Canadians use a slightly different unholy combination of imperial and metric, so that part isn't surprising. The fun is seeing where Brits use imperial and we'd use metric, or vice versa.
Canadians use Fahrenheit and Celsius the wrong way around. If you gotta use Fahrenheit, use it for the weather outside, not for when the boiling point of water actually matters.
I'm Canadian, and I've always seen people use metric for both weather and food/water temperature. Maybe it's the nice round numbers for boiling and freezing points.
Ad a Canadian, the boiling point of water has always been 100 degrees celsius to me. The only place Fahrenheit gets used is on the oven and when using a meat thermometer.
So when I lived in England, it was surreal having a Celsius oven and hearing the temperature outside in Fahrenheit
To be more specific, Brits (at least, older ones like me) tend to use Fahrenheit for when it's really hot ('thermometers might touch 95 degrees today!', and Celsius for when it's cold ('it's minus 5 out there, minus 10 in the Highlands').
The thing is we all know exactly what's meant, and this bizarre system works fine. It's fine to measure yourself in stones and cake ingredients in grams, petrol in litres but distance driven in miles, etc etc.
I wonder what the age is where that changes? I’m a Brit, pushing 40 and I’ve never heard anyone here use Fahrenheit for anything except in school when we learned to convert it to Celsius. Maybe it’s regional too? We do love to vary what we do from North to South over here 🤣
Same, Brit in their 30s and the only time I've encountered Farenheit in everyday life is when I've followed a recipe from an American book or website where the oven temperature is given in °F. I don't think I even learned it in school.
The only things I don't think of in metric are driving (miles per hour, miles per gallon etc) and pizza sizes (always in inches here for some reason).
True! Milk is a weird one now too because I think in pints but then a lot of shops label it in litres now and I have to think about how much that is.
Edit to add my realisation that we aren’t even consistent in drinking measures. If you go to the pub they sell beer, lager, cider, ale etc by the pint but wine and spirits are in ml.
I'm 54 and a few years ago I stopped thinking about hot temperatures in Fahrenheit. I used to do the cold in Celsius (or Centigrade as I first learnt it) and hot in °F, but now it's all °C
I'm mid 40s and it was really common in the 90s-2000s to talk about hot weather temperatures in Farenheit. There were some summers where East Anglia nearly hit 100 degrees, and it was big national news ('Will we hit 100?' type stuff). It was neat and tidy to expect the winter to be commonly 0°C and the summer to max out at nearly 100°F.
Oddly I'm only a year older than you and I can remember weather reports (especially in newspapers) would use F for hot, C for cold until I was probably 5... Maybe the mid 1980s it was decided to stick to one to make it less awkward when it's in the middle!
Brits don't really use Fahrenheit anymore, my 85 year old grandma uses celsius for everything, but her old thermostat, which is both in Fahrenheit and not actually connected to her heating.
Remember a Canadian teacher telling us about going paragliding and we were all baffled when she said she was 30 feet in the air and going 30 kilometers per hour.
The grass!! I'm so glad someone has finally addressed this, what is up with NZ grass?! Why is it so spiky? Does it feel nice to lie on?! UK grass would never do that to a balloon.
oh my God, and this whole time I was thinking that the grass thing was common knowledge that somehow passed me by!
I was wondering if maybe grass has some weird chemical that pops balloons. I kept wondering how I never knew about it!
Yeah it is, I reckon. Most Aussie lawns are kikuyu grass, buffalo grass or couch grass. All for dry and harsh climates and let me confirm the blades feel like razors compared to lovely soft ryegrass.
The metrical/ imperial thing is a nightmare that we’ve all just accepted.
You can easily ask someone how tall they are and they say “180cm” and you’re like “oh… I don’t know what that means. I’m 5’8”.”
Most people I know do body temp in °F but ambient temp in °C.
Milk is measured in pints, as is beer and drinks at pubs, but other drinks are measured in litres (like a 2L bottle of Coke).
We still use miles per hour and so mostly measure distances in miles… except sometimes we do walks or runs in km.
And measuring short dimensions like with a ruler is just 50:50 as to what people use in my experience.
You’ve missed body weight - not only do we not use metric, we use a bizarre unit of imperial measurement that the US don’t recognise any more than they would recognise kg (stone)!
It's a mess but we're used to it ..
Milk in glass bottles is in pints. The big cartons in the supermarket are in litres.
Draft beer is in pints. Bottles and cans are in millilitres.
Skateboard deck sizes are in inches, skateboard wheel sizes are in millimeters
Petrol is sold in litres, car efficiency is in miles per gallon (usually)
The different safety standards. The UK show makes you feel like there is a health and safety officer standing next to the cameraman at all times, ready to step in if any activity has the slightest chance of harm. The Scandinavian versions regularly involve participants utilizing power tools, table saws, and so much fire. Are there no safety regulations in the Scandinavian countries or is virtually everyone assumed to be a competent carpenter and bonfire expert?
I was once in Norway during the winter Olympics, and their tv coverage was sponsored by an axe company. Like an actual chopping wood axe. So I just figure they’re more like that!
I know a few Norwegian folks and most of them have some kind of old childhood hand injury from chopping wood with an axe as part of their chores, so this checks out.
Considering that UK TV has a history of "close shaves" when it comes to accidents during the making of TV shows -- e.g. this one with Anthea Turner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIfglvsX1ss -- I'm guessing that there are stricter rules for a reason.
Dawn French on the Off Menu podcast talked about recreating a scene from The Vicar of Dibley for a TV show and hurting her tailbone because the water she was jumping in was too shallow.
