Some things to ponder about.

[ColinEssex]

1) In America they have stores (hardware, candy, general etc) do Americans have shops? What is the difference between a store and a shop? Do Americans go storing instead of shopping?

2) What is the difference between a faucet and a tap? If no difference - What do you say? and when would you use the other word?

3) In the song "Little Deuce Coupe" is it only the Beach Boys that mispronounce "coupe"? or do all Americans say "coop"?

4) Have Americans learnt to build railway platforms tall enough for people to get off the train or do you still have little black men rushing round with little steps to help people off. Do they still shout "'board!"?

5) In the song "Walking My Baby Back Home" by Nat King Cole, he mentions he 'pets' with his girlfriend. Given that he is black and a mixed relationship would not have been tollerated in the 40's or 50's (when the song was released) - the girl must also be black. Therefore, as he "got her talcum all over my vest" she must have been in a state of undress, and he must have had his shirt off to expose his vest. Now, a vest is 99.9% usually white, if she had talcum on it couldn't be white because she wasn't and he wouldn't see it on his white vest. So - can you buy coloured talcum in America for non-whites? Otherwise how did he see it?

6) We've learned that a 'levee' is a big bank that stops the water from flooding New Orleans. How can it be that in the song "American Pie" he drove his Chevvy to the levee but the levee was dry? Surely the Gulf of Mexico would need to be dry.

7) What is a "big slip daddy" in Little Deuce Coupe?

8) What is "whisky and rye" in American Pie?

More to follow

Col

 

[Mike375]

1) In America they have stores (hardware, candy, general etc) do Americans have shops? What is the difference between a store and a shop? Do Americans go storing instead of shopping?


Col

Shopping is the act of going out to make a purchase. Thus they do "shopping" and go to a place that stores what they want to shop for.

 

[statsman]

As George Bernard Shaw once opined: The British and Americans are two great peoples separated only by a common language.

1) In America they have stores (hardware, candy, general etc) do Americans have shops? What is the difference between a store and a shop? Do Americans go storing instead of shopping?

The British term shop is the same as the American word store. Stores in the UK would be a place where things are stored.

2) What is the difference between a faucet and a tap? If no difference - What do you say? and when would you use the other word?

Interchangable in the US

3) In the song "Little Deuce Coupe" is it only the Beach Boys that mispronounce "coupe"? or do all Americans say "coop"?

Coop (not to be confused with the short term for co-operative) is the American pronunciation for a two door car or coup-eh

4) Have Americans learnt to build railway platforms tall enough for people to get off the train or do you still have little black men rushing round with little steps to help people off. Do they still shout "'board!"?

At the larger stations, the platforms have always been tall enough to avoid this problem. The platform is still in use but only at small rural stations. The colour and height of the platform operator varies. I personally have not heard the call of "All Aboard" for some time but I don't travel a lot by train.

5) In the song "Walking My Baby Back Home" by Nat King Cole, he mentions he 'pets' with his girlfriend. Given that he is black and a mixed relationship would not have been tollerated in the 40's or 50's (when the song was released) - the girl must also be black. Therefore, as he "got her talcum all over my vest" she must have been in a state of undress, and he must have had his shirt off to expose his vest. Now, a vest is 99.9% usually white, if she had talcum on it couldn't be white because she wasn't and he wouldn't see it on his white vest. So - can you buy coloured talcum in America for non-whites? Otherwise how did he see it?

In America a vest would be a British waistcoat. A British vest would be an American "undershirt" or "tee shirt".

6) We've learned that a 'levee' is a big bank that stops the water from flooding New Orleans. How can it be that in the song "American Pie" he drove his Chevvy to the levee but the levee was dry? Surely the Gulf of Mexico would need to be dry.

If the levee or dike is dry, it means that the water behind the levee is at normal level or not flooding. If the water were at a high or flood level, the levee would be wet.

7) What is a "big slip daddy" in Little Deuce Coupe?

I was told that it is a method of operating the clutch on a manual transmission used during racing. I'm not certain as its probably a California thing.

8) What is "whisky and rye" in American Pie?

If you are a Brit, whiskey is Scotch. If you are an American, whiskey is Bourbon. If you are a Canadian, whiskey is Rye. They were drinking Bourbon and Rye whiskies. I hope they weren't mixing. It would make for a hell of a hangover.

 

[KenHigg]

2) What is the difference between a faucet and a tap? If no difference - What do you say? and when would you use the other word?
Col

Honey, will you get me some tap water from the kitchen faucet?

