slang and HP was re Reckon

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Ali" <Ali at z...> wrote:
> Bboy muses about UK/US language differences:-
> 
bboy_mn with a minor comment:
'As well' vs 'too', I alway think it is sooo cool when I can manage to
work 'as well' into a sentence.


>  
> >>> garden instead of yard or lawn>>>
> 
> Here you confuse me. A garden is not the same as a lawn. I have a 
> lawn in my garden. A lawn is the grass area. What do you mean by a 
> lawn?
> 

bboy_mn:
This came up once before. Some Brit or Brit-like person couldn't see
the logic in it. A garden is where you grow things and grass is
something you grow, so naturally it is in the garden. 

In the USA, lawn generally refers exclusively to grass. When you hear
the pharse, 'They had beautiful lawns and gardens'; it means they had
well manicured grass and a nice flower/vegetable/herb garden.

Yard has more applied meanings than lawn. Yard frequently refers to
all the developed land around an owner's house. In the case of a farm
'yard', it means the buildings like machine sheds and barns, as well
as the drive up (called a driveway here), the parking and general
driving area, the lawn, and the farm house, but usually doesn't
include the woods that surround the house. Sometimes 'yard' will
simply refer to the paved or gravel areas like the driveway, and the
general parking and driving areas. 

Yard and lawn in the city are frequently interchangable and mean the
same thing because for a city house there is no more than a fraction
of a percent difference between what constitutes one or the other.

To an American (USA), garden means vegetables, flowers, and herbs;
anything with cultivated grass is a lawn.
- - - - - - - - - -

> 
> <<< pudding instead of desert, etc...>>>
> 
> That is a funny one, as I seem to remember most people 
> calling "puddings", "desserts" when I was growing up. I do remember 
> being told though that the "proper" word was "pudding". Certainly 
> now "pudding" is the favourite.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> Ali

bboy_mn:
This is another word I find very confusing because there is something
specifically called pudding which is a very thick creamy milk based
desert that resembles custard but is made slightly different.

I was reading at a website on British slang, although it was really
about the differences between British and American, and it said that
waffles would generally be referred to as pudding. That would imply
that if you asked someone what the had for breakfast or lunch and they
said 'pudding' it could be cake, ice cream, or anyone of a long list
of other deserts, or it could indeed not even be a desert at all; it
could be waffles (how about pancakes?). How can you understand what
people are saying when a word is used in such an all encompassing way?

Biscuit is another one. A biscuit is a cookie or a cracker which are
two very different foods used for very different purposed, although
they do resemble each other in construction. So if someone had soup
and buscuits for lunch, did they have crackers in their soup or did
they have soup and then have cookies for their 'pudding'. ...so confusing.

Just a few thoughts.

bboy_mn