# What are some \*subtle\* differences among various dialects of English? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 12, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145 "2017-09-12T06:34:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/61 "2017-09-12T22:39:13Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Is “were stood” really a standard UK construction for “were standing”? To me, it sounds more like something meaning “were placed” rather than the continuous sense of standing somewhere. I hear younger british people using it quite a lot but only ever for stand and sit where normally you would use the past continuous. As far as I know it is considered non-standard. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/62 "2017-09-12T23:12:15Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > This happens a lot with collective nouns in UK usage, where the US typically takes the singular. Like you might hear “The team are doing well” whereas in the US, you’d typically hear, “The team is doing well.” I was doing a lot of business in the UK and Europe back in the early 90s, and the admins in our offices in England would take my powerpoint files and prepare the presentations and handouts (yeah, that used to happen). In the process, they would change everything to standard British spelling and grammar and it would often throw me off as I was trying to give the presentation. I could not get me tongue to spout phrases like “IBM are planning…” It was during that time, also, that I was in a meeting with my UK colleagues where I was the only American. When one of them calmly said “It appears there is a nigger in the woodpile”, I almost fell off my chair. I told that story we had in a thread about that phrase while back. I had heard it in the US, but never in “polite company” and certainly never in the workplace. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/63 "2017-09-13T01:42:55Z")
> [@Find\_Friends](#): > > Many years back a speaker at a conference related her embarrassment when introducing herself to a group of Englishwomen of similar profession. Her name was usually given as “Dotty”. > > She just didn’t understand the strange looks she received when she said “Hello. I’m Dotty.” > > She may as well have said nutty. :eek: Not nearly as awkward as when Americans introduce themselves by saying “Hi, I’m Randy”. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/64 "2017-09-13T01:59:00Z")
> [@CoastalMaineiac](#): > > Here in Maine, “ugly” is a temporary condition. We use the word to say someone’s in a foul mood. “The boss is ugly today, stay away.” In most of the US we use “ugly” with weather or other non-living things: “The weather is ugly today.”, “The traffic is ugly today.” But out West we’d never say the boss was ugly. We would say “The boss’s in an ugly mood today.” But if somebody asked “How’s the boss’s mood?” I might say “It’s ugly” or just “Ugly.” All in all, that’s not very consistent. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/65 "2017-09-13T02:16:15Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > I am dating someone for whom English is their second language and I have noticed that she interprets the word “Okay” differently. For me it is a catch all, generally positive answer but for her it means “barely acceptable” and is generally a negative connotation. “Ordinary” is like that in Australia (and I don’t think this is a usage that’s made it anywhere else) If your beer is “pretty ordinary” then it sucks donkey balls and you’re about to pour it down the sink… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/66 "2017-09-13T02:35:54Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > “Ordinary” is like that in Australia (and I don’t think this is a usage that’s made it anywhere else) > > If your beer is “pretty ordinary” then it sucks donkey balls and you’re about to pour it down the sink… For me, the word “okay” is definitely contextual, but in a lot of contexts, it does simply mean “barely passable.” However, tone is important. That said, typically, if I ask someone “how was the concert” and they answer “it was okay” in a normal tone I’m not getting a whole lot of positive vibes out of that. It means that is was decent, but nothing special. I can also imagine it being said in a more “up” tone where the meaning is slightly more passable, but it’s still nothing great. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/67 "2017-09-13T03:43:21Z")
“Quite” is another word that can convey different levels of approval in different variants of English. When my (Irish) brother was teaching in a (US) university, he returns a student’s paper to him with the written comment “quite good”, meaning better than just “good”. But the (US) student understood it to mean something like “only somewhat good, not as good as it might be”. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/68 "2017-09-13T03:48:51Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > “Quite” is another word that can convey different levels of approval in different variants of English. When my (Irish) brother was teaching in a (US) university, he returns a student’s paper to him with the written comment “quite good”, meaning better than just “good”. But the (US) student understood it to mean something like “only somewhat good, not as good as it might be”. That isn’t accurate. “Quite good” is a synonym for “Very good” in U.S. English as well. It is a higher compliment than just “Good”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/69 "2017-09-13T04:08:09Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That isn’t accurate. “Quite good” is a synonym for “Very good” in U.S. English as well. It is a higher compliment than just “Good”. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/70 "2017-09-13T05:28:32Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That isn’t accurate. “Quite good” is a synonym for “Very good” in U.S. English as well. It is a higher compliment than just “Good”. Interesting. Possibly the student involved wasn’t American, as I had assumed. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/71 "2017-09-13T06:01:53Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Various ways to resurrect a “plural you”: > … > Y’all –\> All y’all; various parts of the south > Any others? Depends. Where I lived “y’all” depended on context, so I spell the singular as “y’all” and the plural as “ya’all,” pronounced the same, but what do I, a Yankee, know? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/72 "2017-09-13T07:25:19Z")
