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Is the phrase "have overweight" from England/Australia/a largely English-speaking country?
Replies
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cwolfman13 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »
Seems like a reasonable guess, but I don't think it was ever explicitly stated.
It may not have been. There's oil there though. And for sure not too many decades before the show there were lots of "Okies" migrating to California to escape the ravages of the Dust Bowl. It is so sad we lost so much soil because we didn't know any better. Now we're losing soil in our forests from devastating wildfires. There was a fire on the Payette River, I think around 2000, that was so hot it actually vaporized the forest soil and sent it to the sky. What was once a lush forest is now just rocks. So sad.
No mountains in Oklahoma to be a "mountaineer".
Pretty sure the Ozarks extend into Oklahoma, but I'm not married to the idea that Jed Clampet was an Okie.
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Just went through the thread. Nothing to really add other than I'm still trying to wrap my head around the brits "in hospital" as opposed to "in THE hospital", the Beverly Hillbillies theme song is now stuck in my head, and marry *kitten* kill Jess, Dean, Logan?
We say that in Australia too - someone is in hospital not in the hospital
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paperpudding wrote: »Just went through the thread. Nothing to really add other than I'm still trying to wrap my head around the brits "in hospital" as opposed to "in THE hospital", the Beverly Hillbillies theme song is now stuck in my head, and marry *kitten* kill Jess, Dean, Logan?
We say that in Australia too - someone is in hospital not in the hospital
LOL sorry. Didn't mean to leave the aussies (and others out). But whyyyyyy? That missing "the" just gets to me.
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I guess it is like ' I go to school' - we don't say 'I go to the school'
Or ' asleep in bed' - we don't say 'asleep in the bed'
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paperpudding wrote: »I guess it is like ' I go to school' - we don't say 'I go to the school'
Or ' asleep in bed' - we don't say 'asleep in the bed'
But we do say "asleep in the chair" when it happens.0 -
paperpudding wrote: »I guess it is like ' I go to school' - we don't say 'I go to the school'
Or ' asleep in bed' - we don't say 'asleep in the bed'
Well hell. Neither do we really. 🤔0 -
paperpudding wrote: »Just went through the thread. Nothing to really add other than I'm still trying to wrap my head around the brits "in hospital" as opposed to "in THE hospital", the Beverly Hillbillies theme song is now stuck in my head, and marry *kitten* kill Jess, Dean, Logan?
We say that in Australia too - someone is in hospital not in the hospital
LOL sorry. Didn't mean to leave the aussies (and others out). But whyyyyyy? That missing "the" just gets to me.
I don't know about your region, but in my part of the US, we'd say "in the hospital" but "in hospice" (if residential hospice). Similar scenario, different wording. Go figure.
IMO, there's not a "missing the" in the other usage. It's just different, like trunk/boot, windshield/windscreen, "knock up" and "thong" meaning very different things US vs. UK & Australia, lift/elevator, yard/garden minor differences, and a zillion other things. (I hope I've gotten those terms right.)0 -
Even "First Floor" means different things on the east and west side of the Atlantic.
In the USA, it means the ground level. In the UK it means the floor ABOVE ground level.
And given the automatic content sensor/censor around here, it's kind of humorous I can write fanny but not.... kitten.2 -
Even "First Floor" means different things on the east and west side of the Atlantic.
In the USA, it means the ground level. In the UK it means the floor ABOVE ground level.
And given the automatic content sensor/censor around here, it's kind of humorous I can write fanny but not.... kitten.
I was gonna totally bring up fanny!0 -
Bring it on up...
To the second floor.....0 -
It's interesting because as an Australian:
She's at the hospital - to me means she's maybe visiting, or had to pick something up
She's in hospital - to me means she's sick and has been admitted
She's in the hospital would have the same meaning as the second one, and I wouldn't blink at it, but it's not as commonly used.
In respect of the original question, I agree that it sounds like it's that use of language to try and move away from someone being defined as overweight, but it really misses the mark. Who knows though, give it a few years - stuff like "It's really hotting up!" and "I can't adult today" sounded super weird a few years back (I still dislike them both LOL but I'm losing that battle, apparently).
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Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
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paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀0 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »
Seems like a reasonable guess, but I don't think it was ever explicitly stated.
It may not have been. There's oil there though. And for sure not too many decades before the show there were lots of "Okies" migrating to California to escape the ravages of the Dust Bowl. It is so sad we lost so much soil because we didn't know any better. Now we're losing soil in our forests from devastating wildfires. There was a fire on the Payette River, I think around 2000, that was so hot it actually vaporized the forest soil and sent it to the sky. What was once a lush forest is now just rocks. So sad.
