BS: American English usages taking over Brit

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 12:32 PM

Allan Conn - breakfast at my Gran's back in the '50s and '60s (Lincolnshire, UK) always included toast made on a toasting fork over the kitchen fire and toasted one side only. We called it "French Toast", although strictly speaking it wasn't.

MtheGM - when I was an engineering apprentice, a spanner was a tool with non-adjusting jaws at one or both ends, whereas a monkey wrench (a.k.a. Adjustable Wrench) had jaws at one end only which can be opened or closed gradually by rotating a threaded wheel. So no, we don't call a monkey wrench a spanner - we call a spanner a spanner and a monkey wrench a monkey (or adjustable) wrench.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 01:47 PM

Ah, thank you BWM. Always happy to learn something new. Now I shall know the distinction.

However, would you not agree that "throwing a spanner in the works" is the usual English expression for doing something deliberately to prevent or sabotage some sort of ongoing activity?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 01:54 PM

Sensibly enough, the monkey wrench was once called an "adjustable spanner."

Or "spanner" for short.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 02:26 PM

MtheGM, yes, unless you are Dutch. Then you would throw a "Sabot" into the works. (Wooden shoe). Hence, the word Sabotage.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 02:39 PM

Kendall:
Surely that was French, not Dutch.

If a Dutchman threw his shoe it would just clog-up the machinery :)

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 03:10 PM

Interesting about the toasting fork! We call bread fried in egg "French toast"

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 03:33 PM

The 'French toast' usage for bread fork-toasted on one side only, often is done this way because the bread is already buttered but has remained uneaten - a way of avoiding waste. My mother certainly called this 'French toast'. However, the bread fried in egg is certainly what Americans mean by 'French toast'; it figures largely in one scene of Thornton Wilder's moving play about American family life & community, "Our Town" (1938).

I'll bet anyone plenty of 6 to 5 that the French lay no claim to either comestible!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 05:00 PM

Interestingly enough, the OED dates yummy "French toast" recipes to the 17th century.

The "toasted on the dry side" version seems to come only from the 1920s.

It makes me wonder if the one-sided toast was named because that was about the only way you could make toast in a trench on the Western Front, with a knife or bayonet for a toasting-fork. (Assuming you had bread, which was something of a luxury in a forward area.)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: JennieG
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 05:42 PM

I for one quite like the variety in our current language - makes for a richer lexicon! Trying to keep just one style (i.e. 'Proper English') contained within the borders of one country is akin to pulling up the drawbridge and letting no one in......or out.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 07:28 PM

Soaking stale bread in milk, cooking and then sweetening, is as old as Rome (Pan dulcis)

When egg was added is uncertain, but cookbooks from the Middle Ages give the recipe for French Toast with egg.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 10:55 PM

"We call bread fried in egg "French toast"

That's "Eggy-Bread" in these here parts of the Backwoods.

French Toast, I was informed by a chef I used to know, is a thick slice of bread toasted both sides, then split into two pieces of half the thickness so that one side is toasted and the other side is un-toasted. Which seems a complicated way of achieving what we achieved by the simple expedient of toasting thinner bread on one side only!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 02:40 AM

French Toast, I was informed by a chef I used to know, is a thick slice of bread toasted both sides, then split into two pieces of half the thickness so that one side is toasted and the other side is un-toasted.

Where I come from, that's called Polish Toast.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 04:05 AM

There ya go!

I'm fascinated by this kind of stuff, love it! It's the differences between us that make the world such a great place!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 06:41 AM

If you can't have marriage sunny side up try divorce over easy!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 09:58 AM

Like in "Polish jokes"?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 10:00 PM

Like in "Polish jokes"?

Yes. I've actually never heard of making toast like that (was making a joke), but I'm quite sure that if it existed, we'd call it Polish toast.

As inappropriate (bigoted) as it is, the word "Polish" has been used in my area to label something as generally "backwards" or nonsensical. Or when there is some kind of clusterf#ck situation.

You can apply the adjective "Polish" to many things. I remember a notable occasion when my sister and I had spent some time in New Jersey. We complaint about typical, though innocuous, things that would confuse/irritate outsiders. For example, the fact that you cannot pump your own gas there, or strange aspects of the roads, like "jug-handles" (which require that you take a right in order to make a left). When we finally left New Jersey, my sister said, "Yes! We're finally out of this Polish state." It was funny and, yes, you had to be there.

I am well aware that this doesn't "excuse" bigoted terms, but: I have people of Polish descent in my family, and I have worked amongst Polish people (Polish-Americans) who just laugh at the usage.

