Americans using English terms.

I take it you're also one of these 'YER IN AMERICA NOW SPEAK ENGLISH!' folk?

 

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion, because he makes a very good point.

The problem is that too many people think that words like "pitch," "kit" and "nil" are soccer terms, analogous to "diamond" being the term for a baseball field or "love" being the tennis word for "zero." Those people are more misinformed, for the most part, than intentionally posing, IMO.

"Pitch" is just a British synonym for "field." To them, American gridiron football is played on a pitch. Similarly, I have heard baseball scores reported on Sky Sports News as "2-nil" and stories about "basketball matches."

The word "football," on the other hand, is something that most Americans need to understand differently. As in, THERE IS MORE THAN ONE KIND OF FOOTBALL, AND SOCCER AND GRIDIRON ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES. Americans understand that at some level, mostly because ESPN used to show Aussie Rules, but the ones who think that the statement "we call it soccer, they call it football" is something other than a complete misunderstanding of it are the ones who are wrong, not those who dare to refer to soccer as football here.

The jagoffs on both sides of this little linguistic pissing match, the ones who refer to either one as "the REAL football, dammit!" need to have freshly-dented skulls, regardless of their affiliation. Football isn't a sport, it's a category of sports, and just saying otherwise does not make it so, no matter how loudly or often you say it.

 

Americans using English terms are berks.

 

Shut yer gob, you git!

 

Get stuffed, ya bloody prat!

 

For the most part I hear people using those terms in order to demonstrate the "superior" knowledge of the game. The same crowd of American soccer fans who continually try to prove that they too know much about the game of soccer and are as sophisticated as the Euro football supporters.

In the end it creates an elitist culture about the sport in this country, essentially making it more foreign and less acceptable. It's unfortunate that in an attempt to fit in with soccer's eurosnobs, we end up alienating those whom many are attempting to attract to the sport.

If you want soccer to be big in the US, than make it comfortable and acceptable to average Americans. It all plays into the need to create a soccer culture in the US, similar to what we have with football, basketball or baseball.

 

We speak English, the most diverse and richest language on earth today. To try and limit vocabulary to some local lowest common denominator will give us tons of gerbils chattering in monotone and, at the same time, do absolutely nothing to banish Eurosnobspeak and other banes of existence.
Let folks use, accurately, whatever words the language embraces--- and leave linguistic haughtiness to such as the French Academy..
Now to the pitch, for a spot of Soccerball until I chunder

 

Cheers, mate.
Why limit ourselves to one set of terms? I think we Americans are smart enough to recognize and embrace the international nature of the sport. Why not use both British AND American terms interchangeably?

 

Yeah, there is that. The insufferable ones, who correct someone who says "goalie," because the "soccer term" is "keeper." I can see not using the hockey term "goaltender," since the goal in soccer is just too big to be referred to as being "tended," but they can take that smug condescension and stuff it.

The other side of that coin are the just plain ignorant, who assume that the whole world calls the game "futbol," to the point of spelling it. Most of those are the ones who simply can't bear to think of the word that they use for their beloved helmet-gladiatorball could be associated with that sissy, foreign sport, and so come up with that crap.

Exactly right, and that's where the two sides of the coin converge. The soccer bashers are more than happy to create as much separation between soccer and the "American sports" as they can, and the quasi-sophisticates' zeal to appear "worldly" by trying to maintain their superiority will be both derided and used by the bashers for their own ends.

I agree. The idea of soccer being "that weird, foreign sport" has to be destroyed, and Europosers telling people about how their team on the "pitch" looked in their "kits" in the "1-nil" win should be made to look just as stupid as they would if they insisted that we used "windscreen" and "bonnet" and "motorway."

 

Taking that as a "yes".

 

"Football- We call it soccer here.While I'll be the first to admit that football makes more sense,it is what we call it(Italians-calcio,Germans-fussball,Americans-soccer)"

Soccer was an English expression. I call it football or soccer depending who I am talking to.

-------------------
"Pitch-We call it a field"

I call it the field

----------------------------
"Kits-We call it jerseys or uniforms."

I call it shirts.
----------------------

"Nill-Zero,nuff said lol"

Must of the time I refer to zero as a shutout or smetimes like this score was 4-zip.
-----------------
I refer to the sideline as the touch line because youcan touch the ball for a throw in or a restart if you will from that touch line or behind it.

 

in that particular case just ask them why people in England regularly say "goalie" as well. And then knee them in the balls for good measure.

 

Incorrectly, and for no good reason.

Again, soccer IS football. So is American football, so is Aussie Rules, so is Gaelic football, so is rugby. All it takes for the terms to be more interchangeable here is for people to finally admit that there is more than one kind of football, and the more people who use them that way, the faster that we can get rid of the whole "THEY call it football...." mentality.

And, it should be no different for soccer. Sometimes when I hear people say a soccer score as "1-nil," I ask them if they ever use "nil" in other sports. That gives me the opportunity to either A) Set them straight from thinking something in error, or B) expose them as an ignorant Europoser. I'm not sure which one is more fun.

Yes I do....

Perfectly okay, IMO. There is a legitimate, practical reason to use the term "touchline," and of course, "sideline" is just as acceptable.

Now, using the British term, "byline" for the goal line or end line for me falls into the same category as "pitch" and "kit."

That reminds me, when the Detroit Express played (and yes, I AM that old), their first TV announcer insisted on calling the penalty area the "Hot Box." That's the other extreme, the ones who try to "Americanize" everything, and discard all of the existing terms, as if being "American" is enough to not require making sense.

 

That's just good advice, there.

 

This thread is pants.

 

It went all pear-shaped early on. Was it Jeremy E. or was it SYoshonis? Six of one, half dozen of the other. Anyway, the less said about this thread, the better.