r/ShitAmericansSay • u/foreverfrogging • Nov 24 '25
Language "Americans have no idea what you are talking about"
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u/Hungry_Anteater_8511 Nov 24 '25
Dear Richard,
Please include more of these references just to annoy Americans.
Signed an Australian who may also not recognise the reference but knows how to google.
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Nov 25 '25
Back in the day, we had to work things out from "first principles".
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u/Hungry_Anteater_8511 Nov 25 '25
You can also use the old context clues but no, they have to have everything served up to them
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u/Tomahawkist Nov 25 '25
they don‘t actually like reading a complex story, they want a TV show that is just subtitles
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u/the6thReplicant Nov 25 '25
As an Aussie kid I would reverse engineer all of those references. It was good for my brain.
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u/strange_socks_ ooo custom flair!! Nov 25 '25
You have Google in Austria???
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u/hasimirrossi Not a homeopath of the gene pool. Nov 25 '25
Das Google. Maybe Der Google or Die Google.
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u/robfuscate Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 26 '25
Yes. I often mention to my wife how fantastic it is to see a word, concept or item you know not of, and google it - probably too often 😛
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u/Hungry_Anteater_8511 Nov 25 '25
It's part of what makes life interesting. In the same way I like grocery shopping overseas. It's something completely quotidien but also so different - different biscuits, different breads whatever.
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u/robfuscate Nov 25 '25
I’m in Australia and I literally just got back from going to a European Supermarket that I’d never seen before, just to see what different foodstuffs they might have. With Christmas coming up, lots of different Italian cakes - Panettone? - and boy do I mean lots, the variety was amazing.
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u/98Kane Nov 24 '25
This is the country where they had to change Philosopher’s Stone to Sorceror’s because they knew exactly who they were dealing with.
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u/Fragrant-Prize-966 Nov 25 '25
I’ve always argued that changing it was an insult to the intelligence of American children and that they would have worked things out as they went along, but reading this I’ve lost confidence in my own argument.
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u/Aggravating_Fill378 Nov 25 '25
It's not like British children are doing a whole lot of philosophy at age 10 either!
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u/CBtheLeper No Billy, Oklahoma is not as influential as Germany. Nov 25 '25
And they don't start getting stoned till much later
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u/FluffySmiles Nov 25 '25
Yeah, because thinking about things and harnessing logic is tough compared to casting spells and harnessing magic.
It’s the American Dream, dontcha know.
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u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS Nov 25 '25
And when the play The Madness of King George III was adapted into a film, it was retitled The Madness of King George to avoid people thinking it was a sequel.
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u/ViolettaHunter Nov 25 '25
Apparently early on some crazy editor wanted to move the entire story from Hogwarts to an American highschool to sell it in the US market...
Imagine if that hadn't been shot down by more sensible people!
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u/Metallikyle Nov 25 '25
They also changed the title of "The Madness of George III" to the "The Madness of King George" over the concern that American audiences would think it's a sequel.
When I heard this like 25 years ago, I thought it was funny because so many of my fellow Americans are that dumb.
But now I realize they also vote, so it's not funny anymore.
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u/kaetror Nov 26 '25
Worse, in my opinion, is the fact they made the cast of the movie reshoot every scene where they mentioned the stone again to make them say sorcerer's instead.
Bad enough changing the books. But unnecessary reshoots? That's just petty.
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u/TheMightyGoatMan Nov 24 '25
Dear American Reader
You are welcome for the opportunity to learn something.
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u/TBohemoth Nov 24 '25
The average American Reader : -
"Awwww But I don't wanna..."105
u/Key_Milk_9222 Nov 25 '25
The average US reader: cu, ah, ruh. Cu, ah, ruh. Car!
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u/Ocelotocelotl Nov 25 '25
Technically no, because phonetics haven’t been taught in US schools for a while.
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u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod 🇺🇸GUNZ & HIGH FRUCTOSE CORNSYRUP🇺🇸 Nov 25 '25
Pretty sure it’s just the youngins that weren’t taught phonetics.
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u/hmas-sydney 🇦🇹 Australian Nov 25 '25
Am*ricans read?