No mountains in Oklahoma to be a "mountaineer".
Pretty sure the Ozarks extend into Oklahoma, but I'm not married to the idea that Jed Clampet was an Okie.
Yeah, they do...but they're more like big hills at that point. Most of my family is from Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma...I always have a good chuckle when we visit Oklahoma and they want to go to the mountains. It's pretty and all, but particularly coming from the Rocky Mountain region and Northern NM Sangre de Cristo region it always just makes me kind of chuckle when they say "mountain"2 -
paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀
Contract and contract
Extract and extract 🙂
I have a friend (non native English speaker) who finds it impossible to learn correct prononciation for English, it all seems so random 😁
Edited to correct a major 'totally opposite meaning' typo1 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »It's interesting because as an Australian:
She's at the hospital - to me means she's maybe visiting, or had to pick something up
She's in hospital - to me means she's sick and has been admitted
She's in the hospital would have the same meaning as the second one, and I wouldn't blink at it, but it's not as commonly used.
In respect of the original question, I agree that it sounds like it's that use of language to try and move away from someone being defined as overweight, but it really misses the mark. Who knows though, give it a few years - stuff like "It's really hotting up!" and "I can't adult today" sounded super weird a few years back (I still dislike them both LOL but I'm losing that battle, apparently).
FWIW, "hotting up" goes back to at least the 1920s, though the usage may be more common now. It's not new. ("Adulting" in the current meaning is newer.)
To me, this is all just part of the fun of language (at least the English language): It evolves, and it allows for playful usages (such as verbing nouns, a thing @paperpudding mentions).
I do appreciate the value of standard usage (which is regional!), since if we diverge too far we can't communicate. As long as I understand what a person's trying to communicate, I'm fine with non-standard usage, whether it's from ignorance or playfulness. Because communication is a two (or more) part process, I look at it as part of my reader/listener obligation to meet the writer/speaker part way, if that's necessary. I even appreciate the playfulness side of it, sometimes, as creative and lively.
I used to be more of a strict-construction person about language, focused on 'proper' usage, until I learned more about dialect and diversity, plus figured out that in my case, that tendency to strictness said more about me than about the person employing what I saw as nonstandard usage. (In my case, not elite, but rather aspirational, blue collar background, first in family line to attend college - a marker of cultural wannabe-hood, for me.)
Others' mileage definitely varies. 😆
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cwolfman13 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »
Seems like a reasonable guess, but I don't think it was ever explicitly stated.
It may not have been. There's oil there though. And for sure not too many decades before the show there were lots of "Okies" migrating to California to escape the ravages of the Dust Bowl. It is so sad we lost so much soil because we didn't know any better. Now we're losing soil in our forests from devastating wildfires. There was a fire on the Payette River, I think around 2000, that was so hot it actually vaporized the forest soil and sent it to the sky. What was once a lush forest is now just rocks. So sad.
No mountains in Oklahoma to be a "mountaineer".
Pretty sure the Ozarks extend into Oklahoma, but I'm not married to the idea that Jed Clampet was an Okie.
Yeah, they do...but they're more like big hills at that point. Most of my family is from Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma...I always have a good chuckle when we visit Oklahoma and they want to go to the mountains. It's pretty and all, but particularly coming from the Rocky Mountain region and Northern NM Sangre de Cristo region it always just makes me kind of chuckle when they say "mountain"
Where I grew up, we had "mountains." They were very old mountains, so weren't very tall, and were very rounded over from age and erosion. The last two places I live actually have mountains and volcanoes. With maximum elevations of about 2500 feet, the entire Ozarks probably look more like "hills" in comparison. "The Ozarks have undertall." Just to bring this back on topic....
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As a Brit, I’d use the term in hospital for a patient and at the hospital for a visitor.
To “have overweight” is not a term I’ve ever heard used. When I googled the phrase “to have overweight” the only source I found that used the phrasing was the CDC who stated “People who have overweight and obesity…”0 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »It's interesting because as an Australian:
She's at the hospital - to me means she's maybe visiting, or had to pick something up
She's in hospital - to me means she's sick and has been admitted
She's in the hospital would have the same meaning as the second one, and I wouldn't blink at it, but it's not as commonly used.
In respect of the original question, I agree that it sounds like it's that use of language to try and move away from someone being defined as overweight, but it really misses the mark. Who knows though, give it a few years - stuff like "It's really hotting up!" and "I can't adult today" sounded super weird a few years back (I still dislike them both LOL but I'm losing that battle, apparently).
