And both characters have been played by Kevin Costner in the movies! I sense a conspiracy lurking here somewhere, especially since Costner also played Jim Garrison in KFK. :dubious: 
Whoops, what the hell is KFK?
Kentucky Fried Kennedys?
I meant JFK, of course.
In the US a fender is the part that goes above the wheels, and bumpers are horizontal pieces of metal on the back and front of the car, How is it in UK?
everton, from some guy in manchester…
Yes, that’s why I picked Eliot Ness for comparison. KFK? – think Oliver Stone could be persuaded to do a remake of Kentucky Fried Movie? 
Mr Kami: I thought we’d already covered fenders/bumpers? In the UK, bumpers are the same as you’ve described. British cars tend not to have separate pieces of metal above the wheels these days, but that part of the bodywork is just called a wheel arch.
Maybe it’s Manchester slang then? Tell him he’s bobbins and mention me by name. You should get an interesting response ;).
I’m continuing the “Robin Hood” hijack, largely because nobody beat me up for the “milk float” hijack.
As near as I can tell, any efforts to assign Robin Hood an actual historical identity center around a late Domesday Book entry for a Robert Locksley (spelling varies), who evidently was a land-owner, and a neighbor to a sheriff of the County of Nottingham, and doesn’t appear again the next year. It’s thin. Very thin.
My best guess is that the character is just an almalgamation of popular figures who thumbed their noses at nobility and “poached” food for their families.
I recommend Sherwood by Parke Godwin as an alternative Robin Hood story. It casts Robin as a young Saxon thane confronting the Norman occupation of England. It’s 11th century guerilla warfare at it’s finest.
As far as pronunciation goes, you have to be kidding.
I can drive south for two hours and find people who don’t pronounce anything the same way I do.
The one my sister ran into when she had to do some sewing repairs: American=thread British=cotton
And some food terms:
American / British
eggplant / aubergine
squash / vegetable marrow
rutabaga / swede
cornstarch / cornflour
blueberry / bilberry
zucchini / courgette
lima bean / butter bean
I’d say that “cotton” is more just shorthand for “cotton thread”, which you do hear quite a lot.
I can honestly say that never in my life have I heard of a “bilberry”.
Fair suck of the sav! Cant any of you drongoes speak proper English? Strewth sometimes I reckon poms are all shirtlifters and a septic wouldnt know if he had a rat up him. Now go dont go spitting the dummy and dont come the raw prawn with me, just learn strine.
Everyone I know just calls it “thread”, but there you go – it’s very difficult to generalise.
I used to love the bilberry pie that my Mother would make when I was a kid. They aren’t quite the same as blueberries, being typically smaller, but essentially they’re just the native variety of the same thing. Seems that imported Blueberries are a lot easier to find nowadays, though.
For those interested in Robin Hood, this is an excellent site.
The master on the Robin Hood legend:
And don’t forget:
American/Australian = snow peas
English = mange tout
Pretty much as I’ve heard it Laughing Lagomorph. If anyone happens to be in the neighbourhood they can visit the supposed graves of Robin Hood at Kirklees to the west of Wakefield and of Little John in the Derbyshire village of Hathersage, near Sheffield. Read more here.
BTW, the SD article also throws up another subtle difference between American and British usage – the nickname of Richard I is Richard the Lionheart in Britain but Richard the Lion-Hearted over there.
I’m pretty sure squash and marrow are different vegetables; over here at least. These are examples of what I would call a squash, and this is what I would call a marrow – it’s just a big courgette (i.e. zucchini*). Googling for those pictures imformed be that the green smooth-skinned vegetable is just a variety of squash in the US, without its own name.
The word squash would be more commonly used in the UK to mean the racket sport or a still soft drink.
*shouldn’t that be zucchino in the singular?
For most of the other food terms, I use the American version.
But I didn’t knew that “butter beans” was a Britishism. I’ve always called them that.
Aluminium - this caused endless arguments with English people - “It’s SPELLED Aluminium, you’re pronouncing it wrong!” Actually, no, in Canada it’s spelled Aluminum
Swimsuit = swimming costume (sometimes shortened to “cossie” which confused me no end - British English seems much more fond of ending words with “ie” - ones I heard were “jammy” (as in “lucky”, also a kind of cookie with jam in it), “toastie” (grilled cheese sandwich), “buttie” (a sandwich made from cold leftover chips, as far as I can tell), the aforementioned “telly” and “chippy”)
ketchup = tomato sauce
nail polish = nail varnish
toilet = bog
toliet paper = loo roll or bog roll
running shoes = trainers (sometimes “runners” in Canada, noted in a thread last week)
Indian food = “a curry” (and once, to my horror, Chinese food was “a Chinky”)
British English also provides some wonderful sex terms, aside from those related above:
shag = fuck (verb) but not as abrasive-sounding
snog = making out (“making out” sounds nasty, when you think about it) - a friend once said to me “I got a snog off your Colombian friend!”
fancy = have a crush on, be attracted to - we don’t have a word for this that doesn’t sound childish or stupid
everton, no, you’re not supposed to say Eskimo - it means “Eater of Fish,” when the Europeans came over they decided it would be a good name for them, and recently the people themselves decided they’d pick their own name: Inuit (adjective and language: Inuk). this seems to still be relatively unknown outside of Canada which is too bad: to my ears calling Inuit “Eskimo” sounds about like calling indigenous people “savages.”
Oh, and also have to get in my two cents on the chips/fries thing - they’re NOT THE SAME ! Chips are big, thick pieces of potato, fries are thin. Even in England they’er Fries at McD’s. And I haven’t had a single decent chip in Toronto.
Slang words, yes. Cf the Australian and Irish “-o”
No, buttie is just a slang term for sandwich, more commonly used in the north than the south, where “sarnie” seems to predominate. A chip buttie is indeed made with chips but they should be fresh not leftovers. In fact what is a leftover chip ;)?
Those are both decidely, erm, non-standard. When visiting, don’t ask your host where “the bog” is. I suppose it’s more analogous to john.
I assumed that. I was quoting directly from the dictionary, but there’s even a TV advert here in which a little girl of eight or nine explains to an unseen adult that “Eskimos are really called Inuit”, so it’s fairly well understood.
There’s also “to pull”, which I’m pretty sure isn’t in use in the US. Pull = pick up, in the sense of meeting someone in a bar or club, going home with them, shagging them senseless and then never calling them again.
Actually, in the US, the term squash is the broadest form of description for this class of vegetables. It would include zucchini, which are sometimes called “zucchini squash”. The second link looks like large zucchini to me (which are rather less flavorful). The first looks like a hubbard squash and a couple of acorn squash. All varieties of squash have their own name, but of course not everyone knows them! (Including myself.) They are usually broken into two categories, summer squash and winter squash, and then into each individual variety.
Oh, and usually “zucchini” is used for both the singular and plural here.