The point being that in American English, the term is also quite suggestive, though nowhere near as much as the British term is.
This actually reminds me of a funny anecdote (and true story): On my first visit to the UK in '76, I ended up in a hostel in Inverness. Another North American and I (don’t remember if he was from Canada or the US, but it doesn’t matter) hooked up with a couple of French chicks and spent the evening in a nearby pub. When the other guy got up to visit the men’s room, he gave one of the girls a little pat on the bottom. Not yet versed in the nuances of British English, I leaned over and told her sotto voce that she had just gotten a “swat on the fanny.” She loved the expression and started using it herself.
I wish I could have been there the first time she repeated it in exclusively British company!
“Would you like that to eat here or to take away?” is standard, grammatical English, with all the words used with the same senses that they have in other contexts.
“Would you like that to eat here or to go?” is ungrammatical gibberish unless you happen to be familiar with the idiom; either that, or you are being asked whether you would like the food to leave without you. In other contexts, food is not something that “goes” (except when it goes with other food, but that is another matter). Cars go, people go, but food, being unable to self-locomote, does not (although it certainly can be taken away).
Of course it makes perfect sense to you, but that is just because you, being a North American, are very used to the idiom.
And of course, calling an establishment where you buy prepared food to eat elsewhere a “takeaway”, as is done in England elsewhere outside North America, is also an idiom that makes little sense in terms of standard English syntax and semantics. However, “Would you like that to eat here or to take away?” does use standard syntax and semantics.
She didn’t say “… eat here or to go?”. She just asked “is that to go?” and I’d never heard the expression. As others have said, we refer to it as take-away. I told her I wanted it to take away and she didn’t understand me either.
It was a source of confusement when I first visited the US to see the main courses listed as “Entrees” (anyone with even a modicum of French would understand why the designation didn’t make any sense). Also, I found seeing hamburgers referred to as “Sandwiches” to be somewhat bizarre too.
I speak French, and I’ve never understood why “entrees” in the US and Canada are the main course. But I just go with the flow.
As for hamburgers; well, technically, they are sandwiches: a grilled beef patty between two pieces of bread. Though most menus I’ve seen in North America have “Sandwiches” (smoked meat, French dip beef, meatball, etc.), and “Burgers” (cheese, bacon-and-cheddar, chili, etc.).
Basted eggs involve water? I swear it was here in the Dope that I was told basting involved pouring the cooking liquid over the item being cooked, which is how i’ve always fried eggs - but pouring/tossing the oil, no water involved. Og, figuring out that I needed to ask for “sunny side up” instead of “fried” was pain in the ass enough!
I tried. But eventually needed to fry an egg and get an American friend to tell me what that kind was called: the people in diners were unable to explain, and my friends hadn’t been much more helpful. “What does over easy mean?” “Over easy!” “That’s not a definition, it’s not an explanation and it doesn’t tell me what does it MEAN!”
If they asked me “would you like your food to go?” I would say: “My food to go where? Where is my food going? Can I go with my food? Can I have my food? I paid for it, lemme have my food! Leave my food alone! I don’t want it to go anywhere without me! Gimme my food!! :mad:” (I should probably have some practice rounds before going to the US… ;))
I think I usually understand references, but sometimes just in a vague, simplified form:
GPA = important school-related thing, you end up with a number that is good or bad
sophomore = a year in school or “college”, it gives information about being cool or not in some contexts
over easy = wanting your egg done a specific way
It’s usually more important what it means culturally, than what it means literally. So “sophomore” might be said about someone’s girlfriend with a smile, and it means something about them being older and cool, or younger and therefore funny. But somehow I can never tell without the reaction if it’s going to be cool or not. It’s in relation to the speaker of course, but I don’t know where the speaker stands in the hierarchy. I think that’s something an American would automatically know.
I remember when I was about 4 or 5 I asked my mum why people on television thought everything was “cute”, and what it meant. The reason I remember asking was that my mum thought it was hilarious, and said to my papa “[gracer] wants to know why on telly people say everything is cute”, and they both couldn’t stop laughing.
“Sophomore” means a student in their second year of high school - the progression is usually “Freshmen,” “Sophomores,” “Juniors,” and “Seniors.” Which would be someone around fifteen years old. (It’s sometimes applied to college students in the second year of their undergrad program, but that’s less common) When used as an adjective, it means “acting immature, like a teenager.” It’s most often heard in the phrase, “a sophomoric sense of humor,” which usually means bathroom humor or cheap slapstick - the sort of thing that primarily appeals to young teenagers. There’s really no positive context to the word - you wouldn’t use it as a compliment. At best it’s a neutral descriptor of someone’s progress through the educational system. Beyond that, it’s generally an insult.
This one almost made me look like a complete doufus on my first every trip to the States. I believe it was a Wendy’s I opted to be my first taste of American fast food, and when my order was ready the lady said “Here’s your sandwich” I opened my mouth, mere moments from saying “No, I ordered a burger, not a sandwich” before something clicked and I realised, that it was actually a burger I had been handed.
The oddest thing I can think of in the USA, you have the salad served as a portion before the main course. Or at least that was my experience 20 years ago.
I expect the salad to be part of the main meal or on rare occasions to be in the middle of the table for all to help themselves.
GPA = Grade Point Average. Letter grades (A, B, C, D, and F) have numerical values (4, 3, 2, 1, and 0; “F” means you’ve failed the course entirely).
A “C” (average) student would have a GPA of 3. A straight “A” (excellent) student would have a GPA of 4. Your GPA is the numerical average for the grades you got in all your courses.