"French" as a modifier, on the other hand, stereotypically conveys either something "dirty" or something done without proper "manners."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 12:47 AM

Yes; I remember first hearing that US-ers use 'Polish' as we [reprehensibly] use 'Irish' in this way, from Heather Woods, ex-Young·Tradition, who has lived in NY for years but was on a visit over here. Likewise they tell Polish jokes as we tell Irish jokes. Her example, which will approx date this telling, was --

A man was found dead at the bottom of the Grand Canyon wearing roller-skates. The police were baffled till they found that his name was Evel Kowalski.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 01:51 AM

In the UK, we don't have the same derogatory connotations attached to the term "Polish" as you apparently do, so the rather weak joke was completely wasted on me.

"French" can have those connotations, but also, especially with reference to the culinary arts, it can be used as an indicator of "excellence" or "uniqueness".

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 02:09 AM

"Polish jokes" mostly went in and out of fashion in the 1980s, if I remember correctly - though they certainly live on among some people who thrived then, I guess.

I would not generalize the use of "Polish" as a modifier to all of the USA. Although it's certainly hard to tell - due to the cringe-worthy nature of the usage stifling its usage in public! - it is most characteristic of the working-class Northeast. Well, perhaps in the Midwest, too. I wouldn't know. It's gotta be somewhere where there are actually Polish people! I grew up not far from New Britain, Connecticut, which is one of the Polish Diaspora centers of the US. Once a week we ate kielbasa, and any community meals usually included pierogie, kluski (sp?) and gawumpki (sp?!). But out here in California, few people are aware of such things. Even to use the "kielbasa" elicits blank stares. So to say "Polish" in any off-color fashion would brand you as a bigot.

Of course, Californians have "Mexican" as their go-to ethnic/national term (though it does not equate with Polish). "Mexican standoff" is perhaps one similar concept. A more accurate equivalence: What we call a "Puerto Rican shower" in the Northeast US is a "Mexican shower" in the West, I believe.

I grew up calling fingerless gloves (the kind you wear outdoors to keep your hands warm, while retaining the ability to do fine work) as "Polish burglar gloves." Yep. Hardy-har-har. But I don't think it was about trying to be clever/funny, since the "joke" was too old and conventional. I get the feeling that such usages are more about affirming social class. That is, the "upper" classes, bereft as they are from Poles, etc., would be worried about the reaction from saying such things, whereas the working class folks (among whom you'd invariably know and interact with some Poles, etc etc) "don't care."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 09:14 AM

The "toasted on the dry side" version seems to come only from the 1920s.

In the '30s, in my Grandparents' house where I lived, we did not have a toaster. My grandmother would make toast under the broiler of the oven, one-sided. But not toasted "on the dry side", and not as a means of avoiding wastage of already-buttered bread.

Instead, the procedure was to butter the pieces of bread and then
toast them in the broiler, buttered side up. The resultant toast was spotty, sort of like a palomino horse.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 10:41 AM

"Polish jokes" became a fad in the Chicago-Milwaukee area around 1965.

They were so common that there was an "Official Polish Joke Book" published in 1966.

Whatever the ultimate source (Germans have been blamed), the American "Era of the Polish Joke," when everyone seemed to be telling them, ended (in my experience) about ten years later.

They're still heard but not very often. There are probably some "tradition bearers" who know dozens of them and will tell them at the drop of a hat.

Before the "Polish joke" fad was the "elephant joke" fad of about 1962. There was also a fad for "dead baby jokes" around 1970.

The people I knew who told Polish (or, as they were usually called outside of the media, "Polack") jokes seemed to have absolutely nothing against real Poles. It was just a rhetorical convention.

Which isn't to say that real Poles weren't justifiably irritated.

Fun facts: Though "Polack" is now derogatory in English, it's just the English pronunciation of the ordinary Polish word. It's even in dignified use in Hamlet, whose father "smote the sledded Polacks on the ice."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 11:16 AM

Small>In the UK, we don't have the same derogatory connotations attached to the term "Polish" as you apparently do, so the rather weak joke was completely wasted on me.

.,,.

As who do, BWM? I [based here in UK as you know] was quoting an American joke, admittedly 'feeble' as such jokes are [part of their point], told me for folkloric interest, as an exemplar of a variant from our then current 'Irish' ones, by an expatriate British friend living in USA. So not quite clear to me whom you were addressing in such dismissive tones, or to what precise effect.

