Minging

The British and Americans agree on most things and on a whole the similarities outweigh the differences.

When our cousins from over the Atlantic start to break away we generally hum and haw but eventually concede the point and adopt whatever new thing they have invented or telly show they are exporting. 

The special relationship will always be maintained and who cares if we have to invent acronyms like WMD to keep it that way.

Obesity, regime change, hot tubs, Miller Lite, Dodge RAM trucks, self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth status to name but a few of the things the British have gleefully welcomed into our green and pleasant land. We have managed so far to resist the temptation to adopt bad spelling and then there is the obvious word and overused comedy routine differences; Fanny, Rubber, Pants.

Sticking with words for a second. I am probably biased but I do think British slang is so much more versatile than its American equivalent. I am basing this on the diet of American shows I have been fed since I was a small child and my infrequent trips over there so am also most likely wrong.

Take vagina as a good example. Now don’t worry I am not going to use the vocabulary version of a WMD, the C word, here. I do also believe it’s a common noun either side of the Atlantic.

It’s also a word which should only ever be used as a word of last resort.

Please don’t dilute it by adding it to your everyday lexicon.
The C word is a word I want to keep in my armoury and on the few occasions I do use it I expect it to have the impact it should have. Situations like two drunken men staggering down the street, one hugs the other and says ‘come here ya daft c**tya’ shouldn’t happen.

This is wrong, not because the C word has been used, in this case as a term of endearment, but because it is depriving the rest of us from using it properly.

When Richard Gere turns to Lisa Blount towards the end of An Officer and a Gentleman and calmly but firmly calls her a C**t, its powerful. Its strong. It makes you sit up. You understand what he’s feeling. You understand he had no choice to use it. This is it being used in the correct context.

Anyway I won’t be using that word here - that would definitely be inappropriate.

But back to vagina. It’s an antiseptic word, like haemorrhoids or renal. Words which should stay locked up tight in a doctor’s cupboard alongside the catheters and adult nappies.

In American English, as I understand it, there are only three ways to describe a vagina; the C word, pus*y and of course the medicinal Vagina.

In British English there are loads, the three shared ones and then hundreds of homemade ones. Probably.

If I had to have a favourite, then it would be ‘Minge’.

Not because it’s a nice sounding word, more that it’s one of the more perfect words out there. I guess its a derivation of Minger, meaning very ugly. i.e. ‘She’s a minger mate’. It could also be derived from the more general ‘Minging’ i.e. ‘wouldn’t go there, that toilet is minging’.

Even if you have never heard the word Minging I bet you would be off in search of a bush rather than find out how accurate it was.

The same goes for Minge and now that you know the meanings of Minging and Minger it’s not a huge leap to understand Minge if you hadn’t worked it out already. Yes it’s a bit distasteful but is perfect in the context of describing ‘that’ if it is infact a minge rather than, say, a pus*y.

I like all of the regional dialects. I like that in such a small country they tend to overlap and interbreed so, for example, it becomes perfectly normal for a Glaswegian weegie to use Cockney rhyming slang. People from Norfolk are a bit weird though.

One of the more confusing differences between the home of the free and the other 300+ equally as free countries in the world are numbers.

Now you would think, on the face of it, given their binary nature, should never be different. In fact the differences are vast. Just within the uneasy ménage e trois of the UK, the US and France there are huge differences.

For example let’s look at the next ‘big’ number which comes after a Trillion. Contrary to popular belief this is not a Gazillion, that’s a made up word apparently (yes really). It’s real name is a Quadrillion.

Or is it?

In American numbers it is but in British numbers the number ten with fifteen zeros after is has the perfectly understandable and logical name ‘Thousand Million’. The French version is called a ‘Billiard’ – don’t ask me why, you need to ask a Frenchman.

And the differences keep on coming. 

Actually the only number which all three agree on is the Million.
Currency differences aside if you are a millionaire in the San Francisco, you would be one in Hull as well and you would also be one in Paris. There are no similarities though once we leave million behind.

I would like to say us Brits have got it right but I can’t.

When the Americans come up with the tongue twisting ‘Nonagintillion’ we go one better with a utterly undecipherable ‘Thousand quinquaquadragintillion’. At least we had the good grace to add Thousand before it but it doesn’t really help much. The French just drop the thousand and add ‘illiard’ to the end of most of them.

Just as an aside, adding ‘ard’ to the end of anything doesn’t add to its attractiveness. It will take some persuasion for me to play a game of Billiards. I like playing snooker, but Billiards sound horribly dull. Lard, well need I go on? It’s just not a good way to end a word.

My favourite number name if I had to pick one is the Googolplex. Not because of its name but because of what it represents. A googolplex is a number starting with 1 and ends with as many zeros as you can write before your hand gets tired. This was the brainchild of Milton Sirotta the 9year old nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner(ard). Its simplicity is its beauty, just don’t try measuring anything against it.

So my googolplex I would estimate to be somewhere in the region of a very British Thousand Octodecillion. My 4 year old son's would be maybe a British billion or an American Trillion. Stephen Hawkins’s would be 1.

I like the idea of a googolplex even if from a mathematical standpoint its reliability is somewhat shaky. I like it because it speaks to the meaningless nature of such numbers. What is the point of having a name for a number with 336 zeros after it? (Sesquinquagintillion). And if you have to have a name, which I dispute, why not give it one you can actually pronounce.

But given such large numbers have no place in the real world why bother giving them names at all. If you need such a number, say if you feel the need to calculate the weight of a particularly aggressive planet eating black hole, what’s the added value of giving the resulting number a name. You are after all weighing black holes, can’t you just be happy with that?

Also whatever the resulting number is, who cares? ‘Really, a thousand quinquaoctogintillion kilos? Wow, that is heavy….(long embarrassing pause) ......anyway did you see the game on the telly last night? No? Too busy weighing everything huh? Right I'll be off then’

Or how about simply saying it’s just heavy, or for added impact if you must try adding ‘very’ a few times and be done. Would work for me.

When it comes to actual banknotes and even in periods of super hyperinflation these numbers are still unnecessary. Upon gaining independence one US Dollar would buy you 0.8 of the newly created Zimbabwean Dollar. By 2006 with inflation standing at 11,000% one Dollar could buy you 688 trillion.

Even in such extreme situations it’s still going to be sometime before it becomes necessary to start figuring out how to pronounce or print Trestrigintillion.

I think numbers, like language will continue to be different wherever you are.

I am ok that the American Billion is now fairly well accepted as the global rule. This has been done out of necessity rather than for any other reason. Given Billion is a number which does exists in the real world there needed to be some common logic otherwise things could go wrong very easily and by eye-watering degrees as well.

I accept the French will never cease to keep adding ‘ard’ to the end of things so long as they accept this makes them a nation of Dull(ards).

I accept we Brits will continue to adopt everything American apart from the more clever things like language and numbers. 

I am happy to see Dodge RAM trucks struggling to park in an NCP multi-story car park. I am content to think about sitting in a hot tub in the rain. I don’t mind my backside growing a little wider but I will never bring myself to drink a bottle of Miller Lite.

Cos its minging.