Shoes or Boots? Field or Pitch? Zero-zero or nil-nil? Etc.

[Maczebus]

Originally posted by QPR Kevin H

Thanks Richard - I was having a bit of a laugh. Thanks to not being hamstrung as an over-defensive American, I know my way around an English pub.



And aren't our pints bigger than the US ones?

How'd that happen?
I guess the feeble average US drinker couldn't handle a full pint of an evening. :)

[QPR Kevin H]

Originally posted by maczebus


And aren't our pints bigger than the US ones?

How'd that happen?
I guess the feeble average US drinker couldn't handle a full pint of an evening. :)
Well a pint is 16oz by measure. Thats what you get over here. Over there - its more like 20oz - so Pint has become more of a proper name than a measure. Not that Im complaining!

[dcunited81]

Originally posted by sydtheeagle


If you have no football tradition (and the only traditions worth imitating are your own, anyway) then make one. Speak whatever language works for the game in your country, and don't be ashamed of it. That'll in time become as traditional as the language of football anywhere else.

It doesn't, however, sound affected when a Yank says "pitch", or "nil", or "boot". Why should it? They're just words, and the right words to use in the broader context of the soccer universe as a whole when talking about the game. You're just being unnecessarily self conscious if you think your American accent somehow disqualifies using from using the standard lingo of the game. I may sound pretty stupid talking about gridiron with my English accent, but if I'm gonna talk about it I might as well use the phrases that actually apply to the sport, whether they're common in my own country or not.

AMEN, I couldn't have said it better.

[mr magoo]

this is feeble its like the age old question half full or half empty??? it makes no difrence what it is everybody knows what you are saying.

[Boro_lad]

Originally posted by mr magoo
this is feeble its like the age old question half full or half empty??? it makes no difrence what it is everybody knows what you are saying.

ahh but this is a subconsious thingy that judges your state of mind or something. If it is half full you are happy with life and content with things as they are. And half empty is the opposite.....

sneaky

as for yanks using english terms to sound knowledgeable about the game. Its totally unessasary as you will never know....only joking. What ever is most effective is what you should use. Ones preferable when you are talking to each other you dont have to stop them and say what the fu©k are you saying?......

if a yank was tlkaing to me and started using english terms and it was obvious it wasnt natural it would just sound laughable. You should stick with you ties and your left wing backerman. but dont in 20 years time when football is more mainstream over there (or so many hope) you dont come over here complaining we use wierd words about football. Just remember no matter what we are always right and you will always be wrong!!

[kebzach]

Originally posted by GoDC
You are doing the right thing. Speak American, not English.

exactly.

shoes.

field.

zero-zero.

this isn't Europe. quit talking like it is.

[usscouse]

There’s a lot of plain old common sense here, so read it and use it.

There is also a lot of sad, scared people with huge inferiority complexes frightened to use different words. So they’ll use words from a mainstream American sport and adapt it to Football/soccer in case their friends mock them.

We all know what the sport is and most of the terms are interchangeable now days. My U15 team use the word shoes while I still call them boots and to them the cleats are on the bottom of their shoes. While I have studs on my boots. They know what I mean when we talk about the game.

I go to a pub in Liverpool for a pint (Yes there are still 20oz to a pint) and I’ll get asked what part of America I’m from. So I know what Brad, Casey and John go through. Language is learnt by osmosis and a lot of the time it’s involuntary.
Here I’ll have a beer and someone will ask “Are you from Boston?” I usually say “No, farther east” Most people get it and some think the world ends at Boston.

[Craig the Aussie]

It's all funny, especially as an Aussie because we use some British and some American usages.

However one tip, as was said earlier if in Oz - never say "root" unless you want sex, and never ask a barman for a "beer" - it shows you must be underage. You have to ask by size of glass and brand of beer.

Just to make things harder, the glass size differs from state to state. But, if in Sydney, the largest glass is a "schooner". So, for example - "Schooner of VB thanks mate"

(And noone in Australia drinks Fosters - only tourists ask for it)

[RichardL]

There is something pathetically sad about hearing someone from England describe a girl as a "chick".

I'd never heard the word "cleats" before using these boards though.

Technically the difference between a boot and a shoe is that a boot covers the ankle and a shoe doesn't, so from that point of view the USA is actually correct. I'd imagine when the game was first played people wore boots (as normal shoes would have been ruined) which became specialised with studs etc, and over time these 'football boots' became styled into what we know them to be today - but the name stuck.

Pitch? I've no idea, but it does seem to be only used in a sporting field context. You wouldn't, for example, go camping and put up a tent in a pitch.

Zero is more commonly used than nil throughout Europe (except the UK).

[Boro_lad]

Originally posted by Craig the Aussie
It's all funny, especially as an Aussie because we use some British and some American usages.

However one tip, as was said earlier if in Oz - never say "root" unless you want sex, and never ask a barman for a "beer" - it shows you must be underage. You have to ask by size of glass and brand of beer.

Just to make things harder, the glass size differs from state to state. But, if in Sydney, the largest glass is a "schooner". So, for example - "Schooner of VB thanks mate"

(And noone in Australia drinks Fosters - only tourists ask for it)

but you do have 4 x...please let that be true......


as for the pitch/field point.

that is technically incorrect calling it a field. As a field is just an open plain of grass. While a pitch is a purposely marked out area...

[bungadiri]

Originally posted by usscouse
There’s a lot of plain old common sense here, so read it and use it.

There is also a lot of sad, scared people with huge inferiority complexes frightened to use different words. So they’ll use words from a mainstream American sport and adapt it to Football/soccer in case their friends mock them.