Best

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 11:56 AM

He was addressing me, Michael, and my "Polish toast" quip. And I took no offense.

Incidentally (moving things along in other directions), I took Backwoodsman for a North American - because I have difficulty imagining any "backwoods" in the UK! Does it exist? I (naive) impression is that no patch of woods is far enough from another town (and another pub) to really constitute it.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 01:19 PM

Thanks, GS - no offence was intended!

You're right about the 'backwoods' reference - I live in the county of Lincolnshire which, by UK standards, is relatively sparsely populated and is largely devoted to agriculture. I adopted the name when a female member (now deceased), known for her vitriolic style of posting, referred to me and a group of fellow Lincolnshire men as 'backwoodsmen' in one of her even-more-than-usually hysterical outbursts. :-)

Michael, I usually hold you and your contributions in high regard. Why on Earth would I be deliberately offensive towards you? Chill man! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 03:50 PM

Some in the US are perfectly capable of saying "I am presently busy weeding my garden, but I will meet you at the store presently... with seemingly no awareness of the dichotomy.

Go figger'...

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:01 AM

I was always amazed at how the likes of Norwich could be described as 'in the sticks' and the Ipswich football team are called "the tractor boys" when these places are massive in comparison to towns in my area. I suppose it is all relative. To folks in London I suppose Norwich is a wee place. And like BWM says the counties as a whole have a lot of agricultural. There are some pretty secluded places in Britain though especially in the northern half of Scotland where you can be quite a way from the nearest town of any size or pub.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 07:27 AM

French fries? no connection to France. They were developed in Belgium.

Polish jokes? as I understand it, they were created by the Poles themselves as a mild protest for the butchery of the Polish intelligentsia by the Russians.
Remember, Copernicus was a Pole.Hardly a dolt.

Now, what have the Australians done to the English language?

How about Jamaica?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Dáithí
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 07:58 AM

How about the US use of "alternate" to mean "alternative" - surely not the same thing at all. To step on alternate steps isn't the same as to step on alternative steps - which latter would mean some other ones, over there, perhaps.

Or what about "momentarily". Does that mean in a moment (US) or for a moment (UK)?
D

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 09:20 AM

(If it's already been mentioned forgive me, as I'm too lazy to scroll through over 400 posts) but I do so hate the inane and nasal 'Hiyaaa' for 'Hello'. It's everywhere now. Is it American in origin? And 'You guys'. I always think of 'guys' as denoting American men, but it seems unisex now. I'm definitely not a 'guy'; the only time we used that word was on November 5th, and it referred to the dressed-up dummy of Guy Fawkes which we toted round asking, 'Penny for the Guy?'.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:31 PM

Words like momentarily, and presently and other -ly words seem to be added in speech when the speaker is impatient, or doesn't want to give a full answer. Its purpose is to stop the in(en)quirer from pursuing the question.
They should be used properly (if at all; they are often weasel words)) in written communication.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:22 PM

> created by the Poles themselves as a mild protest for the butchery of the Polish intelligentsia by the Russians.

Surely a Pole in a Polish joke is the only sort of Pole who would think of a Polish joke as pro-Polish.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,ED T
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:35 PM

There are many dead languages, like latin, which are mostly used for laying out draft brochures.

Thjere are many dead-end local languages with little broad influence.

English is a living and evolving language- that is one reason why it has taken hold in a broad way.It is a patchwork, with many influences. The USA has had it's time to influence the Language, with it's past influence in global economics,movies, advertizing and TV. I suspect this influence is waning today, as it was for awhile with England.

So, what's the problem with being a major player in a growing and popular language- beyond being "stuck in the mud"?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:55 PM

Ongoing argument as to where this type of fried potato originated, France or Belgium. The early Belgian reference seems to be fictional.

The name French fried first appeared in an English cookbook, 1856.

Thomas Jefferson ate them, whatever the name, in 1802.

Polish jokes remind me of the Ukranian jokes often heard in Alberta a couple of decades ago. Many Ukranians and some Poles settled homesteads in central Alberta, starting in the 1890s but mostly in the 1920s.
Typical joke- How many Ukranians does it take to replace a light bulb?
Twenty-one. One to hold the bulb and 20 to keep turning the house around. I'm sure that this joke is as old as the light bulb.

The Hutterites of Alberta (with their own language at home) are a source of many jokes heard in the province.