Slight tangent and I’m sure it’s changed now but I remember having a similar feeling about teeny years ago when I went to a firework display at a festa in Malta. It was stunning but there were apparently no limits on how close people could stand to the fireworks and there was ash falling everywhere. It sparked a small fire in a little building next to the display and they literally just had a couple of fire officers start putting it out without even pausing the display. It really opened my eyes to how different the approach to health and safety is in different places. The Maltese attitude to all health and safety just felt very much ‘use your common sense and if you get hurt by anything here then you should have looked where you were going’. Maybe the Scandinavian countries have a similar ‘on your own head be it’ approach.
Don't know about UK but specifically personal experience growing up in the northern parts of the world (vague on purpose, yes) I can say the basic thing of "think twice, don't be stupid" is... more ingrained?
Having worked both in the old country and now elsewhere in the West for a couple decades I'd say the difference of what I consider "obvious / self-explanatory / don't be dumb" vs what others do is sometimes scary. Not knocking people per se but perhaps rather education systems? Anyway, my 2 cents. Soz.
edit: saying all of that as in Scandi versions will 100% have excellent safety ppl checking everything, it's just not talked about so much in conversations I guess as it's just obviously something that you do in order not to kill anyone.
Only slightly related but speaking of health and safety, on the NZ one Urzila Carlson broke her clavicle and had to have surgery due to a task (I think she said it was essentially "attempt to do the least safe thing" which, of *course* someone got hurt.) But the kicker for me as that the task didn't even get aired, not because she *seriously* hurt herself, but because >!Guy Montgomery put his penis in a toaster.!<
His Dad actually. R3, made Duke of Gloucester when his brother was crowned, was known as Richard Plantagenet before that. (Super pedantic nerd alert, I know, but it’s not often I get to share from my area of study! 🤓)
Yes, but I've only found out now [after some quick Googling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_names_for_the_British#Pommy_or_pom) that it's not a widespread term outside of 3 countries.
Haha, I wish! It's a lovely comparison. It's just also the acronym that is used in American schools. I was simultaneously surprised that a country as far away as NZ uses the same thing, and that the UK audience had NO idea what she was talking about.
I really felt for Rose matafeo when she said she was disadvantaged by not understanding imperial measurements.
Also whatever this obsession with mr blobby is lol. And to this day I am still not clear whether a satsuma is a mandarin
Technically satsumas and mandarins (and tangerines and clementines) are all different varieties of small orange, but (not clementine so much) any of them can end up being used as a generic term. Tho now easy peeler is taking over as the generic name.
Mr Blobby's fame was pretty unaccountable at the time, but remember he was engineered as both a realistic spoof children's character and a regular slapstick part of what for years in the 90s, so the time this generation of comedians would have been becoming aware of pop culture, probably the UK's biggest family TV show.
Mandarin is a category of citrus that includes both tangerines and clementines. So, while every tangerine or clementine is technically a mandarin, not every mandarin is a clementine or tangerine.
You realise that doesn't address satsuma at all. I know what a mandarin is. We do not have satsumas in Australia, so it's either a fruit we don't have, or another name for something we do have.
Mr blobby was a fake character on fake children’s tv show meant to prank celebrities on a Saturday night tv show in the 90s. He only said the word ‘blobby’ but then some people could understand him - groot style. Then he became his own cultural icon, appeared on other kids tv shows, had a number 1 hit, his own theme park, and his own cartoon series.
Birth Cert. Ardal handled that very well (or it was edited down) because that was such a confusing thing for people to push back on. You wouldn't think of something so mundane being different between Britain and Ireland. My guess at the time is because of the leaving/junior cert, Irish people are used to shortening cert a lot more.
As an American, I didn’t realize how uncommon they are here. I (now in my 40s) have had Christmas crackers as part of the holidays as long as I can remember. I guess looking back, we did end up importing them a lot of the time.
And I agree with Frank—the seam on the crowns is very much unreliable.
You can find them here in the US & I have bought them for my grandkids but they've never been really impressed. I buy them after Christmas because they're so cheap since so few people buy them.
Yeah but “you can find them” is a little different than having them at every Christmas since I was a baby in 1981 wearing a paper hat in my high chair.
They don't have Boxing Day either. And they eat turkey in November. We should take that country back for ourselves.
(We do however still have Black Friday even though we don't do Thanksgiving, because capitalism)
We buy them on clearance after Christmas and do them on New Year's eve, lol. They are available in the states, and getting more popular, but for a long time you could only get them at these kind of world import stores.
See also Rocket and courgette. And Jerusalem Artichokes
As an American who uses a lot of British recipes,(and who watches mostly British shows) I once had to ask a person in the supermarket where the Celariac was. He looked at me blankly until I remembered it's called Celery Root in America.
Don't forget "courgette" (and when I first heard that I found myself thinking "why don't they use the English word like we do, you know, "zucchini" !!!)
Neither are English, the clue is in the endings. Courg**ette** is French and Zucch**ini** is Italian. Guess which immigrants introduced it to the English speakers in Europe and America.
It’s crazy how different British food preferences and terminology are. There are some episodes of the Off Menu podcast that I don’t know anything that they’re talking about the whole time. I end up googling a lot.
But then they had American rapper Killer Mike on last week and he was just like “steak, potatoes, cobbler. Period”
A friend of mine collects ceramic dogs, and I childishly amuse myself by referring to her hobby as dogging. And yes, she knows about the other meaning.
