Well, j_sum1, I’m with you on “colour”, but not so much “neighbour” and “honour” though. “Mum” sounds like something Oliver Twist would say. Painful. Not a big fan of “britches” either. But the worst of the worst is the Midwest, “Pop” for soda. Everytime I hear that I wanna kick the person in the teeth after I’m done cringing. The combination of that word with the usual mid-western accent makes me feel like I’ve been teleported to the fricky 1950’s.
Wow, I’d NEVER heard of that one before now.
“Bull dust”… That’s actually kinda cute/quaint. 
Oh I agree. It’s not the words/phrases themselves that are annoying, of course, as differences in language are fun, generally. It is annoying to hear them used by people native to here, though. Of course, it can act as a handy shortcut, letting me know that such a person, copying what they hear on television, and supposing it makes them sound clever, is probably not a person worth talking to. 
Here, for instance, some of the children seem to think they go “Trick or Treating” at Hallowe’en,f or example. Hmm, we called it “guising” in my young day. Youngsters these days! 
My own brother, without even the excuse of being a daft teenger, has been known to say “Monday through Thursday” instead of “from Monday until Thursday”. BAH!
Vive la difference. (Ooops, that’s foreiegn too. :):) )
Are you a native North Carolinian?
I grew up around Charlotte, and the use of Coke as a generic term was the norm. As more and more people from elsewhere have moved into the state, though, it has become less common.
And, for those who were concerned about how you could tell the difference between Coke (the generic term for any soft drink) and Coke (the product of the Coca-Cola bottling company), the latter was referred to as a Co-Cola.
But times are a’changing.
In Canada, we call chips chips. We also call fries chips. We would get along fine in New Zealand in this regard. 
For you students of regionalisms, hoodies are known as bunnyhugs in Saskatchewan. And chocolate milk is called Vico (after the brand name that is most common there).
That’s sadly starting to lose ground to ‘hoodies’ though I am doing my level best to export it. I blame Old Navy.
“Yes, officer, the mugger was wearing sunglasses, a black Ecko jacket, baggy jeans, and had his bunnyhug pulled up over his head.” At which the cop falls over laughing.
I would keep this to yourselves up there if you want to ever seem 
Thanks for the explanation about the TV. Our network TV is largely free of foreign influence because we just don’t watch 'em (although there always was stuff on PBS, and now cable too). Although American networks are notorious for remaking British and Australian programs ‘to our tastes’ and removing absolutely everything interesting or unique about them, watching them flop like beached whales, and then concluding that there’s no sense importing foreign TV programs.
Pop, pop, pop.
You non-'Merkins can take some comfort in that your ways still infiltrate our parochial brains. Even as a child I consistently got graded down in school assignments because I’d picked up pernicious “u” spellings by osmosis. It was all due to my favorite uncle (R.I.P., Unca Henry) loaning me his set of Sherlock Holmes when I fell ill with a nasty case of measles. I was occupied quite happily and my frazzled mother didn’t have to smother me with a pillow, but the long-lasting damage was done. She was stuck with a daughter who argued with teachers over spelling.
FWIW, I love learning slang and regionalisms. They’re the salt and spice of language. They’re also happy reality checks for the great big ol’ world out there. It’s fun reading or hearing something that doesn’t make sense, and then finding out the meanings. Cultural shorthand can really be a wedge for exploration. F’rinstance, somebody–London_Calling?–referred to “Women’s Institute” in a Cafe Society thread. Obviously that carries nuances that whiz right past me.
I grew up in a remote enough region of New England that I still think it normal to refer to generic carbonated beverages as “tonic”, although I’ve since drifted more toward “soda”.
With only couple of exceptions, I’m pretty much ok with all the various Britishisms, Canadianisms, Aussieisms and New Zealisms, but I can’t guarantee I’ll understand what you’re talking about at first.
“Bull dust”. Dust are the tiny particles of dirt that float through the air, coat the surfaces of my house and get trapped in the filter over my computer fan. I’m torn between images of my workspace covered in a thin layer of cow shit, and of bulls pumping out little clouds of dust from the backsides.
“Dummy”. For some reason, I was looking at a government website from Australia concerning passport photos. One of the sample reject pictures was of a toddler with a fake nipple thingy in his mouth, with the caption “Dummy is in the way”. My first thought was “well that’s an awfully mean thing to say about the kid!”
No they don’t do this anymore, and it was extremely rare when the did it with MAd Max. I have never seen it done in any other movie. Nowdays when they show Max on TV it is always the original voices. I guess they learned their lesson.