 

[TessB]

In America a vest would be a British waistcoat. A British vest would be an American "undershirt" or "tee shirt".

Thanks for clearing that one up.
I was confused when Col stated 99.9% of vests were white. I thought, "Who the hell wears a white vest????"

 

[KenHigg]

Thanks for clearing that one up.
I was confused when Col stated 99.9% of vests were white. I thought, "Who the hell wears a white vest????"

Who tries to reverse engineer any of the lyrics from those 70's songs

The people that wrote them were stoned and the people that listened to were as well...

 

[dkinley]

Good one, Ken ...

1) The term shop is mostly used for a combination of blue-collar work spaces and offices. So you would have a mechanic's shop, brake shop, airframe shop, bike shop, etc., meaning where they work on something and/or keep up with clientele files. Strangely, we still have flower shops.

The phrase "I need to put my car in the shop" would mean some sort of repairs by a third person is needed. "I need to put my car in the garage" means the garage attached to your house. However, the phrase "I need to take my car to a garage" would mean you are taking it to the shop for repair or maintenance. The difference being the usage of definite/indefinte articles for correct interpretation of meaning.

2) Tap is still used by the older generations. They grew up with manual pumps and buckets but once the new fangled 'tap' came along ...

4) You can still hear "All Aboard" at tourist stops where they maintained the older style trains for nostalgia. These normally consist of a 2-3 hour ride in the country side with some sort of lunch or dinner.

5) To 'pet' could be describing a closeness such as some form of public display of affection. But in the phrase "heavy petting" - could be getting as far as second base but with no removal of clothing. I don't think dry humping could be considered as part of the petting process. So in the song, if he was doing some petting/caressing then it could be he got talc all over his hands and wiped them on his vest or there was dry humping going on in which case her head was probably against his chest. Funny, he doesn't mention brushing the dirt off since they were walking and not in a car.

7) I think the lyrics are "I got the pink slip, Daddy" meaning the driver owns the car. The phrase "big slip daddy", if that is what it is, would mean positive traction (rear end). But because the singer has already described the characteristics of the car the final lick of 'owning it outright' would be enough to 'flip your lid'.

8) Beer before liquor - never been sicker. Liquor before wine - never been more fine ... or something like that.

-dK

 

[Rich]

The people that wrote them were stoned and the people that listened to were as well...

That would be YOUR age group then, fine example for kids today

 

[KenHigg]

That would be YOUR age group then, fine example for kids today

Kind of like 'Stay away from it or you'll end up like me!'

 

[Ron_dK]

8) What is "whisky and rye" in American Pie?

More to follow

Col

Not having English as the mother-tongue, there are a couple of songs which I very much like , but from which I hardly understand the lyrics.
For example, the song : The Ragpicker's Dream by Mark Knopfler ( real pice of beauty) it says :

" Where the whiskey keeps following
Cold pitchers of beer
Me and my associate
Like the clientele here get
The onions and the 'taters"

I don't quite get what he's saying. Could you translate that for me in plain English. ?

 

[Rich]

I don't quite get what he's saying. Could you translate that for me in plain English. ?

Cold pitchers
Large glasses

Me and my associate
Me and my mate

Like the clientele
Like the customer


The onions and the 'taters"
onions and potatoes

 

[The_Doc_Man]

1. Store vs. Shop - it is up to the owner of the business as to whether they call it the store, the shop, or the shoppe. Functionally, no difference except a matter of common or colloquial usage.

2. Faucet vs. Tap - when limited to water, they are almost interchangeable. However, "tap" - as a device to control flow of something - also applies to "power taps." The latter is a connection to a power line that can drain off power to a secondary line. In that context, the wall power socket can also be called a power tap. In the context of electrical power, the word "faucet" never appears.

3. Pronunciation of "coupe" - common American pronunciation. Mostly because we have dropped the accent-grave' (or is it accent-acute'?) that would cause the trailing letter "e" to be voiced.

4. Previous answers are correct. It depends on the station, but most of the time now the platform is at the same height as the floor of train car. Or the car itself has steps.

5. Nat King Cole wasn't the originator of the song, nor did he write the lyrics. Therefore, references of the race of the singer are immaterial. He sang what is called a "cover" - because it was a good song suited to his vocal style. Another person has pointed out that we use different words for under-shirt vs. vest vs. waistcoat.

6. As a child and young man, I lived about half a city block from a levee for the Mississippi River. The levee is dry unless the river is at least above minimum flood stage. This is because the levee does not run down to the edge of the river. Let me see if I can draw you a mental picture.

