In a message dated 8/30/2009 6:22:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time, carcharothwp@googlemail.com writes:
We have those. I've heard Americans refer to "garage sales". We (Brits) have those sometimes, but more often we take stuff to a local charity shop, or a school's "jumble sale", or stick stuff in the boot (luggage compartment) of a car, drive with others to an empty field, and have what called a "car boot sale"! :-)
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OK, a garage sale is typically where you sell your stuff from your own garage. People just park on the street, walk to your house and buy your stuff. Sometimes we'll have a "neighborhood" garage sale, where several people will sell their junk from one person's garage.
A flea market must be like your "car boot sale", but the flea market's I've been to, aren't in empty fields, they are more organized and regular. "Jumble sale" that's a new one, I think we'd call that a "charity flea market". That is, you donate your stuff and some charity sells it.
I was just thinking the other day, "Is there a British-American Dictionary" ? That would be a dictionary that has all these various words and phrases and their translations into British English. Often I'll come upon an article obviously written by a Brit and it will say something like "At the market, her trolley bumped into a right blinker and he copped her one..."
(I just made that up), and it makes little sense at all to an American, unless they had watched a lot of British tele.
W.J.
n Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 2:33 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
I was just thinking the other day, "Is there a British-American Dictionary" ? That would be a dictionary that has all these various words and phrases and their translations into British English. Often I'll come upon an article obviously written by a Brit and it will say something like "At the market, her trolley bumped into a right blinker and he copped her one..."
I was hoping Wiktionary had something, but haven't found it yet.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
The main page says:
"Designed as the lexical companion to Wikipedia, the encyclopaedia project, Wiktionary has grown beyond a standard dictionary and now includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics and extensive appendices. We aim to include not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it. Thus etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations are included."
I'd assume that would include phrase books for US and British English (and the other English variants as well).
I like the way Wiktionary approach policies!
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wiktionary_policies
I'm impressed they are tackling sign languages:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_sign_languages
A bit on spelling variants here:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Spelling_variants_in_entry_names
For phrases, see here:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Phrasebook
But no US or British phrases.
I think you are stuck with looking up individual phrases and seeing which country they originate from. Getting translations from one variant of English into another doesn't seem to be something Wiktionary has attempted yet.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Americanism http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/American_English http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/British_English http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Scottish_English http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Commonwealth_English
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Dialects
Carcharoth
Carcharoth schreef:
I was hoping Wiktionary had something, but haven't found it yet.
It's on Wikipedia:
[[List of words having different meanings in British and American English]]
(and the other pages in the navbox at the top of that page).
Eugene
2009/8/30 WJhonson@aol.com:
A flea market must be like your "car boot sale", but the flea market's I've been to, aren't in empty fields, they are more organized and regular.
Car boot sales are often very organised and regular. Some sellers will be regulars (selling things they made or buy in from somewhere, or whatever) some will be one-offs just having a clear out at home, but the sale is often there every week.
On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:33 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
I was just thinking the other day, "Is there a British-American Dictionary" ? That would be a dictionary that has all these various words and phrases and their translations into British English. Often I'll come upon an article obviously written by a Brit and it will say something like "At the market, her trolley bumped into a right blinker and he copped her one..."
(I just made that up), and it makes little sense at all to an American, unless they had watched a lot of British tele.
There are dozens of books like that. In reality, there aren't all that many words in common use that are incomprehensible one way or the other. I'd venture to suggest that Brits and particularly Australians, Kiwis etc are generally more aware of American words (even if they're not sure what they mean than vice versa). Now when I speak to an American, I almost mentally load an "American vocabulary" knowledge module :) (Like you said, shopping cart not trolly, turn signal not blinker/indicator...)
On a side note, I frequently find myself reverting what I believe are well-intentioned changes to spelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Optical_wireless&diff=31077936...
That is, I don't think the people making these changes are aware they're switching from British to US spelling - I think they think they're just correcting spelling mistakes/typos. I could be wrong though.
And since I'm truly rambling, on the "flea market" thing, I'm not sure we have a specific term. School fetes sometimes have "trash and treasure markets", but for permanent commercial things...I know of one that's just called the "Sunday market". *shrug*
Steve