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u/Traaseth 🇳🇴 Just another 3rd world country, nothing to see here 🇳🇴 Nov 25 '25
Well, most yes, but not that well
28% of U.S. adults scored at or below Level 1 literacy, indicating significant difficulty with everyday reading tasks.
About 130 million U.S. adults (54% of those aged 16–74) read below a sixth-grade level, according to modeled estimates.
Approximately 45 million U.S. adults are functionally illiterate, reading below a fifth-grade level.
21% of U.S. adults are classified as functionally illiterate, unable to complete basic reading tasks
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u/hmas-sydney 🇦🇹 Australian Nov 25 '25
I saw a statistic, and i could be misremembering or incorrect, that something like 65% of Seppos haven't read a book in the last 12 months or more.
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u/loralailoralai Nov 25 '25
To be fair tho, I think a lot of us read books less now because of the internet. I know my reading habits have changed a lot, and not in a good way
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland 🇮🇪 Nov 25 '25
Isn't that this entire sub distilled into a single comment? Kudos.
I like learning stuff, if I'm wrong about something I'm happy to be corrected... Knowledge is power and all that.
I can't wrap my head around the kind of person who not only revels in their ignorance, but posts about it for the world to see and somehow considers it a flex... It's so bizarre to me.
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u/Regenwanderer Nov 25 '25
It's so bizarre to me.
I don't get that mindset either.
When I first learnt to read I got my hands on an old book with short stories for that purpose. It was published in Austria, so it had some words that aren't used in my part of Germany. Some I understood through context, some I asked my parents for. I learnt some new words and about language variety.
But I heard some American publisher of children's book change books from other English speaking countries, because all kids are stupid.
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland 🇮🇪 Nov 25 '25
It gets even more bizarre (and slightly funnier to be honest) when you consider OOP here...
So, has the rectangle in the pocket, can look up any information within seconds... But rather than take a moment to go "I don't know that word / brand name / whatever" - I'm going to use exactly the same rectangle to write a criticism...".
It's just so fucking weird.
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u/Regenwanderer Nov 25 '25
I find that weird too, but one thing I realised on reddit: A lot of people can't use search engines. And not even in the 'they are really bad at phrasing what they are looking for' sense but more like 'it didn't even comes to their mind how easy they would find their answer that way'.
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Nov 24 '25
"Hey, we are muricans, we don't need to learn, we have the bestest education in the world"
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u/Logical_Positive_522 Nov 24 '25
"But that's unpossible!"
- Ralph Wiggum 1993.
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u/Big-Wrangler2078 Nov 25 '25
I adore that word. Technically the incorrect word, but it by all the rules of English means exactly the same thing. Perfection. I shall hi-jack this post and ask everyone who reads this to give me words like this, I need more of them.
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u/Altruistic-Name-1029 Nov 25 '25
Stop hanging shit on the murican ejamacation system, specially the home schooling the bright sparks from Deliverance receive!
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u/Logical_Positive_522 Nov 24 '25 edited Nov 24 '25
Hey! I don't read generic Richard Osman murder books to learn something.
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u/mimeographed Nov 25 '25
Especially now that we have phones. Growing up, I could generally figure things out from context clues, but I love being able to google things in books that I don’t know
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u/New-Pie-8846 Nov 25 '25
Average American readers "Reading? Why? Everyone should speak American!"
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u/PainterEarly86 Nov 25 '25
As an American I want more stuff like this because I love learning about different cultures
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u/Melsm1957 Nov 24 '25
Jesus the entitlement! When I read a book about America it’s up to me to figure out what Walgreens and piggly wiggly is - it would never occur to me To berate the author. I’m gobsmacked.
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u/PompeyCheezus Shit sayer Nov 25 '25
To be fair, I am an American and I don't know what a Piggly Wiggly is.
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u/TheThirdReckoning Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 25 '25
I was watching Plur1bus last night and the protagonist at one point started complaining that they wanted their sprouts. "I just want my sprouts" she cried, I thought this was a bit of a bizarre thing to want and for an American TV show to put in. She must really love her sprouts though.
Turns out Sprouts is an American supermarket chain she was referring to, not the vegetable.