My dad grew up 400 miles south of where I did, so he had a lot of unique expressions that I never heard outside my own household. A couple that come to mind: Turn out the lights (instead of turn off) My time (instead of “my turn” when playing a board game) Frolnt room (instead of living room) ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/73 "2017-09-13T07:29:51Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Isn’t the phrase more often “hiring” a car or van rather than renting in the U.K.? We don’t (or at least my North American dialect doesn’t) use “hire” in that sense. Yeah, you can hire a car, or rent it; you can rent or let a house. You wouldn’t hire a house or let a car (actually, I suppose you might hire a holiday cottage for the weekend, but ‘hire’, to me, implies it’s not a serious long term arrangement). Another local- Bristol, England- language quirk that confused me is the unnecessary addition of the word ‘to’ in sentences like “Where’s that to?”, which simply means “Where’s that?” ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/74 "2017-09-13T08:58:11Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > - She’s a web designer, and sometimes will ask me to critique her designs. Once, I remarked that I thought a design choice she made was “nice.” I’d intended it as a compliment; in American English, “nice” is generally seen as such. But, she was crushed by my use of the term. For her, “nice” is damning with faint praise – in Irish English, it’s what you say when you have nothing really positive to say about something, but you can’t come straight out and say, “it’s no good.” I don’t use “nice” anymore with her. Best as I can tell, there are two “nices” in American English: there’s the “short nice”, which is often negative; and there’s the “long nice”, or “niiice”, which is an unequivocal compliment. I bet you said the latter and she heard it as the former. ---
**Author:** ![JohnnyMac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@JohnnyMac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnnyMac)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/75 "2017-09-13T09:59:23Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I hear younger british people using it quite a lot but only ever for stand and sit where normally you would use the past continuous. As far as I know it is considered non-standard. I use it sometimes - I always thought of it as the passive tense. So: I was standing at the back. They stood me at the back. I was stood at the back. Granted, I rarely mean I was literally instructed to stand somewhere, more that general consensus dictated it was the right place to be. Sent from my SM-A300FU using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/76 "2017-09-13T10:19:00Z")
When a South African says they’ll do something “just now”, we don’t really mean “now”. We mean somewhere between “in a little while” and _mañana_. Immediacy is conveyed by “now-now” Also, we don’t have any traffic light or signals here. But our intersections _are_ full of robots. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/77 "2017-09-13T11:09:14Z")
Similarly, I’ve heard that in some Indian dialects, if you ask someone a question and they say “yes”, that doesn’t mean that the answer is “yes”. It just means that they heard and understood your question. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/78 "2017-09-13T11:15:00Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That isn’t accurate. “Quite good” is a synonym for “Very good” in U.S. English as well. It is a higher compliment than just “Good”. American here, and I don’t quite agree. To me, “quite” can indeed imply “not bad, but I was kinda expecting it to be just a little better.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/79 "2017-09-13T11:21:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Similarly, I’ve heard that in some Indian dialects, if you ask someone a question and they say “yes”, that doesn’t mean that the answer is “yes”. It just means that they heard and understood your question. I don’t recall encountering that. But there’s a very distinct head wobble that can mean yes, no, or I’m acknowledging that you said something. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145/80 "2017-09-13T11:22:11Z")
In Malaysian English – which is not some sort of bad English, but a true dialect with its own rules – the preposition is often dropped from phrasal verbs. Example: My Malaysian-born wife often asks me to “throw that [apple core or whatever],” rather than throw it _away_. Only sometimes do I then chuck the piece of garbage at her. 😉 Or “Don’t forget to pick Li’l Map!” Choose him from a lineup? Pick away at his scabs? She means pick him _up_, from school. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-subtle-differences-among-various-dialects-of-english/796145.md?page=5)