We all know what the sport is and most of the terms are interchangeable now days. My U15 team use the word shoes while I still call them boots and to them the cleats are on the bottom of their shoes. While I have studs on my boots. They know what I mean when we talk about the game.

I go to a pub in Liverpool for a pint (Yes there are still 20oz to a pint) and I’ll get asked what part of America I’m from. So I know what Brad, Casey and John go through. Language is learnt by osmosis and a lot of the time it’s involuntary.
Here I’ll have a beer and someone will ask “Are you from Boston?” I usually say “No, farther east” Most people get it and some think the world ends at Boston.
Yep, I don't see much point in giving those guys a hard time for having picked up some of the traits of speech common to wherever they happen to be living. It's completely normal--children get their "accents" primarily from their peer groups, once they're of school age, and not from their parents and, contrary to popular belief, a person's language does not become fixed upon reaching adulthood, the pace of acquisition just slows down a lot.

[Mattbro]

Originally posted by RichardL
Zero is more commonly used than nil throughout Europe (except the UK).

This I don't understand, since they're speaking their own languages in the rest of Europe? I know the French say "zéro", but does anyone else? The German word, BTW, is "Null", so you can see where "nil" comes from!

My mom recalls - from when we lived in England - seeing basketball sneakers being advertised in a catalog as "baseball boots". :D

[kevbrunton]

My son (who's 17 and has been playing forever) uses...

Boots are on your feet.
You play on the field.
You wear a uniform / shirt.
The score was zero-zero.

We're both referees and in the referee courses, the side of the field is called the touchline and the end of the field is called the endline, so that's how we refer to them and we both tend to use "out of touch" for a ball out of bounds.

One term that I heard during the WC a lot that I don't think I had heard before then was calling the endline the "byline". I always thought that was something writers got.

[Maczebus]

Originally posted by Craig the Aussie

(And noone in Australia drinks Fosters - only tourists ask for it)

That's why I like the Aussies, they know a shite beer when they come across it.

Fosters is absolute piss water, and to top it off it's brewed in Tadcaster outside York. Yeah the real Aussie flavour, my arse.

[Maczebus]

Originally posted by RichardL

I'd never heard the word "cleats" before using these boards though.

Same here - took me a couple of minutes to realise what they were talking about. 'Cleats' puts me in mind of rock climbing or something similar.

Originally posted by RichardL

I'd imagine when the game was first played people wore boots (as normal shoes would have been ruined) which became specialised with studs etc, and over time these 'football boots' became styled into what we know them to be today - but the name stuck.

You're right. A few weeks back I went back home to Preston and took the time to go with my dad, to the National Football Museum at Deepdale. You should see the stuff they had to wear in yesteryear. Woollen tops, boots that looked more robust than most building site workers wear (including steel toe caps and yes, above the ankle) and with the steel toe caps in mind, the smallest, least effective looking shin pads I've ever seen.
They had odd shaped balls too in those days (wa-hey!). One from Eton college sometime in the 19th century, really was more like a rugby ball than football (and players complain nowadays how crap pitches give the ball uneven bounce!). Made of what looked like elephant hide with prominent stitching, to ensure anyone who headed the thing would recieve the double-whammy of a nasty gash to the forehead, plus compression fractures of the spine.
Compare the game then, to what it is now when we see Totti, Beckham or Rivaldo fall over when someone breathes near them.


Originally posted by RichardL

Pitch? I've no idea, but it does seem to be only used in a sporting field context. You wouldn't, for example, go camping and put up a tent in a pitch.


I have a small theory-ette on this.
I know when the clubs were just starting to be formed, the clubs weren't exclusively footballing. Often cricket was also part of the club - I know this was the case for PNE and am fairly sure Sheffield Wednesday were similar, as were probably others.
Cricket is played on a pitch, and since the game of cricket was substantially more founded than football was, football was to be played on the cricket pitch and not cricket being played on a football field.
Just a thought.

[Mattbro]

Originally posted by RichardL

You wouldn't, for example, go camping and put up a tent in a pitch.


Then why do we say "pitch" a tent?

[DC Forever]

Originally posted by maczebus


We say 'on frame'?

It's the first I've heard of it.

I may be wrong about this one (not an admission I generally like to make) but I think it's a hockey term.

I think all good Americans, however we feel about Britishisms, should be able to agree that we want nothing to do with Canadianisms.

[sebakoole]

Originally posted by Mattbro


This I don't understand, since they're speaking their own languages in the rest of Europe? I know the French say "zéro", but does anyone else? The German word, BTW, is "Null", so you can see where "nil" comes from!

It's been 13 or so years since I lived in France so I may be the victim of faulty memory here, but I seem to remember them also saying "nul partout" for a 0-0 game. "Nul", meaning nil or zero obviously and "partout" meaning literally "everywhere" but, idiomatically in this case, "each". My fellow DCU fans can sympathize with the "zero everywhere" phrase, I'm sure.

[bungadiri]

Originally posted by sebakoole

It's been 13 or so years since I lived in France so I may be the victim of faulty memory here, but I seem to remember them also saying "nul partout" for a 0-0 game. "Nul", meaning nil or zero obviously and "partout" meaning literally "everywhere" but, idiomatically in this case, "each". My fellow DCU fans can sympathize with the "zero everywhere" phrase, I'm sure.

Do the French think "nul partout is like kissing your sister"? Probably not...

[Mattbro]

I think nul partout in the French league is like kissing the ugliest sister in a multi-sister family.