I liked one I heard at the Smoky Lake Colony.
The vampires held a convention in Venice. The fish in the canals sang: "Drained wops keep falling on my head."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 05:04 PM

Q:
If you're going for vampiric songs as parodies, might I suggest the one about the (literary & film) family of 'vegetarian' vampires who move into the television show "Under The Dome" ...

Chester song at Twilight :)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 06:12 PM

In Minnesota, "up on The Range" (the iron range, in far
northern Minnesota) there's a large population of Finns,
(or Finnlanders, as we said in "Minnesotish" in my youth).

For a long time after the passing of the Polish joke fad
the very same jokes were "Finnlander jokes."

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 12:36 AM

And sometimes they aren't racially based at all: like blonde jokes, or, esp around these parts, banjo-player jokes.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 01:47 AM

Sorry to belabor the "Polish" thing - doing a bit of indulging in the "heres what people from my part of the world say" thing. Anyway, what I find interesting (and probably few others do, much less relevant in any way!) is this use of "Polish" more generally - outside of dumb jokes.

The jokes have had their day (for the history of which, thanks Lighter), and as others have pointed out, various stereotypes can fit the same "slot" in those type of jokes. The regional (Northeast US) slang usage I'm talking about has no precise (local) equivalent that I'm aware of. "Polish" means a things is "backwards" not just "dumb" and put together or performed in an illogical way. Say you go to one post office and they have a strange system where you have to wait in line for a long time, etc. Then there is another post office on the other side of town that runs more efficiently. The inefficient one might get dumbed "the Polish post office."

I am also interested in how this on-the-surface very offensive usage manages to survive and, to a degree, thrive. That is, it survives in spaces where something like "Jew post office" or "Black post office" could not.

My aunt is Polish...she hosts a Polish-style Easter and Thanksgiving (!)...and I have heard her construe the Polish "side" of the family in wacky terms. And so therefore is my cousin (part) Polish (and Irish). I lived with that cousin for a year, and we joked often about "Polish" this and that -- low brow humor to be sure (but isn't that the point?), but we had a lot of fun trying to image what the "Polish" version of something might be...it's almost like a game. My nephew is Polish (his father's name). My sister works for an entirely Polish-run company (she is the only non-Pole), and she reports her co-workers' frequent self-deprecatory banter. A have heard the same from some Polish co-workers I've had in factories and a machine shop.

There seems to be this "space" where the derogatory "Polish" concept exists, where it is "fair game." It's neither total self-deprecation (because others outside Poles participate), nor is it an outsider's denigration. This may sound silly, but it is almost like a gesture of solidarity between Polish and non-Polish Americans of the area. How such a ridiculous and unflattering thing could be a bond is strange to contemplate...the logic of it all is, in a word: Polish.

I don't know how common this is in USA, though I do know I have not seen it during my years in California. Such a usage just "wouldn't fly," and I am not sure if I could explain to people why it's OK because, naturally enough, they are thinking "Bad word. Stereotypes bad." Some friends of mine from Canada (western side) can't even come close to understanding the concept (or at least *my* version of the concept!) of using language in such a paradoxical way. And it's at those moments when I wonder if there really isn't a different way of thinking (broadly speaking) between, say, most peoples of the Northeast those of the West, and probably other areas.

On an unrelated note, I've been told by Canadians that the most "American" word I use is "yo." I think the ladies kind of like it though. Britons: beware this word doesn't invade your land!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 01:52 AM

Yo! It's been and gone, Gibb. Esp among folkies (and ho-hos and bottles of rum!).

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 01:57 AM

"On an unrelated note, I've been told by Canadians that the most "American" word I use is "yo." I think the ladies kind of like it though. Britons: beware this word doesn't invade your land!"

Too late, mah man, it's already here! Mrs. Fenswoman and I use it all the time to greet one another!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 02:28 AM

Haha, nice! Or should I say: legal!

Whenabouts did it come and go (aside from yeo-heave-ho's)?

The Englishmen of my fantasies say "oi!"

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 02:43 AM

Also, speaking of "oi"... Do you guys ( = modern, non-gender-specific, plural form of "you" in Northern US!) use much of the German/Yiddish-like terms?

e.g. mainstream ones: schtick, spiel, schmear, schmutz, schlock, shyster, putz, schlepp...?
Or do these sound very "American"?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 03:59 AM

"Yo!" seems to have arrived with Rap music. I was a Youth Worker when Rap first hit the UK, and I think I picked it up back then.

I guess "Oi!" Is a pretty common exclamation here, usually to attract someone's attention (in a rather impolite way!) or as an expression of surprise.