Draw a traditional church bell or an upside-down letter "U". Draw two flat lines on either side. Now at the far end of one of those lines, draw a letter U descending down and up again, level with the flat line.

The river is in the "U" and the vertical sides of the letter U are the river's banks. The bell is the levee. Between the "U" and the bell is what we call the batture, which is part of the river's flood-plain or area of sedimentary deposition. The flat line on the other side of the bell from the batture is where people live and drive and whatever.

If the river is normal, all the water is in the "U" and none of it is on the batture. The river is at flood stage when it would make a deposit of sediment on the batture. It takes a lot of water to overtop the levee (the bell shape), because there is usually a LOT of distance between the levee and the river's bank. I.e. wide batture.

Let's get proportions right. Where I grew up, the Mississippi River was about 1/4 of a mile wide, about 190-200 feet deep. The flow rate was in the general range of 6.5 to 7 million US gallons per second using more or less standard methods for defining that rate. As wide as that was, the batture (inside the levee) was another 1/8 of a mile on each side, leading to another 1/4 mile total. To flood the batture and overtop the levees starting from flood stage suddenly becomes a lot more difficult. In that situation, it takes at least two times the amount of water to raise the river level one foot as it did when the river was below flood stage.

Therefore, it is really quite common to "take your Chevy to the levee" only to find that the "levee is dry" as noted in the song.

7. I agree with previous posters - the lyric is ... "pink slip, daddy" - meaning, "yeah, man, I own it." Not making payments. In the USA, the pink slip is the part of the auto title that the bank keeps. You get the pink slip when the bank acknowledges that the debt is paid.

8. Agree with previous posts. In a USA bar, if you ask for "whiskey" you will get Bourbon whiskey. If you want Scotch whiskey you ask for "Scotch" and if you want rye whiskey you ask for "Rye."

 

[KenHigg]

... about 190-200 feet deep.

This has to be at it's deepest point and not an average depth - ??

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Ken - correct. It is U-shaped or V-shaped, not like a rectangular box.

The bottom of the river in the vicinity of New Orleans varies from 190 to 200 feet more or less along the centerline, which some variations where there is a big curve, mostly due to eddy currents. Average depth? Can't tell you. But the flow is correct for the water passing through the imaginary vertical plane that parallels the centerline of Canal Street as it meets the river. The flow variation between 6.5 million and 7 million is "normal" seasonal range. In spring, closer to 7 million. Later, when the winter ice has melted and streams are back to normal, closer to 6.5 million.

 

[statsman]

The above is correct. The lyric is "Pink Slip Daddy" (brought an old Beach Boys LP out of retirement).

The ownership certificate in most places is printed on pink paper, hence "pink slip".
For serious street racers, the stakes at a race is your pink slip. If you lose the race, you lose your car.

Now...a question for you Col.
In the Beatles song Norwegian Wood, why is John Lennon complaining about his bird having flown?
Having just had carnal knowledge of a woman, you would think he wouldn't care that much about his budgie.

 

[Ron_dK]

Cold pitchers
Large glasses

Me and my associate
Me and my mate

Like the clientele
Like the customer


The onions and the 'taters"
onions and potatoes

That makes sense Rich. Putting this into context I figure Knopfler is painting a scenery which looks a bit like this :

 

[ColinEssex]

The above is correct. The lyric is "Pink Slip Daddy" (brought an old Beach Boys LP out of retirement).

The ownership certificate in most places is printed on pink paper, hence "pink slip".
For serious street racers, the stakes at a race is your pink slip. If you lose the race, you lose your car.

Now...a question for you Col.
In the Beatles song Norwegian Wood, why is John Lennon complaining about his bird having flown?
Having just had carnal knowledge of a woman, you would think he wouldn't care that much about his budgie.

A "bird" is a slang term for a girl. As in "I saw this stunning bird last night"

Col

 

[statsman]

A "bird" is a slang term for a girl. As in "I saw this stunning bird last night"

Col

Ah...much like the American term "chick" which means the same thing.

 

[Vassago]

"Bird" is also used here in the US, although a lot less common. It seems to stem from the swing era, hence songs with lyrics such as "The cool cats chase the birds."

 

[Mike375]

Both "bird" and "chick" are used in Australia but "chick" would be far more commonly used by younger blokes.

"woman" is also use a lot by age 50 and over blokes. Of course we also think women should dress in white to match the colour of the other appliances