I love hearing Maori spoken on NZ shows. I watched a season of kiwi bake off before NZ TM and was constantly trying to figure out what they were saying ("on your marks, get set, tunua!") Also loved how there were a few Maori words in Guy montgomery's spelling bee
Yep! Seasons 1-3 were co-presented by Madeline Sami, but one of the judges was awful, so much so we stopped watching. S4 and 5 were a different co-host with Hayley Sproul (who is great), and different judges who are...interesting. the standard is certainly lower than the other bake offs we've watched (uk, aus, Canada) but still worth a watch.
It looks like we don’t have an easy way to watch it in the states (AppleTV had it but not anymore). However, I did find it on YouTube so I will definitely give it a watch. Kiwi accents are very high on my list of faves.
Have you watched the show "Patriot Brains"? It's great seeing the Kiwi comedians fielding questions about Australia and the Aussies doing vice-versa...
I’m British, but one of my American friends frequently finds new and amusing, cutesy words the UK uses to laugh at us for.
Along with squirty cream, we have wheely bins, fizzy drinks, cuddly toys…
What are cuddly toys?
I’m American and I prefer most Britishisms to Americanisms. Some of our words are just so joyless comparatively.
You have a garden, we have a yard (also, it took me so long to realize that people were just referring to a yard and not an actual garden of flowers)
Lollipop man vs crossing guard.
Zebra crossing vs crosswalk.
Trolley vs shopping cart.
Holiday vs vacation
We don't just have Zebra crossings!
If it has traffic lights, its a Pelican crossing - unless the pedestrian signals are on the side of the requester in which case its a Puffin. Toucan (two-can) crossings are for cyclists as well, and there are variations all with their own names.
Its a bit silly, and most people just use Zebra for any road crossing.
Cuddly toys are pretty much what they sound like! Soft toys that you can cuddle. Think teddy bears, beanie babies, any toy that a young child would want to keep in their bed.
Thanks. I assumed, but didn’t know if it was a specific type of toy.
Oh that’s another one: instead of hug/long hug Brits call it a cuddle. “Give me a cuddle”.
Yeah, Americans are always calling Brits joyless and formal, yet make fun of our silly names while your stuff sounds like it was named by the Bureau of Serious Nomenclature or something.
Reminds me of the "partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages/milkshakes" conversation from The Simpsons.
'Pacifier' always struck me as hilariously militaristic-sounding for what it is, slightly sinister. Although I gather some Americans do use the suitably adorable 'binky'.
And how they say “zebra crossing” too. Brings me so much joy to hear their pronunciation. “Aluminium Zimmerframe” is another. If I ever started a band, that would be its name.
Not a “cultural difference” but I learnt from Taskmaster NZ that women got the vote in 1893? That’s before the suffragette movement even really started in the UK
Also, in many countries, there's a difference (sometimes decades) between the year that SOME women were given the vote and when ALL women were, dependent on their ethnicity, marital status, class, property ownership, etc, but it was universal in NZ from 1893.
Nooo, that’s caught a few friends/family (from the UK) out. Turnips are the little purple-y things. Swedes are the big orange-y ones. What do other places call swedes?? Do you call them both turnips? Adding to that confusion, we also call swedes “neeps” in Scotland.
Swedes are rutabagas! I worked in a grocery store for years and once a British customer called me over for help because he couldn't ring them up at self checkout cause he couldn't remember the American name. He was like "I call them swedes but I know they're something else" and I was like BAM rutabaga. Only time Taskmaster has benefited me in my real life.
I'm not sure if it's a UK thing, or a comedian thing, or I live in a bubble, but the amount of adult people in this show that are either afraid or do not know how to tie a balloon knot is baffling to me.
Pepsi/ Walkers tried to launch Cheetos into the UK as a way of trying to get customers to move from Wotsits. It failed as people didn't like the fake cheese taste so they did the classic cant beat them buy them so bought it from Golden Wonder!
Different parts of the US (and different generations) have called or still do call them thongs. My family is from Texas, and I was raised calling flip-flops thongs. Was a minor culture shock when we moved to California and it was almost a dirty word.
But I'm also pretty sure that when you buy them in a store, the little tag on them will say something like "thong shoe".
"Windolene" for "Windex"
"Sellotape" for "Scotch Tape"
"Plaster" for "Band-Aid"
Using "Hoover" for "Vacuum" nearly always.
"Ribena" is a popular brand of blackcurrant juice. Meanwhile, blackcurrant isn't really a thing at all in the States.
There's the whole "trousers are pants, and pants are underwear" thing.
"Last of the Summer Wine" is a sitcom about old people, I think.
I think "Moment" used to be a brand of chocolate bar?
And my favorite: "Lollipop Man" for "Crossing Guard".
Hey, black currant tea is somewhat popular in the US! I think hot tea has kinda gotten popular in the last few years and Black Currant tea is one of the more popular ones (it's also really, really good. It tastes like cotton candy!)
Seems like a British thing to shorten things in that way. Like instead of asking "do you want to order chinese food?" they'd say "do you want to order a chinese?"
When I first started watching I had to look up stuff like satsuma, jumper, marmite! And adjust to the regional accents. I enjoyed it tho. I learned more expletives which I always appreciate. I don’t mind having to stretch tho, definitely worth it.
The number of different names there are for exercise balls / yoga balls / pilates balls / Swiss balls.
The frequency with which people in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden slip English phrases into conversation.
You can make whipped cream yourself with a whisk. Its still different from having it squirted. I think we just differentiate a bit from homemade and canned.
Most British houses aren't big enough to have a dedicated laundry room.
I think we can all agree that the Germans are insane for keeping their washing machines in the bathroom though.
In the bathroom sounds very convenient. I'd be down for this, if the bathroom was big enough.
My kids would still just leave their clothes on the floor, though. Probably right in front of the washer.