No we don't generally use the Yiddish-sounding expressions you mention, we have one or two - 'shyster' for instance - but there isn't a big "Yiddish" thing going on here. Maybe because we don't have such a big Jewish population here? Those terms do sound very "American" AFAIC.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking with regard to language usage out in The Lincolnshire Backwoods. Others, who may reside in the North or Dahn Sarf, may have different experiences of language usage!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 07:22 AM

It depends where you are. Certainly in East London although the use of Yiddish words is diminishing as the centres of Jewish population move to north London.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Mr Happy
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 07:57 AM

British English!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:12 AM

I don't think English/ Australian "Oy!" has anything to do with Yiddish "Oi!" The meanings, AFAIK, are distinct.

> I am also interested in how this on-the-surface very offensive usage manages to survive and, to a degree, thrive. That is, it survives in spaces where something like "Jew post office" or "Black post office" could not.

But how "thriving" is it? I've never encountered it, and I used to take note of such things. At any rate, the word "Polish" in itself isn't considered offensive, as is "Jew" used in place of "Jewish." Presumably anybody imagining "black post office" would have not have used "black." So "Polish" gets some slack (as we Yanks say)that the other two do not.

> the most "American" word I use is "yo." I think the ladies kind of like it though.

So ladies don't say "Yo"? Why the self-imposed sexism, ladies?

Have Brits started using "yo" at the end of sentences yet? I began noticing it about a dozen years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Penny S.
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 09:45 AM

Going back a bit, I thought the sort of toast made by toasting a thick slice, splitting it, and then baking the result so it curled was called Melba Toast, not French toast. and I think that what I had as a child by the name French toast wasn't pain perdu (eggy bread) but buttery toast from left overs.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 12:11 PM

I don't think English/ Australian "Oy!" has anything to do with Yiddish "Oi!"

I don't either. Was making a segue!

So ladies don't say "Yo"?

*Canadian* ladies! Kidding around. Though, come to think of it, there may be a gendered aspect of it.

Have Brits started using "yo" at the end of sentences yet? I began noticing it about a dozen years ago.

This is along the lines of what I was also wondering - but was afraid to ask for fear it would lead to a confusing Internet back-and-forth. i.e.: if Britons are using "yo" like in America, or if the word exists in more limited use.
In "my" use, Yo is:
To get attention, in quieter setting: "Yo Michael!"
To get attention, when loud voice is needed: [someone far away has just dropped his wallet without noticing] "Yo!!!"
Greeting: "yo, what's up?"
To halt an action in progress: "yo yo yo"
Answering when one's name is called.
Reaction to a slight: [a car runs over my foot, or, someone cuts in line/queue] "yo...wtf?!"
Sustain someone's attention (?), at the end of sentence: "Don't be trying to bother me 'cause I gotta lotta work to do yo."

I realize most of that is the same as "hey," and not very remarkable! But it would be interesting (to me) if people in UK had adopted *all* the uses.

I don't (often) listen to Rap, so my primary association is not as a Rap-based "slang", but rather just an American word. Is it used consciously with "American" connotation, in UK?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 12:31 PM

> Answering when one's name is called.

> To get attention, when loud voice is needed: [someone far away has just dropped his wallet without noticing] "Yo!!!"

Those are the only uses that would come naturally in my speech, and even the second still sounds creepily newfangled. (When our names were called in grade school in a huge Northeastern city, we still answered "here.")

> To halt an action in progress: "yo yo yo"

Only "Whoa whoa whoa" works here for me. Or "Hold on!" (Note presence of "o" sound in all three choices>)

For some of the others, "Hey!" or "Hey man!" (certainly not "Hey, you!") is the utterance of choice.

In a "quieter setting," it would be "Say, Michael..." Or "Mike" back in the days (I mean "day") when men usually went by the conventional nicknames.

When a car runs over my foot, I say "Owwww!!! &@##@&%%!!!" Not "Yo."

No sentence-final "yo" for me. It would have to be, "OK?" or "man."

And it's just one single-syllable interjection, people! Nobody said language was simple!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 04:47 PM

Here's one woman who says "yo". When I answer my mobile (cell phone, for the Canadians and USAans among us) it's my standard greeting.

Unless I feel like putting on the dog, then it's "Yes?"

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 16 Oct 13 - 05:58 PM

Didn't Bush greet Tony Blair at some conference with "Yo, Tony!" ? I remember at the time it annoyed many Brits as it implied a lack of respect for Blair on his part and demonstrated their poodle-and-master relationship which resulted in our following along into War.