Fine-Tuning 15, British English/American English

A 'mechanical pencil' or a 'clutch-pencil' is called a propelling pencil here.

Propelling pencils originally had a screw mechanism to move the graphite rod out, and now this is less common than the little grabber or clutch mechanism, but oldsters like me, who can sometines call a radio a wireless, still think of them as propelling pencils.

Shortening is solidified vegetable oil, these days--in simpler times it was simply lard or a mixed substitute of vegetable shortening and lard. Shortening bread is a biscuit, in the sense that Americans understand. If you've never had an American biscuit, it's rather difficult to explain what one is. One takes a quantity of shortening, into which one mixes flour. A standard recipe is one cup of shortening, one cup of flour, and cold water and baking powder. (I don't have a recipe with me.) The amount of shortening can be reduced by substituting buttermilk for a portion of the shortening and for the cold water. These ingredients are mixed, traditionally by hand, although the modern cook who doesn't wish to get his hands too greasy can "cut" them in. When the mixture has reached a condition known as "fine pea," in which small balls of the "dough" as small as small dried peas, has been attained, the dough is formed into a ball, and rolled out with a rolling pin, usually to a thickness of 1/4" to 1/2". One then takes a round cookie cutter (cookies and biscuits--isn't this delightfully confused for those laboring under the handicap of British English?), and cuts out round portions about 3" or 4" in diameter. These are then placed on a greased cookie sheet and baked. The baking powder causes them to rise and take on a light, and fluffy texture, if the cook has any skill at the procedure of mixing the dough. In buttermilk biscuits, one can substitute baking soda for baking powder, because the soda will react with the buttermilk. Someone good at making buttermilk biscuits can make a very light, bread-like product, which contains much less shortening that the standard vaiety.

Now just cover them suckers with red-eye gravy, and yer ready to go ! Yum, Yum. For desert at the same meal, take more fresh, hot biscuits and spread generously with butter and molasses.

Field corn (maize) is inedible for humans--it is intended to feed livestock. However, the kernels of corn can be soaked in a lye solution, which will case the hull to crack, and the starch within will soak up a good deal of water. When blanched, the lye is leached out, and the corn is now edible for humans--as hominy. The traditional method of preparation is to saute the corn with spicy pork sausage and green onions. If the hominy is milled to remove the hull, you have turned yellow hominy into white hominy. If the hominy is dried, and milled further to produce a course grain powder, it can then be prepared as a breakfast food, not unlike cream of wheat or oatmeal, which is known as hominy grits, or simply as grits.

McTag, You don't have to be from the other side of the Atlantic to wonder about grits. The first time I had breakfast in the South, I had to ask the waitress what the white farina-like stuff was. Did I order it? No. Do I have to pay for it? No. Grits just show up on your plate at breakfast. Who knew?

No wonder I think Hominy is yucky. Leached in lye? Ick. I like polenta -- that's Italian for corn grits.

I thought hobnobs were British cookies.

Speaking of field corn... we were once in Minnesota at a party on somebody's farm. Someone got the great notion to pick a few ears of the beautiful huge corn that was standing in the field nearby. So we cooked & served it forth. Ah, all buttered & salted... I took a bite and started to chew. And chewed and chewed and chewed. It was the worst -- horrible, unchewable, inedible fiber. So beautiful to look out, so awful to try to eat.

Piffka

Grits and polenta are not exactly the same thing, although both come from corn. Polenta is usually yellow (there is white corn in Friuli which is sometimes used) and is really nothing more than boiled corn meal.
Grits are made by drying white corn and treating it with certain chemicals before grinding.

Supermarkets often sell field corn as sweet corn--and there's a way to tell if you're getting the real McCoy. If it is field corn, in order for it to be sufficiently tender to foist onto the customer as sweet corn, it must be immature. The "silk" which comes out of the top of the shuck will be green. True sweetcorn is not ready to eat until fully mature. The silk coming out of the top of the shuck will be black at the ends, and brown near the shuck, and if you peel back the shuck a little, it will be a pale green, almost transparent. If you had grown your own corn, as my grandparents did when i was a child--with the liberal use of child labor--you'd spot these things more readily. A cousin of ours was raised in Chicago, and we took horrible advantage of his ignorance of the country. On one occasion, we got him to eat the ears of sweet corn when they were very small (about 5" long) and completely green. You can eat them cob and all at that point. They are also loaded with sugar. A couple of those will, later rather than sooner, make a child ill. I think we got him to eat about five or six of them before he got a funny look on his face, and noticed that we weren't eating any of them.

Thank everyone for all this information about food which sounds absolutely....off-putting.
You can also make a bomb out of maize.
I know this, because when I was a schoolboy, (Palmerston was in Downing Street at the time), lorryloads of maize (some got dropped in the street, that's how I know what it was) went into Brown & Poulson's flour mill and one morning there was an explosion and half the factory fell down.
An electrical fault had caused a spark which ignited dry and inflammable (able to burn) dust in the air, and the effect was devastating.

