It's COLOR and ARMOR!

Man I was raised in the norther part of Cali/Oregon/Washington/Michigan, far from anyone from the south, and I say y'all. Hell my roommate who is from Texas says that at times I sound like more of a southerner (did I get that right? o.O) than he does.

I was using the "F-Word" for many things besides just swearing before I had ever even heard of that bit. Of course it just reinforced what I already knew. I mean really, which one of these sounds like I enjoyed myself more: "That was sweet!" or "That was f****ng sweet!"?

I could probably come up with other examples for different uses of the word without just ripping off Carlin..... but im on the verge of passing out right now and I dont feel like it..... hell im not even going to bother using the crap Carlin said.

*runs to see if the name "Spiraltrappor" is taken*

But you see, torches are on fire and all you British people are confusing the issue by calling an innocuous not-fiery light source a torch!

Wazzat?

Also, storming a castle with pitchforks and flaming torches works.
Pitchforks and flashlights? Not so much.

What a fine ambassador for your people you make.

Pitchforks and flaming flashlights. Now there's an image....


(Hmm, that'd get pretty uncomfortable when the burning plastic dripped on your hand.)

The pronunciation of the word scone (as in whether it should rhyme with 'gone' or 'home') is a debate more serious than religion, politics and which is the best Star Trek, even if they were combined into some sort of gestalt pan-argument.

It is rumoured to have been a conversation about scones that really kicked off the Civil War, and the whole monarchy vs parliament thing was added in afterwards as a way of healing the bitter wounds.

You missed "Point No Point" in Washington State.

I doubt anyone's seriously complaining about spelling.

One has to wonder sometimes

Quite easy (in my head). Both pronounciations refer to slightly different cakes.

A scone (rhyming with 'gone' and said in a gruff northern English accent) is a hearty little beast of a cake, which some of my lesser acquaintances seem to think is a type of rock cake.

Whereas a scone (rhyming with cone and said in a mandatory higher pitched southern accent) is a wussy, airy-fairy piece of worthlessness eaten with cream by people not tough enough to face the former scones.

Anyone who disagrees is obviously cruising for a baked-produce-based bruising.



It wouldn't surprise me if many readers have never heard rock cakes called scones before...

I actually grew up knowing what you may call 'rock cakes' as 'scones' when my grandma would often bake them. My wife couldn't understand me calling them scones when she only knew them as rock cakes. So after months of minor disagreement over this I had a dig about and found a few old recipe books calling them both names and that the term scone was used as another name for rock cakes in North East England. Given that some of my great-grandparents had lived much of their lives around Newcastle that seemed to explain my use of scone for rock cake.

This may be a personal usage, but I find that scone (rhyming with cone) suits the lightweight cake eaten with clotted cream when faced with the hardier scone (rhymes with gone) of a rock cake.

I know I did, that's why I read the whole thread. Good read..

Yes, it does make you wonder, when peopel saw the thread's title and didn't get it was a joke.

Before that you were conquered by the Normans. The language of state in England was actually French until (IIRC) Henry IV. The bubonic plague had thinned the pool of French speakers for the nobility, and, of course, the loss of Normandy and Aquitaine created a rift between the French-descended nobles and their mainland identity. Inter-marriage took care of the rest.

French contributed a lot in the intervening period. That's a large part of the reason that English, more so than probably any other language, has so many synonyms with slightly varying shades of meaning. On the upside, as a result, English allows for a great deal of precision; whereas other languages tend to have a smaller collection of words, the exact meaning of each determined almost solely by context or tone, English has a boat load of what some might consider redundant words, many of which convey subtle but important differences in connotation. The downside is that English is a pain in the backside to learn, and it may be a medium more prone to miscommunication.

In any case, back then, what we call English would have been only vaguely recognizable to us as such when written, and probably sounded more like German to a modern ear. The modern brits have no more claim to a so-called true English tongue than Chaucer had, much as it often pains me to see more and more lazy speaking and writing habits become acceptable, here.

The language evolves, whch I believe was your point. It's not a big deal. The only surprising thing, to me, about the American variant is that there are so few substantive differences from British English. Despite the USA's vast size, we don't have as many distinct differences in regional accent as you might expect, either -- given the often vast differences one can find over a relatively small distance in the UK.

Laugh all you like at our Texans; you (speaking generally now) know as well as I do that you have more than your fair share of indecipherable accents. Unlike the English of times gone by, though, we cannot easily ascribe a particular social class to any individual based on his accent.

That's a good thing; I think we'd all agree.

On a side note, it's nice to hear the word imperialist used correctly. Along with many other political terms, it's been flogged to the point of near incoherence, lately.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Pretty sure that the Norman conquest of Britain came after Romans, Vikings and various Germanic tribes!

(Though I can't recall whether or not the vikings continued occasional shopping trips to England up until the 13th or 14th centuries... it went on for a while, but then we developed ferries and cheap flights and now wreak revenge sending stag parties marauding in the rough direction of the viking homelands.)

I didn't mention most of the Norman influence mainly because most of my tongue-in-cheek potted history of English was responding to the point that a large portion of English is courtesy of the French. Yes a fair bit is - but a lot more is due to other languages/races and a fair bit we just made up all by ourselves...

My guess is also that French probably owed hell of a lot to latin, and we'd already had bit of an infusion of that with the Romans.

Over time we managed to get a sort of mongrel language that finds it hard to trace all its ancestors - and it became all the richer for that.

Still not sure where the Greek came from...

Fun fact: When travelling south, Intercourse leads directly to Paradise, PA.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

heh, so scones in the northeast are the wimpy versions of hardtack One of these days hopefully I'll stumble on the northern version in the states. Unfortunately the southern version seems to be the dominant variety here (and even then I suspect its something altogether different and the same in name only).

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.