English Sailors in Brooklyn?

I just ran across this article, thought you%26#39;d all enjoy it. Do you think any of the British sailors knew what seaman-tchotchke decor means before they landed?

nytimes.com/2007/…11journal.html

English Sailors in Brooklyn?

I shouldn%26#39;t think any of them knew what it meant after they left! I certainly don%26#39;t.

Thanks for that Bettina, it was er... brilliant.

English Sailors in Brooklyn?

Oh come on Nic! Everyone knows that!

Tchotchke (originally from Yiddish tshatshke (often spelled in a variety of other ways because there is no standardized transliteration) trinket), ultimately from a Slavic word for ';toys'; (Polish: cacka, Russian: цацки) are trinkets, small toys, knickknacks, baubles, or kitsch. The term has a connotation of worthlessness or disposability, as well as tackiness. The term was long used in the Jewish-American community and in the regional speech of New York City.

(Couldn%26#39;t even pronounce it myself!)

Brilliant.

If they were anything like me ( with my HUGE knowledge of Jewish words) I%26#39;m sure they knew just what was what. Yeah right.

';for it was well known that he had been brutally sunburned in soccer matches — he called it football';

Well, its called football all over the world except in USA.

Thanks Bettina for posting.

“You go to Manhattan to see the tourist things,” he said. “But you go to Brooklyn to see the real people.” Brilliant!

The truth is that many people call the game soccer. So, for example, many of the football games available in the U.K. are known, by trade mark, as table soccer or subbuteo soccer. And people from continental Europe often describe association football as %26#39;soccer%26#39;. It%26#39;s not just an American designation.

The truth is that it is called football. However, it was referred to as soccer as a shorter version of association football. People know what soccer is but they do not, by and large, call it that.

Some products use the name soccer but the game is rarely referred to as soccer amongst its followers outside of North America to the best of my knowledge. You will know better if Irish people distinguish it from Irish football by calling it soccer but I%26#39;m not sure where else does. Maybe Australia with their Aussie rules?

The US Soccer Federation was originally called the US Football Association.

Interesting topic but in the article I would have been surprised if a member of the British Royal Navy called it anything other than football.

Why not try an experiment Mac ? Type ';Soccer in the Czech Republic'; into google and you will get 2,190,000 responses. Type ';Football in the Czech Republic'; and you will get 2,240,000 responses. Which would suggest to me that the terms are used interchangeably in the Czech part of Continental Europe. If, however, you have any statistical evidence to confirm your hunch that the game is ';by and large'; called soccer outside of America, I would be interested to consider it.

I tried your experiment.

Of the first four hits for soccerin the Czech Republic: two were US sites, one was the google.com directory and the other (a UK site where they call it football) hasn%26#39;t been updated for years.

Of the first four hits for football: the Football Association of the Czech Republic, wikipedia reference to the Czech national team, football.co.uk and Prague.tv!

I really don%26#39;t know where you are coming from here. Are you sure you live in Europe? Is it the Czech Football Association, or UEFA or FIFA? Do the fans call it soccer in Germany? France? Spain? Portugal? Norway? Sweden? Denmark? Czech Republic even? I have been to three world cups and met many fans from Europe and beyond. I do not need statistics to convince myself that it is, by and large, known as football.

Is there an off topic forum?

It is not ';by and large'; known as football. I will concede that the term ';football'; is used more than the term ';soccer'; outside of the USA. But there are tens of thousands of references to soccer on google and - nothwithstanding your selective search - most of them emanate from Europe and not the USA. Just to take a single example, there%26#39;s an article entitled ';Will Sponsors Penalize Soccer ? '; by Frantisek Bouk in the Prague Post on August 12, 2004 and, in the article, a German executive in VW called Asschenberger refers to the ';Czech Soccer Team';. Also, my father, who was from Olomouc in Moravia, and who I knew for forty-five years, always called it soccer.

Also, if you type ';Ferenc Puskas (a Hungarian not an American) and Soccer'; into Google, you get 27,600 references as opposed to 53,800 references for ';Ference Puskas and Soccer';. Few of these 27,600 references are American.

Maybe we should just agree to disagree.