Same! I just read a headline on MSN.com about something unusual someone saw at an airport and "people are shook". Eh, no. I know that one has been around for a while, though.
This thread has been quite interesting, though. Leave it to MFP peeps to have an in-depth conversation about a fictional family and where they originally came from! Funny, but I learned a few things from that exchange as well.1 -
paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀
Contract and contract
Extract and extract 🙂
I have a friend (non native English speaker) who finds it impossible to learn correct prononciation for English, it all seems so random 😁
Edited to correct a major 'totally opposite meaning' typo
I would pronounce contract, extract and address exactly the same whether I was using them as a noun or a verb
what I meant more was words that are not really verbs being used as verbs - such as adult and lunch, in the examples I gave.
Although I guess if they are used as verbs often enough they become genuine dual usage (noun and verb) rather than a noun being used as a verb.
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paperpudding wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀
Contract and contract
Extract and extract 🙂
I have a friend (non native English speaker) who finds it impossible to learn correct prononciation for English, it all seems so random 😁
Edited to correct a major 'totally opposite meaning' typo
I would pronounce contract, extract and address exactly the same whether I was using them as a noun or a verb
what I meant more was words that are not really verbs being used as verbs - such as adult and lunch, in the examples I gave.
Although I guess if they are used as verbs often enough they become genuine dual usage (noun and verb) rather than a noun being used as a verb.
Same, but I would pronounce them differently depending on whether I was entering a CONtract, or talking about how a muscle can conTRACT, or whether I was asking for your address, or giving an address to a group of people.
No wonder English is so hard to learn!1 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀
Contract and contract
Extract and extract 🙂
I have a friend (non native English speaker) who finds it impossible to learn correct prononciation for English, it all seems so random 😁
Edited to correct a major 'totally opposite meaning' typo
I would pronounce contract, extract and address exactly the same whether I was using them as a noun or a verb
what I meant more was words that are not really verbs being used as verbs - such as adult and lunch, in the examples I gave.
Although I guess if they are used as verbs often enough they become genuine dual usage (noun and verb) rather than a noun being used as a verb.
Same, but I would pronounce them differently depending on whether I was entering a CONtract, or talking about how a muscle can conTRACT, or whether I was asking for your address, or giving an address to a group of people.
No wonder English is so hard to learn!
I conTRACT a disease or a muscle but sign a CONtract, same word but different meaning obviously.
I exTRACT a tooth, but use vanilla EXtract.
Or are these not generalized?
Address is the only noun of these three that I can imagine with two different pronunciations, emphasis on both first and second syllables being possible.
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Alatariel75 wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »paperpudding wrote: »Yes as a fellow Aussie I agree with Alatsriel - in hospital means as an inpatient, at the hospital means there working or getting a blood test or an xray or anything not involving being an admitted patient
Interestingly 'at hospital ' doesn't sound right and it would 'at the hospital' but ' in hospital' with no 'the'
Re your last sentence - have you heard the phrase 'Any noun can be verbed' ? - so you get sentences like
I can't adult now
Are we lunching today?
I saw this post once that pointed out different pronunciations of the same word (barring accents, of course) changed a noun into a verb.
You look up someone's address.
You address a letter.
Only one I can think of right now. 😀
Contract and contract
Extract and extract 🙂
I have a friend (non native English speaker) who finds it impossible to learn correct prononciation for English, it all seems so random 😁
Edited to correct a major 'totally opposite meaning' typo
I would pronounce contract, extract and address exactly the same whether I was using them as a noun or a verb
what I meant more was words that are not really verbs being used as verbs - such as adult and lunch, in the examples I gave.
Although I guess if they are used as verbs often enough they become genuine dual usage (noun and verb) rather than a noun being used as a verb.
Same, but I would pronounce them differently depending on whether I was entering a CONtract, or talking about how a muscle can conTRACT, or whether I was asking for your address, or giving an address to a group of people.
No wonder English is so hard to learn!
I conTRACT a disease or a muscle but sign a CONtract, same word but different meaning obviously.
I exTRACT a tooth, but use vanilla EXtract.
Or are these not generalized?
Address is the only noun of these three that I can imagine with two different pronunciations, emphasis on both first and second syllables being possible.
When I was in the USA, I used to get teased for saying GARage instead of guhrAGE.2 -
I'm definitely in the American camp for garage 😁 for my own pronunciation at least. But watching BBC regularly, the UK version doesn't disturb me in the slightest.