There was a similar incident in the American Midwest many years ago, and, although not unheard of in small town silos, a grain dust explosion of that magnitude made the national news--it happened in a corporate grain storage facility, and the silo in question was about the size of a twenty story apartment building. Several people were killed.

When Palmerston was in Downing Street ? ? ?

Really McTag . . . hmmm . . . well, if i ignore the anachronism of "lorryloads" . . . Palmerston died in 1865, and was in Downing Street then, so you must be at least, what, 150 years old? You've held up well, young man.

You didn't know Anthony Eden had a cat named Palmerston?



Don't research it, Walter, I made that one up!

Good lookin' out there, McT, Valter mighta gone fer it . . .

I actually was ...

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Naah. I dont buy it. I believe its really to do with American egoism and clutching for some sort of identity and individuality, especially seperate from the old colonial powers (which perhaps is fair enough) now that America is occupying the role of 'Top dog' .Like I said theres much more variety in English within England itself than there is between Standard English and America. I reckon part of it is that because Americans often like to think of themselves as THE most poweful THE best THE biggest etc etc blah blah blah, it wont do to speak the language of some grotty backward ex colonial power (ie uk) so we cant just call it 'English' it has to be 'American' English. Like I say I neve heard anyone say they spoke Newcast English, or Manchester English or Cornish English and Im telling you they speak a lot weirder than even smalltown deep south America.

I'm trying very hard to not respond in kind to your generalized & rude commentary about Americans. There's no reason for this, imo, and it seems like a cheap jab. If you were American, which you are patently not, then you would perceive that there are differences -- as have been noted -- between standard British English and standard American English. Small differences, not-very-important differences, but amusing differences and that is, I think, what this thread is about.

Perhaps these differences are more noticable when crossing the Atlantic from west to east. Maybe you haven't spent that much time in the US... or (and this WOULD be a stretch) the Americans with whom you speak are so charmed by your odd pronunciations and find your strange usages so amusing that they would never correct you.

By the way, regarding your multiple postings. You probably have your display set to the default and are running into a pagination problem. If you looked on your profile page and changed both display defaults to 100, you'd have fewer problems. You can also ask a moderator to delete the extra posts.

dreamworld

Speaking of Manchester (btw you surely should know the specific term for 'Manchester English :wink: ): at Manchester University you can study English 'both ways', at the "Department of English and American Studies in the School of English and Linguistics ".

Like Piffka, I will also not respond in kind. If you're hoping to find an argument, it won't be with me.

The term "American English), so far as I know, refers to nothing more than what we've been discussing in this thread. I had to name the thread something, so I chose a title that would fit. So aside from a few minor differences, yes, we speak, read, and write the same language.

dreamworld, I requested that a moderator delete your duplicate posts. I hope that's ok with you.

Also, if I understand your problem correctly, you were trying to post directly under or near another post. If this is the case, you can't do this. No matter how hard you try, a new post will always show up at the end of a thread.

Hmmm. What did you mean 'both ways' . With reference to my previous and perhaps somewhat carelessly put comment, obviously there are many Americans who do not indulge in such base and vulgar ego and power games. However the overwhelming impression that American culture gives off to the rest of the world is a very dominating, no 1 first, competitive (as opposed to coperative) one. I was merely comenting that the name 'American English' is logical step for such a culture. A desire America has to have its own language and distinguish itself as apart (and I believe superior) to other forms of English . Why is is one rarely hears of Australian English. No matter how one tries to avoid looking at the truth, there is a political aspect to language and how they are classified and used. Historically different classes have spoken different languages and dialects, different languages and pronounciation have been and still are marks of class and social status. I believe that America classifying its language as distinct is a natural consequence for a culture that is increasingly dominating the world . Of course it could be commentated that this is often typical primate behaviour of which we (as nations) all equally guilty at some point in history.
However I will be honest and say that I hate American materialist mainstream and popular culture, economic and military actions and the way it seems to inundating the entire globe through television etc. However I am definately not generalising and know there are many good American people who despise it as much as I do, but whos voice is often not heard, due to the fact that most of them are not multi millionair arms dealers who control the media.

She erased my new message that I spent half an hour writing, and left the duplicates there, oh well.

It did mention how language and pronounciation have historically been used to denote social status and this is partly why I believe America wishes to distinguish its language as apart.

There you are dreamworld

you come onto a thread in a rude and insulting way and an American offers you some help.
I hope you feel chastened.

There are other threads for robust exchanges- you can start one yourself if you like- but this isn't one of them IMO.

McT

dreamworld,

Nobody erased any of your posts.