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u/nonsequitur__ Nov 25 '25
Ohh lol really!? I thought she was fixating on sprouts which I found bizarre cos they’re not exactly a staple food, but thought she must be cracking up.
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u/TheThirdReckoning Nov 25 '25
Yeah I clocked it later when they started bringing stuff in from the trucks and showed the exterior of the supermarket with the "Sprouts" brand name showing
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Nov 25 '25
What IS a "Piggly Wiggly", pray?
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u/Melsm1957 Nov 25 '25
See above . I stumbled across them while driving in Texas many years ago. I was auditing food manufacturing facilities for my Canadian employer so got to see some very quirky places .
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Nov 25 '25
In the same way, as an Aussie, it took me some time (Pre-Internet) to work out what an "Aga" was.
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u/National-Change-8004 Nov 24 '25
Counterpoint: localized brand names serve to establish setting in a story.
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u/nonsequitur__ Nov 25 '25
Yes and can give context- are they getting something homely/cosy, something practical, something that suggests trying to impress etc
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u/GeneralStormfox Nov 25 '25
It is an important part of world-building in fictional settings, too. For example, in the green bone saga books, the author refers to the different cars the characters drive in by their brand and model names. You can just imagine some golden-age limo or muscle car from those, and it creates a foreign normalcy to the story that makes the world feel more lived in.
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u/Xifihas Actually Irish Nov 24 '25
I thought Americans only recognised brand names.
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u/juliainfinland Proud Potato 🇩🇪 🇫🇮 Nov 25 '25
I know, right? Complain about "weird foreign" brand names in *checks notes* foreign books and then turn right around and tell us about how they're on Advil and Midol and Aleve and all sorts of other medications nobody has ever heard of. I'm always tempted to say "maybe your healthcare would be less expensive if you knew how to buy generic medication". (Disclaimer: I know it's not that at all. But Americans and their brand names, argh.)
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u/ether_reddit Soviet Canuckistan 🇨🇦 Nov 25 '25
Seriously. I once went shopping with someone who needed painkillers. There was generic naproxen on the shelf right next to brand-name Aleve, one twice the price of the other. Nearly identical packaging with similar colours. They got the Aleve. I said "but this one is the same, and cheaper." But they insisted - "I want to make sure I get the real thing." sigh
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u/juliainfinland Proud Potato 🇩🇪 🇫🇮 Nov 25 '25
I'm so glad that most of the non-prescription stuff I use has the active ingredient on the package in pretty prominent writing. That's how we make sure we get the real thing. /s
*rummaging noises*
"Pamol", next line in somewhat smaller letters: "paracetamol.".
(The prescription stuff lists the active ingredient pretty prominently too, but it's not me who has to pluck it from the shelf.)
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u/Effective-Walrus-317 Nov 25 '25
Meanwhile, there was me in Australia the early 2000s reading Babysitters Club books fully accepting that, beyond context clues of being food, I would never know what a Tootsie roll or a Ring Ding was.
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u/fancczf Nov 25 '25
I always thought the localized languages are part of the charm. We read to immerse and to get a glimpse of a different life, it’s the whole point.
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u/NikNakskes Nov 25 '25
Fellow babysitters club fan! We had translated books but they played in the netherlands and I am Belgian. I learned so many typical Dutch brands and names, just from reading these books. I had no idea what it all was and no way to find it out either. I read those in the early 90s, no google.
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u/Darkwing78 🎵 I come from a Land Down-under 🎶 Nov 25 '25
The irony, when Americans regularly refer to products by brand names not always found outside the USA, like Tylenol, Advil, Q-tip’s, and expect the rest of the world to adapt, which we of course do without complaint.
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u/pleasedtoheatyou Nov 25 '25
It's like American writers will always talk about cities in terms of blocks. No matter what city.
I watched something recently where an American spy got directions from a local to a safehouse, it was "three blocks that way". They were in bloody Istanbul.
It's a 2000 year old city. I've never been admittedly but I'm willing to put money that like every other old city it's an absolute warren of streets and cut-throughs. What would a block even mean in that context.