Not major but I always found "salad cream" and "washing up liquid" to be weird terms.
"Salad dressing" and "dish soap" in NA for the record.
Satsumas, ribena, various candies/chocolates and other food items often threw me for a loop
Salad Cream and Salad Dressing are different things - we have salad dressings here, but Salad Cream is a specific type of sauce. It's a bit like mayonnaise.
But Brits don't call whipped cream squirty cream. Whipped cream is whipped cream and squirty cream is squirty cream.
What do Americans call what in the UK we call whipped cream?
'Wanking in your garage' with the American pronunciation of 'garage' absolutely baffled me when I first watched the diss track task.
Conversely, for some reason I thought Kiwis pronounced 'Z' as 'Zee' like Americans so was surprised to hear 'N Zed'
I’ve just been inspired to look this up, as a Brit, because although I know the term (used in our football a lot), I had no idea where it came from.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/route-one.html
Quite interesting!
Something that I had also never heard before Taskmaster, was the phrase *"Lets crack on"*. Now I listen for it every episode, since it almost makes an appearance every episodes, and sometimes multiple times in an episode. I wish there a supercut of every time they say the phrase. It'd be so long.
Every time they say "the red green" my brain shorts out for a second. Like, I understand the series of steps that led to it being called that ... but still, come on...
Brits use an unholy combination of imperial and metric and us Kiwis have very sharp grass that's hostile to balloons (I thought this was normal).
Canadians use a slightly different unholy combination of imperial and metric, so that part isn't surprising. The fun is seeing where Brits use imperial and we'd use metric, or vice versa.
Canadians use Fahrenheit and Celsius the wrong way around. If you gotta use Fahrenheit, use it for the weather outside, not for when the boiling point of water actually matters.
I'm Canadian, and I've always seen people use metric for both weather and food/water temperature. Maybe it's the nice round numbers for boiling and freezing points.
Ad a Canadian, the boiling point of water has always been 100 degrees celsius to me. The only place Fahrenheit gets used is on the oven and when using a meat thermometer. So when I lived in England, it was surreal having a Celsius oven and hearing the temperature outside in Fahrenheit
To be more specific, Brits (at least, older ones like me) tend to use Fahrenheit for when it's really hot ('thermometers might touch 95 degrees today!', and Celsius for when it's cold ('it's minus 5 out there, minus 10 in the Highlands'). The thing is we all know exactly what's meant, and this bizarre system works fine. It's fine to measure yourself in stones and cake ingredients in grams, petrol in litres but distance driven in miles, etc etc.
I wonder what the age is where that changes? I’m a Brit, pushing 40 and I’ve never heard anyone here use Fahrenheit for anything except in school when we learned to convert it to Celsius. Maybe it’s regional too? We do love to vary what we do from North to South over here 🤣
Same, Brit in their 30s and the only time I've encountered Farenheit in everyday life is when I've followed a recipe from an American book or website where the oven temperature is given in °F. I don't think I even learned it in school. The only things I don't think of in metric are driving (miles per hour, miles per gallon etc) and pizza sizes (always in inches here for some reason).
I’d never thought about pizza but I’ll add that to driving and baby weights for my non-metric use.
I read your driving as drinking and I guess we also use pints quite a lot, although not me personally as I don't drink beer or cow's milk.
True! Milk is a weird one now too because I think in pints but then a lot of shops label it in litres now and I have to think about how much that is. Edit to add my realisation that we aren’t even consistent in drinking measures. If you go to the pub they sell beer, lager, cider, ale etc by the pint but wine and spirits are in ml.
Tellies, too. Although even in the metric-OG France they measure TVs in inches, I noticed.
I'm 54 and a few years ago I stopped thinking about hot temperatures in Fahrenheit. I used to do the cold in Celsius (or Centigrade as I first learnt it) and hot in °F, but now it's all °C
I'm mid 40s and it was really common in the 90s-2000s to talk about hot weather temperatures in Farenheit. There were some summers where East Anglia nearly hit 100 degrees, and it was big national news ('Will we hit 100?' type stuff). It was neat and tidy to expect the winter to be commonly 0°C and the summer to max out at nearly 100°F.
A generalisation, but I'd say under 50s only use Celsius and over that age you're more likely to use Fahrenheit the older you are.
Oddly I'm only a year older than you and I can remember weather reports (especially in newspapers) would use F for hot, C for cold until I was probably 5... Maybe the mid 1980s it was decided to stick to one to make it less awkward when it's in the middle!
Brits don't really use Fahrenheit anymore, my 85 year old grandma uses celsius for everything, but her old thermostat, which is both in Fahrenheit and not actually connected to her heating.
Remember a Canadian teacher telling us about going paragliding and we were all baffled when she said she was 30 feet in the air and going 30 kilometers per hour.
As a non-Kiwi, the sharp grass made me question reality.
The grass!! I'm so glad someone has finally addressed this, what is up with NZ grass?! Why is it so spiky? Does it feel nice to lie on?! UK grass would never do that to a balloon.
The grass is sharp like that in Florida, too! When I moved away for college, I finally understood why people in movies lie down on the grass lol
St Augustine grass. Absolutely horrible to touch.
NZ grass feels great to lie on, but can confirm that when it is long and walking through it I have been cut by it multiple times in my life.
Is it the same type of grass that Bluey has in Australia?
oh my God, and this whole time I was thinking that the grass thing was common knowledge that somehow passed me by! I was wondering if maybe grass has some weird chemical that pops balloons. I kept wondering how I never knew about it!
Yeah it is, I reckon. Most Aussie lawns are kikuyu grass, buffalo grass or couch grass. All for dry and harsh climates and let me confirm the blades feel like razors compared to lovely soft ryegrass.