Letter grades can also have “+” or “–” (“plus” or “minus”) attached to them; this nudges the grade up or down a fraction. For example, if your coursework is very good but not quite excellent, the teacher can give you a grade of B+ or A–. IIRC from my own college days in the US, B+ = 3.5 while A-- = 3.8.
With a GPA of 3.5, you graduate “with Honors”; with one of 3.8 or higher, you graduate “with Highest Honors.” So, yeah, GPA is kind of important for your future career prospects.
Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior are indeed commonly used at the college/university level, and not only in the US. My daughter just started at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and she was all excited about participating in “Frosh (Freshman) Week” activities, which included a toga party on the first night.
“Sophomore,” BTW, is Greek for “wise fool,” hence the pejorative “sophomoric.” I would assume its first use predates the North American educational system.
I think where I get the impression that it can be positive, is in a “high school movie” (Americanisms!) if someone is boasting about dating a sophomore and they mean the college variety. Or perhaps a freshman is boasting about dating a sophomore. Or maybe not specifically a sophomore, it could apply to any of the freshman/sophomore/junior/senior labels. I have no feeling for them, I have to work them out based on context.
“Hamburger sandwich” is, I think, a very old term going back to the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. It accurately described the dish, which featured the seasoned beef patties that supposedly originated in Hamburg, Germany. They were originally served between slices of bread, not in buns.
As to when the term was shortened to “hamburger,” I don’t know, but I’m sure it happened before the 1930s, just from watching films of the period (e.g., I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang with Paul Muni). Interestingly, Ayn Rand used the term “Hamburger sandwich” in Atlas Shrugged, which came out in 1957; but then, she was not a native English-speaker.
Yes, often you have your choice of soup or salad as the first course (not quite the same as an appetizer or “starter,” which in the US would feature a small portion of something a bit more substantial).
What I don’t get is why the salad is (from what I understand) traditionally served after the main course in France!
I get it, but it took me a while to get my head around the concept of “doggy bags”, as in restaurants will pack whatever food you’ve left over so that you can reheat it at home based on the principle that “I paid for the food so now it’s mine, all mine”.
These days some French restaurants will do that too if asked - at least the pizza places around my block do - but back when I was growing up it seemed at the same time boorish, uncouth, decadent (since the importance of not having “bigger eyes than stomach” and never ordering more grub than I was reasonably sure I could put away was impressed upon me from a very young age)… and a really good idea.
[QUOTE=terentii]
What I don’t get is why the salad is (from what I understand) traditionally served after the main course in France!
[/QUOTE]
Not really. In restaurants for example, salad’ll always be an “entrée” (as in opener, not main course ! :)).
However if you’re invited to dinner by a French family and it’s a somewhat formal affair, they may or may not serve the salad after the main course - it’s a logistics issue.
If the main course has a short cooking time and requires some attention (e.g. a grilled steak), serving salad first means the cook, which typically is the hostess, has to leave the table & tend to the kitchen during the course of the meal which some consider impolite. So you serve the hot dish(es) first, then the cold salad either before or with the cheeses.
OTOH if the main course is something that can be left “on the fire” for a while, like a cassoulet or roast, then you’ll be served salad first as usual, all the arty cooking business having been dealt with before the meal began.
Depends on the food that’s left on your plate. If there are only a few scraps from the Special of the Day, it’s not likely that you’ll request a doggie bag. If, on the other hand, you ordered the $30 Porterhouse steak and were only able to eat half of it (or, for that matter, a platter of potato skins and only ate two or three), yeah, you probably will. You can have what’s left for a midnight snack or for lunch the next day. Makes perfect sense to me.
FWIW, my dad once had a little dog who usually waited for us the car whenever we ate at a restaurant, and he invariably brought the pooch some scraps from his plate after we had finished. So in this case, the term “doggie bag” definitely applied.
[QUOTE=Nava;16687172I tried. But eventually needed to fry an egg and get an American friend to tell me what that kind was called: the people in diners were unable to explain, and my friends hadn’t been much more helpful. “What does over easy mean?” “Over easy!” “That’s not a definition, it’s not an explanation and it doesn’t tell me what does it MEAN!”[/QUOTE]
I don’t understand your confusion. It tells you exactly what it means. I don’t expect a non-native speaker to automatically understand the expression but once told the definition should be pretty easy. Unlike many idiomatic expressions its quite literal. For sunny side up you have to take the leap of imagination and think that the yoke on the unfried side looks like the sun. When you cook an egg over easy you flip the egg “over” and do it in an unhurried or “easy” manner so as not to break the yolk. If you are from a culture in which you don’t eat liquid yolks I can see the confusion but once shown what it means it should be easy to understand the definition. Over hard is also completely literal the egg is flipped over and cooked till the egg is hard. The expression is the literal definition. There are hundreds of other idioms that are no were near as literal.
That’s so you can eat it while you wait for the main course to cook.
I think you meant that a C student would have a GPA of 2. Although I’ve seen schools that count an A as 5 and a C as 3. It’s also far from universal whether + and - grades are awarded, and, if so, how or whether they are figured into a student’s GPA. (This may be the subject of some debate at a particular institution.) There may also be other nuances to how GPA is calculated; some classes may be weighted differently than others or left out of the calculation altogether, for example.
But, bottom line, Grade Point Average is a number that measures how good/successful a student is based on the grades they’ve gotten, usually but not always on a scale from 4 (best) to 0 (worst).