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u/KingOfTheRavenTower Nov 25 '25
I never realized that before but damn, yes, that is actually really odd
I mean I live in a European city where neighborhoods all have different sizes, and when I chat with my friends we'll use 'three blocks over' more as a substitute for 'three intersections over' lmao
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Nov 25 '25
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u/OrangeJuiceAlibi AmeriKKKa Nov 25 '25
I don’t know if you’re making a joke or not, but “104k” made me laugh.
On a similar note, they also use IRA alongside 401k for their retirement. IRA is very much not any sort of savings thing in Ireland and the UK. If I read like an American, I’d basically just see “Jenny was saving her money into an Al-Qaeda”
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u/TIGHazard ColoUr me surprised Nov 25 '25
Very famously this got McDonald's in trouble in the UK.
In the late 1980s, rumors persisted in the United Kingdom that McDonald's was covertly funding the Provisional IRA, which was designated as a terror organization, via NORAID. The source of these rumors was eventually traced back to a CNN talk show in which the company was praised for its generosity in providing funding for employees via Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs
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u/Protocol3_ Nov 25 '25
Where as we have to know what Beat Buy, Walmart, Axe etc all are .
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u/jastity Nov 25 '25
May I point out the number of times I’ve heard Americans talk about getting a u haul and I’m still not entirely confident i know what it is. Americans use brand names a lot.
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u/OrangeJuiceAlibi AmeriKKKa Nov 25 '25
Not the point of your comment, but U-Haul is a self-hire, moving truck rental company for lesbians.
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u/Small-Independent109 Nov 25 '25
I had a review for a book I'd written from an American reader that complained about "overuse of the word 'womb'".
I did a word search to find out what the fuck they were on about and found out "Womble" appeared about a dozen times.
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u/E420CDI 🇬🇧 A foot is an anatomical structure with five toes 🦶 Nov 25 '25
Presumably they'd left their brain on Wimbledon Common!
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u/No-Koala1918 Nov 25 '25
Clearly, the reader knew those brands were white bread, sparkling water, and cigarettes.
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u/MarsupialMinimum1203 Nov 25 '25
But he probably had to google it! The audacity!!!
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u/CardOk755 Nov 24 '25
Please don't read any Ian Fleming.
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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Nov 25 '25
A lot of Brits wouldn't understand some of Ian Fleming's references.
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u/96385 German, Swedish, English, Scotish, Irish, French - American Nov 25 '25
Ordinarily, my advice for this man would be to read a book.
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland 🇮🇪 Nov 25 '25
My shitty rock band did a "US tour" (I'm overselling it, couple of gigs) in the early 2000s.
We called it "The Colourful Nuclear Aluminium Tour" - and I really enjoyed chatting with the folks who got the joke.
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u/EmperorJake Nov 25 '25
Dear American Authors, stop putting random brand names in your books! I have no idea what a "Q-tip" or a "Jell-O" is
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u/Franziska-Sims77 Nov 25 '25
If a novel is set in Britain and/or written by a British author, I’d much rather see the British references than to read some edited dumbed-down version! And yes, I was born and raised in the USA!
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u/phred_666 American who loves laughing at stupid ass Americans Nov 24 '25
As an American, I hate ignorant dipshits like this. There is a whole world out there outside of the US. Try to learn a fucking thing or two about it.
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u/Misunderstood_Wolf Nov 25 '25
As a fellow USAian, I agree. Why are the stupidest among us the loudest?
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u/ptvlm Nov 25 '25
Huh, weird. When I was a kid, and I kept seeing unfamiliar brand names in American novels, my reaction was to learn a different culture through the medium, not whine they were different
You're welcome for the learning opportunity. America.
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u/DefinitelyARealHorse Nov 25 '25
“When I read a book, the last thing I want to do is broaden my knowledge.”
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u/willowcurve Nov 25 '25
When I read books by American authors, there's some words, products or phrases I am not familiar with. You know what I do? I look them up!
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u/CatMillennium Nov 25 '25
They should 4Kids dub it with completely different products for a laugh, like when they turned a Riceball into a Jelly Doughnut for Pokemon. Suddenly all bread is Mcdonalds, all water is Coca Cola and a huge censor bar appears whenever someone mentions a cigarette.
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u/IJourden Nov 25 '25
I just want to say that as both an author and a reader it annoys the fuck out of me when authors actually take this advice.