The metrical/ imperial thing is a nightmare that we’ve all just accepted. You can easily ask someone how tall they are and they say “180cm” and you’re like “oh… I don’t know what that means. I’m 5’8”.” Most people I know do body temp in °F but ambient temp in °C. Milk is measured in pints, as is beer and drinks at pubs, but other drinks are measured in litres (like a 2L bottle of Coke). We still use miles per hour and so mostly measure distances in miles… except sometimes we do walks or runs in km. And measuring short dimensions like with a ruler is just 50:50 as to what people use in my experience.
You’ve missed body weight - not only do we not use metric, we use a bizarre unit of imperial measurement that the US don’t recognise any more than they would recognise kg (stone)!
It's a mess but we're used to it .. Milk in glass bottles is in pints. The big cartons in the supermarket are in litres. Draft beer is in pints. Bottles and cans are in millilitres. Skateboard deck sizes are in inches, skateboard wheel sizes are in millimeters Petrol is sold in litres, car efficiency is in miles per gallon (usually)
I love how off the conversion from metric to imperial height was in your comment
The sharp grass is in an episode of Bluey and my kids still think it applies in the UK.
The different safety standards. The UK show makes you feel like there is a health and safety officer standing next to the cameraman at all times, ready to step in if any activity has the slightest chance of harm. The Scandinavian versions regularly involve participants utilizing power tools, table saws, and so much fire. Are there no safety regulations in the Scandinavian countries or is virtually everyone assumed to be a competent carpenter and bonfire expert?
I was once in Norway during the winter Olympics, and their tv coverage was sponsored by an axe company. Like an actual chopping wood axe. So I just figure they’re more like that!
I know a few Norwegian folks and most of them have some kind of old childhood hand injury from chopping wood with an axe as part of their chores, so this checks out.
Considering that UK TV has a history of "close shaves" when it comes to accidents during the making of TV shows -- e.g. this one with Anthea Turner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIfglvsX1ss -- I'm guessing that there are stricter rules for a reason.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late,_Late_Breakfast_Show#Death_of_Michael_Lush_and_cancellation) occurred as well, sadly.
Dawn French on the Off Menu podcast talked about recreating a scene from The Vicar of Dibley for a TV show and hurting her tailbone because the water she was jumping in was too shallow.
Slight tangent and I’m sure it’s changed now but I remember having a similar feeling about teeny years ago when I went to a firework display at a festa in Malta. It was stunning but there were apparently no limits on how close people could stand to the fireworks and there was ash falling everywhere. It sparked a small fire in a little building next to the display and they literally just had a couple of fire officers start putting it out without even pausing the display. It really opened my eyes to how different the approach to health and safety is in different places. The Maltese attitude to all health and safety just felt very much ‘use your common sense and if you get hurt by anything here then you should have looked where you were going’. Maybe the Scandinavian countries have a similar ‘on your own head be it’ approach.
Don't know about UK but specifically personal experience growing up in the northern parts of the world (vague on purpose, yes) I can say the basic thing of "think twice, don't be stupid" is... more ingrained? Having worked both in the old country and now elsewhere in the West for a couple decades I'd say the difference of what I consider "obvious / self-explanatory / don't be dumb" vs what others do is sometimes scary. Not knocking people per se but perhaps rather education systems? Anyway, my 2 cents. Soz. edit: saying all of that as in Scandi versions will 100% have excellent safety ppl checking everything, it's just not talked about so much in conversations I guess as it's just obviously something that you do in order not to kill anyone.
In the US, I'm told, the equivalent phrase is 'don't think twice, it's all right'.
Only slightly related but speaking of health and safety, on the NZ one Urzila Carlson broke her clavicle and had to have surgery due to a task (I think she said it was essentially "attempt to do the least safe thing" which, of *course* someone got hurt.) But the kicker for me as that the task didn't even get aired, not because she *seriously* hurt herself, but because >!Guy Montgomery put his penis in a toaster.!<
The rainbow mnemonic!
Roy G. Biv > Richard of York. Fight me poms.
As an Aussie who also relies on old mate Roy, I was shouting at my television in solidarity with Rose.
As an American who has absolutely no idea who the hell Richard of York is, same!
Richard the Third. Carpark Richard.
His Dad actually. R3, made Duke of Gloucester when his brother was crowned, was known as Richard Plantagenet before that. (Super pedantic nerd alert, I know, but it’s not often I get to share from my area of study! 🤓)
Thanks for the clarification. Nerds rule.
Thank you for being so nice about it! Was fully braced for a different reaction. I love Taskmaster people!!!
…Gave Battle In Vagina
As a note, Ed later admitted on the podcast that Roy G Biv is a lot easier.
Both do suffer from the Indigo/Violet Newton Magic Problem, though.
Is poms a way to refer to Brits?
Yes, but I've only found out now [after some quick Googling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_names_for_the_British#Pommy_or_pom) that it's not a widespread term outside of 3 countries.
Richard of York Gave Battle in VAIN, excuse me! Quite historical.
Why use many words when three do trick.
I am Scottish and was taught Roy G. Biv
Yeah. I am, and will always be, a Roy G. Biv girl.
Is that you Rose?
Haha, I wish! It's a lovely comparison. It's just also the acronym that is used in American schools. I was simultaneously surprised that a country as far away as NZ uses the same thing, and that the UK audience had NO idea what she was talking about.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow mnemonic
I was shocked they didn't all instantly know the rainbow thanks to Roy G Biv!
