil-lee-dee-ee-day).

I didn't know about "zed" until graduate school! While I was working in the audio center one day, a student asked for a record whose call number -- she said -- was "LP-zed." I had no idea what she meant until she wrote it as "LPZ!"

At 6:40, most places spell the location where you buy a pizza as 'pizzeria', not 'pizzaria'.

One that gets me, seems common in the Northeast and Midwest - dropped infinitives. Instead of "the car needs to be washed" someone might just say "the car needs washed"

"What's onomatopoeic?" "It's exactly what it sounds like."

7:43 After much consideration and many laughs, giggles, snorts and, yes, even chortles later, this beautiful tidbit has finally hooked me. Due to sheer perfection and refusal to slack pff, even a little, i shall now and ever after subscribe. Thank you, Sir.

There is definitely something to be said about how a word looks in text. A million years ago, when a computer was prone to making funny noises prior to having an internet connection, there was some discussion about the validity of "lol". I grew to embrace it because it looks funny and has the ability to convey more information than "haha".

You'd be surprised just how many times a day I think to myself, 'ohhh Lawrence'.

I appreciate the fact that the beans hummus is made from are called garbanzo beans, cici beans, and chickpeas. Its a quandry when making a shopping list.

HA! One of my big "pet peeves" is when people say "I could care less!" So, I'm one of those who always says it properly: I could NOT care less!😂

Also growing up I heard “peek-ed” (with specific stress on the two separate syllables) to describe looking pale, tired or ill. I had to look it up to find that it did, in fact have similar historical usage. I never heard anyone outside of family use it. This was in OH.

I'm more used to hearing "forward" spoken with the "w" dropped - "for'ard"

"Tank ewe 4 da humor" 🤣....ok, seriously, thank you for the humorous explanation of English and it's variants

PittsburgH has entered the chat. Did yinz know we go dahn er an at by the crick? Yinz ever drive a Jagwar dahn to the gumband shop?

Growing up, Crawdads were called mud bugs.

Got to admit, it's your sardonic delivery that keeps me watching. Well done! As a US military linguist who spent three years in Scotland but even made it as far South as Avebury and back successfully (in my own American car by the by) and lived to tell about it, I've found English, in all its forms is just about the richest language there is...

I tried to explain to a friend WHY it ought to be "couldn't have cared less." She couldn't understand what I was talking about. On the other hand, the more recently completely removed "not" part of "couldn't" works only because people get the basic idea without the assertively defined "correct" version of the expression.

My favorite college class was History of the English Language and it remains so. I'm in WV and I've heard leftover Old English being used by people who have lived in the same area for generations. Two examples are HIT for it and CHIMLEY for chimney. The English in my state varies but it is predominately leftover Scottish and words are said fast or run together. Another quirk is adding an L or not pronouncing it these two words: Lambasted is LAMBLASTED but the word solder becomes SODDER. Have to love the spoken word.😊 Oh by the way, my granddaughter and I were on my front porch when I noticed one table stacked on another was not straight. I said "It's WHOPPERJAWED "and that word scared her.

Your house ownership is public record. If someone knows the county you live in, they can just go to the county clercs office and request the names of who owns each parcel of land in the county (or any particular one). Not always easy, and some less populated places might need you to go in person, but it's all 100% on public record via your local US government 😅

Always enjoy your videos, so funny and educational

Lol the "roley poley" one got me. Especially that I knew them also as "pill bugs" being from California. My son gets mad at me now if I call then anything but their "order" name, which is "isopods." Lol😊

My Cousin’s husband is from an Italian family and refers to Pizza as “ A Tomato Pie”!

We call them Rolly Pollie bugs in Michigan. But once we got a lizard as a pet and wanted a self sustaining enclosure, I found out there are tons of different kinds of those little f'ers and they are called isopods. They are super important at breaking down everything from decaying plant material to poop.

Canadian English is different again from American and British. Those little bugs are cow bugs or wood bugs here on the east coast. One I was made aware of when I moved to Ontario was that the east coast says "I am done of it. I am done of supper. I am done of shopping. I am done of school" etc

The U.S. has a lot of really interesting dialects. It's fun to meet new people and try to place their accent/dialect. Also, realizing my own dialectic features. My girlfriend loves pointing out that I don't pronounce the "l" in "wolf", so it sounds like "woof". It's a feature of Philadelphia English (my native dialect), and I even studied linguistics at Temple University in Philly, but never realized I had this feature until my girlfriend pointed it out.

A Potato Bug is actually something completely different from the rolly-polly, and kind of frightening.

The way you hold your tone at the end of some sentences, is literally 90% of why I stay watching xD

4:58 There's also the pronunciation, I suspect originating in lower-decks naval subliteracy, of "for'ard", dropping the 'w'. 6:37 And that may be why "focaccia" took so long to get traction in the US. 8:34 Alternatively, saying, derisively, "Like I could care less", while objectively less grammatical, conveys the meaning more accurately.

I always say "for-ward". But, I can never decide if I should say "forward" or "forwards". Also, I live in north-western Illinois, and I grew up calling them "crawdads". It was quite awhile before I learned of "crawfish" or "crayfish".

I've intermittently watched you for a while now, and I'm impressed with how far your production chops have come. The videos feel so snappy now. Really impressive.

7:40 drizzle made me laugh. "And hasn't stopped emerging since". HA!

A recent pet peeve of mine is RU-vidrs saying foe-ward. I'm from the SE US and say FOR-ward (with emphasis on FORE). I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

I've got one. On NYPD Blue, when a character intends to overindulge in alcohol they say "I'm going to get my load on". I had never heard that phrasing before. Here in the Midwest we say "I'm going to get loaded". In other words "filled up with alcohol". Its dumb, but makes descriptive sense. I've also heard "get a load on". That makes sense -- like filling a gas tank, except your stomach is the tank and alcohol is the fuel (btw, "tanked" also means "drunk") but until that show I never heard it phrased as "my load" which kind of doesn't make sense. It implies the alcohol was somehow earmarked for that person "Next load of whisky belongs to Detective Sipowicz"