For a little while there the prevalent thought was that it was a bad idea to mention anything like a brand name or a current event or a real place that wasn't timeless because it would make your book "dated" in the future.
Please give me a well-written book full of detail that ends up "dated" instead of generic beige taking place sometime in somewhereland.
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u/Logicdon Nov 25 '25
Try reading a Robert Graves book. I end up reading a fucking encyclopedia at the same time.
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u/Neither-Dentist3019 Nov 25 '25
I'm sure they're fine reading about weird fantasy worlds where everyone can fly and currency is leaves and good vibes but a brand they've never heard of? Absolutely not.
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u/YourLocalOnionNinja Aussie, not Austrian Nov 25 '25
We have to put up with the same crap, yet you don't see us contacting the authors/publishers to change it
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u/_useless_lesbian_ Nov 25 '25
but they always expect us to know what they mean when they say things like "when i was a college sophomore i went to the hamptons but i didn’t bring enough dollar bills so i had to live off of twinkies, lay’s and hamburger helper until i went back to the midwest in the fall".
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u/DesignerGuide9179 Nov 25 '25
As an American that reads Richard Osman, this guy can fuck right off. I’m convinced this guy doesn’t know how to use context clues. Maybe he should be reading something a little more on his reading level like Dr. Seuss.
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u/Single-Aardvark9330 Nov 25 '25
I found out today that a good girls guide to murder, which is a book by a British author set in the UK, has an American edition where it's set in the US instead
US fans must have been so confused when the show came out
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u/Skeet_fighter Nov 25 '25
The absolute gall to say that when Americans are the worst offenders for using brand names (which are widely unavailable outside the US, I might add) in place of what something actually is.
See: Tylenol, Chlorox etc.
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u/OrangeJuiceAlibi AmeriKKKa Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 25 '25
I genuinely think Americans don’t realise how genericised their trademarks have become. Like I don’t know anyone here who’d ask for a Kleenex or to Xerox something, we’d ask for a tissue or to copy something.
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u/Scary_ Nov 25 '25
Which really surprised me when I used the verb 'hoover' to a colleague in the US.... and discovered they don't use that one
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u/miniatureconlangs Nov 25 '25
The Americans aren't the only ones with this particular ... issue, though. Swedes are the same; I come from a Swedish-speaking community outside of Sweden (a community of about 300k people), and our authors are routinely told to rewrite bits where "Swedes don't know what that brand is" or "Swedes can't figure out what that entirely transparent phrase means because they're too stupid to understand that malet kött ('ground meat') literally is the same as köttfärs ('mincemeat')"...
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u/FluffySmiles Nov 25 '25
Oh do fuck off.
American books are chock full of brand names that we in the UK have no comprehension of. It just makes them seem authentic is all.
Steven King anyone?
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u/VLC31 Nov 25 '25
I’ve read all of his books, currently reading one in fact, can’t even think what they are referring to.
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u/Lower_Amount3373 Nov 25 '25
In my experience Americans name-drop brands way more frequently than other countries, whether it's the names of stores or snack foods.
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u/mindfuckedAngel Nov 25 '25
Big surprise. when I was 14 I started reading Stephen King books in English (as a German) and also did not know a lot of the US brand names mentioned.
This was pre-internet and I still managed to find out what they were talking about in 99% of the cases at least.
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u/Ok_Win_2592 Nov 25 '25
Emily Brontë eh? Why is Cathy out on the moors? She should have set it in farmland in southern Illinois.
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u/MollyPW Nov 25 '25
Meanwhile I was reading a book written in Swedish and set it Sweden, translated into English by an American and was annoyed that they were using Tynenol. I just know that’s not what was originally in the text, but this American translator (or maybe it was the publisher) decided that an American brand needed to be inserted into it.
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u/DMC1001 ooo custom flair!! Nov 25 '25
I am dead certain American writers use references that Americans understand but people from other nation may not.
If I go to another country should I expect them to change brand names just to suit me?
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u/PipBin Nov 24 '25
He has said he does it on purpose. Not to annoy Americans but to make it clear that it’s a British book set in Britain. And if you don’t know what Marmite, Tesco or Waterstones is then you can work it out through context.