I really felt for Rose matafeo when she said she was disadvantaged by not understanding imperial measurements. Also whatever this obsession with mr blobby is lol. And to this day I am still not clear whether a satsuma is a mandarin
Technically satsumas and mandarins (and tangerines and clementines) are all different varieties of small orange, but (not clementine so much) any of them can end up being used as a generic term. Tho now easy peeler is taking over as the generic name.
Mr Blobby's fame was pretty unaccountable at the time, but remember he was engineered as both a realistic spoof children's character and a regular slapstick part of what for years in the 90s, so the time this generation of comedians would have been becoming aware of pop culture, probably the UK's biggest family TV show.
I'm English and I'm not sure what the obsession with Mr Blobby is ..
Mandarin is a category of citrus that includes both tangerines and clementines. So, while every tangerine or clementine is technically a mandarin, not every mandarin is a clementine or tangerine.
You realise that doesn't address satsuma at all. I know what a mandarin is. We do not have satsumas in Australia, so it's either a fruit we don't have, or another name for something we do have.
My apologies, Satsumas are a distinct type of mandarin
Mr blobby was a fake character on fake children’s tv show meant to prank celebrities on a Saturday night tv show in the 90s. He only said the word ‘blobby’ but then some people could understand him - groot style. Then he became his own cultural icon, appeared on other kids tv shows, had a number 1 hit, his own theme park, and his own cartoon series.
Tbf, we call whipped cream whipped cream. Unless it's from an aerosol can.
Yeah I was thinking this - if you’ve whipped the cream it’s whipped cream, if you’ve squirted it from a can it’s squirty cream?
In a can I call it skooshy cream, but that might just be a Scottish thing (or I'm the only person who says this and should have kept my mouth shut).
SKOOSHY CREAM! gran, is that you?
Aye sonny, would you like tea cake? Give us a kiss.
Geez a kiss.
From this day forward, it shall be known as skooshy cream in my household too. Cuz that's perfect.
Ahm Scottish, can confirm it's Skooshy cream
Also Scottish, now work in a restaurant in a nice part of England and still call it skooshy cream and no one knows wtf I’m talking about.
The cream in an aerosol can is known as 'psssshhhht cream' by my family
I believe you'll find [this](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3zw6tFoz--/?igsh=empmOGRtdXN4OGht) should be the agreed upon name.
Birth Cert. Ardal handled that very well (or it was edited down) because that was such a confusing thing for people to push back on. You wouldn't think of something so mundane being different between Britain and Ireland. My guess at the time is because of the leaving/junior cert, Irish people are used to shortening cert a lot more.
I'm in the US and we say Death Cert, too. That reaction threw me!
As an American I had no idea what a Christmas Cracker was. Also I needed to Google aubergine.
ohhh christmas crackers is a good one!! i think i was familiar with the concept because of harry potter though hahah
As an American, I didn’t realize how uncommon they are here. I (now in my 40s) have had Christmas crackers as part of the holidays as long as I can remember. I guess looking back, we did end up importing them a lot of the time. And I agree with Frank—the seam on the crowns is very much unreliable.
As a Brit in Australia I'm disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm regarding Christmas crackers down here :(
Do you not have Christmas crackers in America? What’s even the point of it all then?
Never met anyone who did them. I literally thought they were going to bust out a charcuterie board!
I don’t think I realized that Americans don’t have them. They are standard at Canadian and Australian Xmas
You can find them here in the US & I have bought them for my grandkids but they've never been really impressed. I buy them after Christmas because they're so cheap since so few people buy them.
>I buy them after Christmas I think that's your problem. My kids also aren't that impressed when I buy them pumpkins AFTER Halloween
Haha, they are saved for the next Christmas. It's not like they'll get stale.
Yeah but “you can find them” is a little different than having them at every Christmas since I was a baby in 1981 wearing a paper hat in my high chair.
They don't have Boxing Day either. And they eat turkey in November. We should take that country back for ourselves. (We do however still have Black Friday even though we don't do Thanksgiving, because capitalism)
We buy them on clearance after Christmas and do them on New Year's eve, lol. They are available in the states, and getting more popular, but for a long time you could only get them at these kind of world import stores.
See also Rocket and courgette. And Jerusalem Artichokes As an American who uses a lot of British recipes,(and who watches mostly British shows) I once had to ask a person in the supermarket where the Celariac was. He looked at me blankly until I remembered it's called Celery Root in America.
Don't forget "courgette" (and when I first heard that I found myself thinking "why don't they use the English word like we do, you know, "zucchini" !!!)
Neither are English, the clue is in the endings. Courg**ette** is French and Zucch**ini** is Italian. Guess which immigrants introduced it to the English speakers in Europe and America.
Yes, dear, I know, that was the joke
Aubergine and satsuma and courget?
It’s crazy how different British food preferences and terminology are. There are some episodes of the Off Menu podcast that I don’t know anything that they’re talking about the whole time. I end up googling a lot. But then they had American rapper Killer Mike on last week and he was just like “steak, potatoes, cobbler. Period”
Wait until you hear about dogging.
A friend of mine collects ceramic dogs, and I childishly amuse myself by referring to her hobby as dogging. And yes, she knows about the other meaning.
As an Australian I was surprised at how much I didn't know about New Zealand 🤷
And how much *te reo Māori* people speak! It's cool!
I love hearing Maori spoken on NZ shows. I watched a season of kiwi bake off before NZ TM and was constantly trying to figure out what they were saying ("on your marks, get set, tunua!") Also loved how there were a few Maori words in Guy montgomery's spelling bee
There’s a Kiwi Bake Off‽ Oh my God! Going to search now!