Just thought of another US versus UK difference: CaRIBbean versus CaribBEan. There are probably more.
Languages are cool 😎2 -
I'm definitely in the American camp for garage 😁 for my own pronunciation at least. But watching BBC regularly, the UK version doesn't disturb me in the slightest.
Just thought of another US versus UK difference: CaRIBbean versus CaribBEan. There are probably more.
Languages are cool 😎
I love languages!! I need to learn more. I have very basic French, but a weirdly on point accent. In 2019 we went to Paris, and one of my biggest issues was swanning into a place and doing me greetings and basic question, and because my accent was actually good, the other person would assume I actually spoke French and would just start speaking back while I stood there bewildered trying to explain I'd used up my store LOL Even my BFFs French husband gave me sooooo much stick about being able to sound French and not being able to speak it.1 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »I'm definitely in the American camp for garage 😁 for my own pronunciation at least. But watching BBC regularly, the UK version doesn't disturb me in the slightest.
Just thought of another US versus UK difference: CaRIBbean versus CaribBEan. There are probably more.
Languages are cool 😎
I love languages!! I need to learn more. I have very basic French, but a weirdly on point accent. In 2019 we went to Paris, and one of my biggest issues was swanning into a place and doing me greetings and basic question, and because my accent was actually good, the other person would assume I actually spoke French and would just start speaking back while I stood there bewildered trying to explain I'd used up my store LOL Even my BFFs French husband gave me sooooo much stick about being able to sound French and not being able to speak it.
Well, pronunciation is one of the hardest things to master (some people still have accents after living in a country for decades) so that's a great basis, vocabulary and grammar are easier to learn
I've had a similar experience with Spanish, speaking a few words/sentences pronounced quite well but when I was asked a basic question, I was already lost, oops!
I speak three languages fluently, Dutch (mother tongue), English and French, and then very basic Spanish and German where I can understand somewhat but not speak properly. English has always been my favorite, closely followed by French, and seeing the regional differences is fascinating. English pronunciation is 'wizardry' really - French, Dutch, German and Spanish are much more uniform in linking spelling and pronunciation and which syllables they stress. My friend, who reads a lot in English but never speaks it, asks me regularly how to pronounce certain words, which often ensues in hilarity because 99% of the time she's wrong. She asks 'how do you know how to pronounce that word?'. The answer is: because I've heard it before on TV/in a movie
Side note (in this already off-topic post) but I am incapable of maintaining proper pronunciation in English when speaking with non native speakers, my accent just 'disintegrates' in their presence, while I could fool an American into thinking I'm American when talking with them. Very strange!
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I was thinking that we actually extract vanilla extract from vanilla beans.I exTRACT a tooth, but use vanilla EXtract.
That's just pronunciation. A worse one even is that in the UK and USA there are two different ways to spell color/colour. There's two spellings and two pronunciations for the 13th element in the periodic table (aluminum/aluminium).Alatariel75 wrote: »When I was in the USA, I used to get teased for saying GARage instead of guhrAGE.
For even more fun, does everyone know how to pronounce the name of the island nation of Kiribati? I still want to go there before it's underwater.
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I'm definitely in the American camp for garage 😁 for my own pronunciation at least. But watching BBC regularly, the UK version doesn't disturb me in the slightest.
Just thought of another US versus UK difference: CaRIBbean versus CaribBEan. There are probably more.
Languages are cool 😎
I think that's regional (or maybe just randomly varied) in the US - I've heard both forms of Caribbean fairly commonly, and no one seems to blink.
As an aside to a later subdiscussion here, extract a tooth, vanilla extract - same pronunciation/syllabic emphasis, for me - 2nd syllable accented. (I've heard the other, though.)0 -
As an aside to a later subdiscussion here, extract a tooth, vanilla extract - same pronunciation/syllabic emphasis, for me - 2nd syllable accented. (I've heard the other, though.)
Yes, me too.
All those words get pronounced the same by me regardless of noun or verb or meaning.0 -
Well, pronunciation is one of the hardest things to master (some people still have accents after living in a country for decades)
as a rough rule of thumb (now there is a weird figure of speech !) people tend to retain some accent if they moved to the new area after puberty.
so people who migrated to Australia for example, at age 14, will still have some accent for the rest of their life.
As there were a lot of people who came with their families at around that age from Italy, Greece etc soon after WW2 - you often meet people in their 80's now who have been here for half a century and still have a slight accent.
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