Well, if you English is your native tongue and you want to bespeak the evils of homegenization, you’re pretty much out of luck.
Also, if your knowledge of American English comes from American television and you think that is how all Americans talk, you’re also out of luck. At least argument-wise.
Hang out and talk with a group of Americans for a while, say a month or two, and then go hang out with another group of Americans from another part of the country for a while. If you listen you’ll notice the differences between the two. Even if you don’t notice, they’ll be glad to point out the differences in phrases of speech.
Heck, I grew up with my older brother in Juneau, AK for 19 years. I moved to Phoenix, AZ and he ended up moving to Honolulu, HI. We were hanging out for a while several years back, and when I would ask for a cigarette from him I would ask if I could “bum” a cigarette. He would always make fun of that turn of phrase, but everybody I knew said the exact same thing. We’d only lived in different places for a year or two, but we already had two different modes of speech.
But you know what I find funny? It’s the vehemence in the soda/pop/coke debate. Don’t ask me why, but people really get offended/upset when you call it something other than what they call it.
Well, gosh, I guess I’ll apologize for calling something I’ve called it my entire life. Something everybody else I grew up with and know calls it. How obnoxious of me. For the record, whenever I’m talking about a pop/soda/coke, I refer to it by the brand name I’m thinking about. For some reason that seems so much worse.
As a last aside, I had a lot of fun throwing in words and phrases that seem dialect to me in this post. I mean, golly, why not?
Well, my fellow Americans must cringe every time I say some of the non-Amerricanisms that I’ve subtly and mostly unintentionally incorporated into my speech such as bum, arse, and daft, etc. 
I spell theatre the non-American way but not the others like colour, neighbour, etc. When reading colour, I mentally pronounce it so that it rhymes with velour. Just wrong.
And what’s a hoodie? A hoodied sweatshirt or something? I guess I’ve heard the term before on commercials and such (Old Navy perhaps?), but I’ve certainly never used it myself or heard anyone I know use it. But then I’ve never heard bunnyhug used either!
Yay! I can finally answer a question! A hoodie is just a hooded sweatshirt. A normal one really
The only person I’ve ever known who called it “coke” generically was a guy from South Carolina who transferred to my high school. Even when I lived in Mississippi, the people I knew called it “soda” - although a couple called it “pop.” Apparently, around here - East Texas - it’s “coke,” but I’ve never actually heard anybody call it anything but “soda.” Maybe I’m not paying enough attention. Also, when I am offered/ask for a “coke,” no one has ever once asked me “what kind.”
I ran into the generic coke for all soft drinks think in Pennsylvania. We were getting lunch at a Burger King (you guys have weird burgers - it took me days to digest it), and the counter girl says “You wanna coke with that?”
“No, I’d like a sprite.”
“That’s what I said, a coke.”
“No, I can’t drink caffeine - I’d like a sprite.”
I finally assumed that since I’d said sprite, I would actually get a sprite, not a coke. And I did. But it seemed like a big hassle to me, when she could have just called it a soft drink, or pop, or soda, or anything but the brand name Coke.
(I am also standing firm on the “bunnyhugs” issue. I think we need more soft, fuzzy, cuddly words in our language.)
Hey I said in my OP that I was sure Americans had regionalisms that they wanted to protect too. It’s ok I know we all talk funny really.
It’s soda pop. So there.
Recently I have found myself saying “no worries” to my daughter (age 3). I don’t know why; I haven’t heard it in years. But it’s great to say to her, because she gets so uptight about things, and “no worries” seems to work best in helping her to remember to calm down a bit. I hereby apologize for using a fakely Australian term.
The only real regionalism I know of here is that we all call almonds “aa-munds” --rhymes with salmon. It’s a local industry, but I don’t know why we say it so weirdly. No one else does.
-How are you doing?
-Pas pire. I just got my new carte soleil at the Regie.
-Really? Your car’s still in the driveway.
-Yeah, CBC said the autoroutes would be murder, so I took the metro.
-Had some lunch?
-I grabbed a poutine at the Belle Province.
No worries, how about ‘sweet’?
As to almond, we say are-mond which is different again and ape-re-cot for apricot.
Some words I use which seem to amuse my Americans friends are -
rubbish
Just a tick
cuppa
arvo
chook
wanker
tightarse
bugger me
I’m sure there are many others, just can’t think of them right now.
One which really floored me was fortnight. I have since discovered it is not used in the US.
I use this phrase all the time.
When I bartend, every time I serve a drink, I say “cheers”.
Oh, and when my car is running on empty, I sometimes remark that I need petrol.