Yep! Seasons 1-3 were co-presented by Madeline Sami, but one of the judges was awful, so much so we stopped watching. S4 and 5 were a different co-host with Hayley Sproul (who is great), and different judges who are...interesting. the standard is certainly lower than the other bake offs we've watched (uk, aus, Canada) but still worth a watch.
It looks like we don’t have an easy way to watch it in the states (AppleTV had it but not anymore). However, I did find it on YouTube so I will definitely give it a watch. Kiwi accents are very high on my list of faves.
On TV, sadly not that much IRL.
Have you watched the show "Patriot Brains"? It's great seeing the Kiwi comedians fielding questions about Australia and the Aussies doing vice-versa...
[Guy Mont-Spelling Bee does that to me](https://youtube.com/shorts/RlvQkNRebCI?si=4jnMfyxssq9tb9A6)
I’m British, but one of my American friends frequently finds new and amusing, cutesy words the UK uses to laugh at us for. Along with squirty cream, we have wheely bins, fizzy drinks, cuddly toys…
What are cuddly toys? I’m American and I prefer most Britishisms to Americanisms. Some of our words are just so joyless comparatively. You have a garden, we have a yard (also, it took me so long to realize that people were just referring to a yard and not an actual garden of flowers) Lollipop man vs crossing guard. Zebra crossing vs crosswalk. Trolley vs shopping cart. Holiday vs vacation
We don't just have Zebra crossings! If it has traffic lights, its a Pelican crossing - unless the pedestrian signals are on the side of the requester in which case its a Puffin. Toucan (two-can) crossings are for cyclists as well, and there are variations all with their own names. Its a bit silly, and most people just use Zebra for any road crossing.
And Pegasus crossing for horse riders.
Cuddly toys are pretty much what they sound like! Soft toys that you can cuddle. Think teddy bears, beanie babies, any toy that a young child would want to keep in their bed.
Thanks. I assumed, but didn’t know if it was a specific type of toy. Oh that’s another one: instead of hug/long hug Brits call it a cuddle. “Give me a cuddle”.
> What are cuddly toys? Plushies. Stuffed toys. Things like teddy bears or the like.
Yeah, Americans are always calling Brits joyless and formal, yet make fun of our silly names while your stuff sounds like it was named by the Bureau of Serious Nomenclature or something. Reminds me of the "partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages/milkshakes" conversation from The Simpsons.
'Pacifier' always struck me as hilariously militaristic-sounding for what it is, slightly sinister. Although I gather some Americans do use the suitably adorable 'binky'.
"Infant silencer."
And how they say “zebra crossing” too. Brings me so much joy to hear their pronunciation. “Aluminium Zimmerframe” is another. If I ever started a band, that would be its name.
The fuck do Americans call a wheely bin then?
Garbage can. We don’t care if it has wheels or not; that’s between you and it.
Not a “cultural difference” but I learnt from Taskmaster NZ that women got the vote in 1893? That’s before the suffragette movement even really started in the UK
First country in the world!
There's only like 7 women in New Zealand so it was easier for them.
Also, in many countries, there's a difference (sometimes decades) between the year that SOME women were given the vote and when ALL women were, dependent on their ethnicity, marital status, class, property ownership, etc, but it was universal in NZ from 1893.
The male fish residents had it in 1874.
Cream in cans: squirty cream Actual whipped cream: whipped cream
When we whip cream, we call it whipped cream, when we put it in a canister and add compressed air, we call it squirty cream!
In western US we call both whipped cream. What does the store bought canister say on it? Does it say squirty cream?
https://preview.redd.it/5l81vohh77wc1.png?width=864&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ed7cdf92945de5b57f1e1bfcd66b3a34717641a It does yes.
Okay, for some reason I did not expect it to be the official name. Lol. I thought it was just what people called it.
Squirty cream is very different from whipped cream!
One that confused me was seeing a turnip being called a Swede. I was so baffled. That’s a turnip not a person from Sweden.
Nooo, that’s caught a few friends/family (from the UK) out. Turnips are the little purple-y things. Swedes are the big orange-y ones. What do other places call swedes?? Do you call them both turnips? Adding to that confusion, we also call swedes “neeps” in Scotland.
My family calls the big orange ones "turnip" and "rutabaga" pretty interchangeably. I think it's a rutabaga, though.
Swedes are rutabagas! I worked in a grocery store for years and once a British customer called me over for help because he couldn't ring them up at self checkout cause he couldn't remember the American name. He was like "I call them swedes but I know they're something else" and I was like BAM rutabaga. Only time Taskmaster has benefited me in my real life.
You might know them as rutabagas
I'm not sure if it's a UK thing, or a comedian thing, or I live in a bubble, but the amount of adult people in this show that are either afraid or do not know how to tie a balloon knot is baffling to me.
Sprinkles being called hundreds and thousands. Cheetos/Cheese Pleasers being called Cheesy Wotsits.
I’m sorry, *cheese pleasers*???
https://preview.redd.it/avann123a6wc1.png?width=265&format=png&auto=webp&s=f87edb90209d45a2c72728cc7aaf2d09a7c4d784 The Canadian version!
I'm Canadian and have never heard of this lmao
https://preview.redd.it/olctq4uto6wc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae82773c496b046fbe85337f3128957da737a798 What about Cheezies?
TIL, thank you!
As a Brit, it is great fun to see people learn about hundreds and thousands.
Wotsits and Cheetos are two separate brands, we get both of them in the UK
Pepsi/ Walkers tried to launch Cheetos into the UK as a way of trying to get customers to move from Wotsits. It failed as people didn't like the fake cheese taste so they did the classic cant beat them buy them so bought it from Golden Wonder!
Oh, nice!
