obscure local references
As if I'm supposed to magically know what's a local reference, what's global? Some sort of divine knowledge of what colloquialisms I know but others don't?
I gave up a long time ago on using a niggard hand with my language. It really started with the word "retarded" when the whack-a-doodle wife of a hobby store owner back in the mid '80's got their panties in a knot when I said it... referring to the bomb on the bottom of a plastic model of a F-4 Phantom II. I said "ooh this one has retards" and she lost her freaking mind screaming at me to get the **** out of the store. Thankfully her husband was a Vietnam vet who knew what a retarded bomb was.
Him: You're so ignorant sometimes. It's forward progress is slowed by fins that deploy, that's what retard means. To slow or hinder.
Her: Don't tell me what the word means, I'm an English teacher!
Me: Ayup...
I mean FFS, you folks across the pond don't even know the difference between Jello, Jelly, and Jam.
And most Americans outside New England don't even know what "Across the pond" means..
You brits use terminology us Yanks don't know all the damned time, and you probably don't even realize it. What's the old joke?
Americans and the English, two people divided by a common language.The laugh being I get flak from other Americans -- well, those outside New England -- for my use of Anglicisms. Colour instead of color, boot and bonnet instead of trunk and hood. Though I do favor truck over lorry,
Though it's real fun when you Brits don't even know British ones: Knackered, banjaxed, skint, gobsmacked, pear shaped...
Much less ones that are so commonplace in America we'd never even think don't exist abroad. I was shocked a few months ago to find out you folks don't even know what a wife-beater is. (it's a sleeveless undershirt). Or pacifier which apparently is called a dummy in the UK. Or pram / perambulator which 99.99% of Americans will have ZERO idea what you're talking about. (Baby carriage).
Happens be I sit in the middle between the two; we use terms from each that neither knows of the other. The whole could vs. couldn't thing, in America it's could. In England it's couldn't. In New England it's case by case. Something that exists or a verb it's couldn't, something that doesn't exist is could.
When people can sit around arguing the pedantic difference between normalcy and normality, expiration and expiry... I say screw it and use the language I speak the way I speak it. If that's a problem for someone from another region who will sit there like a crybaby going "what's that? I cant' read this" instead of picking up a flipping dictionary; or -- *SHOCK* opening a new tab to look it up online; or -- **DOUBLE SHOCK** attempt to infer meaning from context...
But it could be worse, at least you guys aren't assuming that every single word I use -- or reference that I make that you don't know -- is some form of profanity.
It's actually funny, I know a lot about the topic, which is why I realize that in an adoptive language it's utterly pointless to even TRY. It's a little like the "living document" bullshit with HTML 5. With no "version tracking" today's valid English is tomorrow's invalid
(as in not valid, not as in a cripple, thanks Engrish) just as yesterday's valid English ain't today... or even yesterday's invalid being valid today.
See "Ain't" which is now valid in most dictionaries. Though that's when the pedants start screaming "just because it's in the dictionary doesn't make it valid". Treading into the same ground as the dipshit media who says we can't call Brock Turner a rapist because he wasn't convicted of Rape, he was convicted of "unlawful penetration with a foreign object".
Where if we look up rape in the dictionary:
"unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or
foreign object, without the consent of the victim."
But sure, can't ruin the college sports star's life for "20 minutes of action". For crying out loud, call a spade a spade.
And watch the "woke" idiots be their own worst enemy, digging themselves a nice deep hole of stupid getting upset thinking that shovels are racist.