This amused me

[klondike]

Quora is full of stupid or distinctly odd questions. Many produced by a cretinous piece of software called the Quora prompt generator (or something like that anyway). Many by dumbass Yanks. This one by https://www.quora.com/profile/Kateryna-Isachkova who has a raft of rather odd questions about the British and the English language.

This question from the poster calling themselves  Kateryna Isachkova got a lot of replies and I have reproduced one below. It's good to see that some of us still remain cheerful and always happy to help out foreigners with their attempts to integrate....

Why don't people in the UK say 'bus' but say coach, single deck, and double deck instead?
Eh?

This is a bus:


It's a single-decker bus but a bus it be.

This too is a bus:



a double-decker, since it's got an upstairs and a downstairs.

This is a load of busses:



in Barnsley Interchange. Because we're going a bit upmarket in Barnsley, tha knows. We can't have a bus station any more. Nope. Now we've got to have an interchange instead. All of this started when we got a Costa Coffee. I said it'd be t'ruin o' t'place but no bugger listened. Now we've got a Taco Bell, a Superbowl, TGI Friday, a bloody wine bar wi' daft plastic trees and mirrors up t' wall, a Starbucks, and a chuffin' interchange. Some chuff's just opened a proper bookshop an' all! Next we'll be getting a Waitrose and that'll be it, game ovver!

Er.....what was this supposed to be about? Oh. Yes, busses. You'll notice that I've put busses with two instances of the letter s in the middle. I've had this buses/busses argument before and according to Collins, Oxford, and Cambridge dictionaries either is correct and buses is more common. Well, if it's common we can't be having that, because as I have already said Barnsley is tarting itself up like a west end callgirl when the oil-sheiks hit town and we're not having any truck with common any more. We've got a Starbucks now! We're even kicking Marks & Spencer out o' town centre, that's how posh we are now. Aye. So you can take your common plurals and not shove 'em up your arse sideways without Vaseline because now we're posh we don't say things like that any more but still you can insert them into your anal orifice at an oblique sans adequate lubrication.

Er again.....oh, yes.

This is a coach:



Posh, intit? They go from t' interchange.

Coaches go much longer distances and make many less stops than do busses (not buses). Indeed, some will go from their pickup point to their dropoff without making any stop along the way between. National Express ones will make drops and pickups in various towns. I once did a National Express coach years ago that went Leeds, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Luton, London. It was miles cheaper than the train and I wanted to see why. I found out. It's not that it's a bad journey but I much prefer the train, thanks.

Any road up to t'interchange, that's your SP on it. I dunno where you got the idea that we don't call busses (not buses) busses. I'm going to blame the EU for it. Ursula on the Lowerdeck.

[GrannyMac]

Brilliant. 

Note to self, revisit Barnsley! It's just up 'road from here.

[JBR]

I agree, Klondike.
However, I see no point in trying to educate Americans in how to speak and write in English, especially as they seem to think that their obfuscation of our language is the only correct version.

They're certainly rather poor when it comes to spelling, with their 'airplanes' and 'aluminum', 'colors' and 'capitalize'; the latter two, for example, would indicate that they don't particularly like the letters 'u' and 's', which might suggest that they'll eventually drop the word 'USA' in favour of a simple 'A' to denote the name of their own country.

[Alex]

That was hilarious !       

[klondike]

It starts out pretty meh so you need to get past the this is a ... to the real meat.

I'm not sure if some of the yank ones are a wind up or not. 

[1955vintage]

Oregano is a good example of their inability to pronounce.

[GrannyMac]

Oregano is a good example of their inability to pronounce.

Surely its just a variation? Probably the influence of people from other countries who said oregano (in whatever form) while we were still calling the herb wild marjoram.  

Just go to Barnsley and listen to some pronunciations there! 

[Scrumpy]

I find it hard to understand what some people  are saying up there.. 

[klondike]

Surely its just a variation? Probably the influence of people from other countries who said oregano (in whatever form) while we were still calling the herb wild marjoram. 

I'm pretty sure that was a joke. Unless somebody is a fan of Yank cooking programs I doubt they've ever heard one talking about oregano. I didn't even know what it was but I have heard of Oregon....

[Michael Rolls]

so did Perry Como. 'Where has Oregon, boys, where has Oregon?'

[Alex]

         

[klondike]

Well blow me. I've never even heard of it and 1955 is bilingual talking about the stuff.

[GrannyMac]

I find it hard to understand what some people  are saying up there..

So do I!