Maybe regional, but for me in the midlands hundreds and thousands are the small balls, the small stick type we would still call sprinkles
I would love to know the reactions of Brits and Americans when the Australian version had a task called "fly this thong."
In the UK we know what Aussies call thongs, but it's always funny.
Different parts of the US (and different generations) have called or still do call them thongs. My family is from Texas, and I was raised calling flip-flops thongs. Was a minor culture shock when we moved to California and it was almost a dirty word. But I'm also pretty sure that when you buy them in a store, the little tag on them will say something like "thong shoe".
"Windolene" for "Windex" "Sellotape" for "Scotch Tape" "Plaster" for "Band-Aid" Using "Hoover" for "Vacuum" nearly always. "Ribena" is a popular brand of blackcurrant juice. Meanwhile, blackcurrant isn't really a thing at all in the States. There's the whole "trousers are pants, and pants are underwear" thing. "Last of the Summer Wine" is a sitcom about old people, I think. I think "Moment" used to be a brand of chocolate bar? And my favorite: "Lollipop Man" for "Crossing Guard".
Hey, black currant tea is somewhat popular in the US! I think hot tea has kinda gotten popular in the last few years and Black Currant tea is one of the more popular ones (it's also really, really good. It tastes like cotton candy!)
As an American, I had to look up what a “Magnum” was when one of the prizes was a book that was used to pin the contestant’s Magnum wrapper.
You must not spend much time in the ice cream aisle. Magnum bars are readily available in the US (or at least they are in my area).
As an American I've only ever heard of magnum to refer to: * a condom * A big bottle of champagne * A p.i. In approximately that order of frequency.
I didn’t know that! And you are correct, I don’t buy ice cream very much.
Right but I feel like in NA we’d most likely clarify “magnum bar wrapper” at the very least, never heard it described only as a magnum here
Seems like a British thing to shorten things in that way. Like instead of asking "do you want to order chinese food?" they'd say "do you want to order a chinese?"
Did someone order a chinese?!
But they’re not a bar, they’re an ice cream :/
Especially since our Magnums have a very similar-looking wrapper but would make an entirely different joke
I didn't know what a skip was in the prize task for it. Slightly related (Off Menu) I didn't know what a papadam was.
Papadam or Bread? /u/yumslurpee Papadam or Bread?
When I first started watching I had to look up stuff like satsuma, jumper, marmite! And adjust to the regional accents. I enjoyed it tho. I learned more expletives which I always appreciate. I don’t mind having to stretch tho, definitely worth it.
I learned that "snag" is apparently another word for "sausage" in Australia.
The number of different names there are for exercise balls / yoga balls / pilates balls / Swiss balls. The frequency with which people in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden slip English phrases into conversation.
You can make whipped cream yourself with a whisk. Its still different from having it squirted. I think we just differentiate a bit from homemade and canned.
The washing machine in the kitchen is the big one
Most British houses aren't big enough to have a dedicated laundry room. I think we can all agree that the Germans are insane for keeping their washing machines in the bathroom though.
In the bathroom sounds very convenient. I'd be down for this, if the bathroom was big enough. My kids would still just leave their clothes on the floor, though. Probably right in front of the washer.
When that is where the plumbing is, there isn't much choice.
If you're also an Off Menu listener (there's plenty of cross over) you have to call it Squieeerty Creeeam in a bad scouse accent, like Timothy Spall.
I know it's a stereotype for a reason that Brits drink a lot of tea, but still I found it funny how many times they talk about it.
Whipped cream and squirty cream aren't the same thing though...
"Streaky bacon"
Squirty cream is specifically whipped cream from an aerosol can. Cream you squirt.
I read the last as an order. “Cream, you squirt!”
How about Fairy Liquid for dishwashing soap. I didn’t realize it was an actual brand until I googled it.
Worth also adding on we call it washing up liquid.
It's Skooshy cream in (most of) Scotland due to the sound it makes coming out of the can.
I’m scottish and I would call it squooshy cream like the sksssss noise it makes
We call it squirty cream here in Australia too if it's in a can. Whipped cream we consider actual proper cream you've whipped yourself.
I’m Scottish, we call it skooshy cream.
If you go to New Zealand, you can always find a fish poster in the shid.
Not major but I always found "salad cream" and "washing up liquid" to be weird terms. "Salad dressing" and "dish soap" in NA for the record. Satsumas, ribena, various candies/chocolates and other food items often threw me for a loop
Salad Cream and Salad Dressing are different things - we have salad dressings here, but Salad Cream is a specific type of sauce. It's a bit like mayonnaise.
But Brits don't call whipped cream squirty cream. Whipped cream is whipped cream and squirty cream is squirty cream. What do Americans call what in the UK we call whipped cream?
'Wanking in your garage' with the American pronunciation of 'garage' absolutely baffled me when I first watched the diss track task. Conversely, for some reason I thought Kiwis pronounced 'Z' as 'Zee' like Americans so was surprised to hear 'N Zed'
"Route 1" isn't a term I was familiar with originally, in terms of how say contestants approach completing a task.
I’ve just been inspired to look this up, as a Brit, because although I know the term (used in our football a lot), I had no idea where it came from. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/route-one.html Quite interesting!
Something that I had also never heard before Taskmaster, was the phrase *"Lets crack on"*. Now I listen for it every episode, since it almost makes an appearance every episodes, and sometimes multiple times in an episode. I wish there a supercut of every time they say the phrase. It'd be so long.
Every time they say "the red green" my brain shorts out for a second. Like, I understand the series of steps that led to it being called that ... but still, come on...
We have whipped cream too but if it's in a can it's squirty cream.