The language movement isn’t all one way. When I was in college, my friend had a British roommate, and we used to giggle over her use of the phrase “I couldn’t be bothered”. How British! Now I hear it with some regularity, from ordinary Americans. I believe that the phrase “good on ya” is originally Australian, but I hear it occasionally, and see it quite often from people of various nationalities here on the SDMB.
BTW, for every British person who starts dropping the "u"s from colour and behaviour because they’ve been exposed to too much American-infested internet, there’s an American who starts adding the "u"s to color and behavior because they think it “looks nicer”. (There are at least a couple people on my LJ friends list who do this!)
Technically it is, but it’s far milder than ‘fuck’. I would be very very reluctant to say ‘fuck’ in front of my mother. but I would have no problem saying ‘damn’.
I do that with some words and even have a bad habit of adding u’s to words that don’t have them in either variety of English. It can be pretty embarassing.
What’s the sense of having the same word for anus as for donkey? And “can’t be arsed” is a really useful expression that just doesn’t work with ‘ass’.
Also, I’ve never heard ‘feck’ used as Aesiron describes, only in connection with Father Ted (as with ‘smeg’ from Red Dwarf).
Among friends in Newcastle, ‘Mam’ is as commonly encountered as ‘Mum’ as the affectionate version of Mother. No-one I know says Mom unless they’re taking the piss (there’s another great British expression) of an American talking
Funny. ‘Smeg’ (and it’s origin) is the word I quickly thought of after thinking about how to answer Aesiron’s question about ‘feck’ and ‘fecking’.
I recently saw a doc type thing (called ‘comedy connections’) which explained the deeper origin of ‘smeg’
Funny. That’s three posts in a row that start with ‘funny’ and either a fulll stop of a comma.
Maybe Bosda’s post subliiminally suggested it to me, or maybe it’s one of those eerie coincidences.
Every time I see the word “arse” written out, I imagine a pirate saying “Arrr-se”.
This is why I can’t bring myself to actually say the word, and why I giggle each time I hear it aloud.
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