Another related Britishism to learn: “the estate” - in the sense of “housing estate”, but more specifically used to mean “council estate” (as opposed to private housing estates or even posher manorial estates). Used similar to, but not exactly the same as, the Americanism “the projects”
This caused some confusion for me in regard to the Kinks song “Come Dancing.” In the last verse, there’s the line “my sister’s married and she lives on an estate.”
I always assumed it meant that his sister had married a rich guy and was living in a big, palatial country house somewhere. I only found out relatively recently that it more likely meant that she lived in more modest public housing of some kind.
I’ve also heard “scheme”, as in “housing scheme”, the residents of which are called “schemies”.
‘Estate’ is one of those strange words whose meaning has diverged into many things over the years. It also in the UK, amongst other meanings, can be a car with an elongated rear end (sorry not sure how else to put it!), a bit like a hatchback but with a longer boot. I’ve no idea what they are called in the US. They might even have the same name.
Station Wagon.
Ah yes I did know that, but forgot. Cheers
Oddly, while South African English usually sticks close to British in both vocab and spelling. for that one, we call them station wagons too, not estates. I grew up with a succession of Borgward Isabella station wagons as our family car.
That’s in Scotland. No idea why the difference.
The Borgward Isabella was a cool car, I had a late friend who was an enthusiast and repaired and refurbished old models as a hobby. I didn’t know they also came as station wagons.
I believe they, themselves, called it a “combi”.
Yes, that’s correct, Combi or Kombi ist still the common name for that type of car.
Round here, only VW vans are called a Kombi.
Those are called Bulli here (especially the first two editions). It’s an affectionate nickname, not an official name used by VW, like Käfer (beetle).
The same thing with the Cleveland newspaper, the Plain Dealer. You can tell a native Clevelander because we stress the first syllable Plain, leaving Dealer completely unstressed, as though it’s all one word.
“Unmade road” is intuitive enough for an American to understand. Like so much else in BE, I learned it from Genesis lyrics, to quote The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway* again,
“Suspension cracks on unmade road
And the trucker’s eyes read ‘Overload’”
But what’s completely unintuitive is “unmetalled road.” Imagine the puzzled reaction. “You put metal on the roads over there?”
*Even though TLLDOB was meant to be their Americanized album, it’s full of Britishisms like “notes and coins” (instead of “bills and change” as Americans would say), or “windscreen wiper.” However, they got the Americanism right with “Fly on a Windshield.”
A source of great confusion to Gen Xers like myself, listening to “Down Under” in high school and wondering what the hell a “fried-out combi” was, and how one traveled in it. (Not to mention the mysterious foodstuff known as a “Vegemite sandwich”.)
It is interesting the products that are unknown on one side or the other. A recent Facebook video offered to me showed two British guys trying bologna for the first time, and if they weren’t hamming things up, they had never ever heard of it before. It suprised me, bologna is such a common and ordinary food in the US it never occurred to me that it would be unknown in a place as closely allied as the UK. (And has so many cultural references–there are tons of common UK foods that I’ve never tried or even seen in the US but definitely know about from UK media.)
I’ve heard of it but had to google it just now to find out what it was.
Looks like it’s similar to what we in the UK would call luncheon meat.
The Wikipedia article on bologna notes that it is likely derived from the Italian sausage mortadella. It also notes that in the UK (and some other countries), there is a similar sausage called “polony,” but I have no idea if that’s a common product there.
And, in the U.S., bologna would definitely be one variety of “lunch meat,” along with sliced ham, sliced turkey, sliced salami, etc.
I’ve never heard of polony, so I’m not sure. I’ve had luncheon meat many times and visually it is similar. It is a bit like reconstituted ham, quite soft, with a bit of spice to it.