08 December, 2013

Burger or sandwich?

I posted this on my Facebook status one day last month, I ended up with a lot of comments from various parts of the globe:
Another subtle difference between American and Australian English. Sandwich. This Aussie (and her husband at least) only calls something between slices of bread a sandwich. If the bread is shaped differently, like a roll/bun it is called something else like a burger or roll. 
But a discussion last night revealed that some/many Americans, only call something a burger if it has a meat patty in it. Hence a "steak sandwich" which an Aussie would call a "steak burger". What do you think? Am I right? Perhaps Australia has changed while we've been gone!
Essentially it turned out I was right (although there were exceptions, notably a good friend called Roger). Georgia summarised it neatly by saying that in America it is what is inside that determines what it is called. In Australia it seems more common to be the type of bread that determines it.

This is the one that particularly blew the minds of Americans: that a Steak Burger is an unground piece of steak in a bread roll. To them, it would be ground steak or what I'd call a meat patty.

Interestingly, the FB comments also included sidetracks onto "bacon and chippy butties" which is British and I have no idea about.

Ah, the English language is a funny beast. And because I have friends from a variety of countries and who speak a number of varieties of English, I can have a lot of fun with these kinds of posts on Facebook!

Today I had a bit of a discussion at church about "cobbler", which I think is an American version of what we call "crumble".

This afternoon we're making an Apple Crumble with some of the 100 yen/kilo apples that we bought on the way home from camping last week. Whatever it is call, it is definitely YUM!

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