If I’m talking to an English speaker from outside of the US, is there any confusion if I say “soccer”?
For example, when I was in college a friend asked for a “torch”. I was confused for quite some time, because I didn’t know it was another word for “flashlight”. Does the same thing happen with the word “soccer”? Should I clarify by saying, “…or football”?
Thank you!
Not a native English speaker, but my hunch is, soccer will almost certainly be understood. Also it will identify you as American.
And Canada 👋
If you really want to throw them off, call it the proper name rather than the nick name. Association football. Most adult non-american english speakers are at least tangentially aware that the name soccer derived from that. But it certainly won’t make you sound American.
Thank you!
But if an American says football, that can create a bit of confusion.
English people understand the limitations Americans have to live under when it comes to language
Edit: jesus you make little high brow joke and all the idiots gets butthurt.
We had to call it soccer. We already had a sport called competitive diving.
When I get asked if I watch soccer as a hockey fan I have the same feelings. The Women’s version of soccer is much tougher and I would rather watch that. They take a beating and get bloodied but keep playing unlike the men falling over including the coaches from being brushed by a piece of paper.
This video does a good job capturing the differences between coaches: https://youtu.be/9HxzLEqI-qE?si=VPWHKI081v80eA3k
This one does a great job highlighting the competition diving angle. I think
artist*artistic diving might be more applicable though: https://youtu.be/_OXdfJgCmLc?si=7n-tIrOIsxznm49WIsn’t American football just rugby with padding /jk
Hey, that’s not fair! It’s actually just rugby with commercial breaks every 5 minutes!
You do realize the word Soccer for the actual game originated in England right?
It just so happened that “Rugby football” got shortened to Rugby and this “Associa toon (Socker) football” got shortened to Football.
Since since an American sport came around the same time called “Football” they kept the name “Soccer” for Association Football.
Just letting you know a little back story.
A small article about it can be found here. https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer And there are plenty more info out there about it.
I’m going to call them soccer football and American football from now on
I’m going to be an insufferable pedant and reply, “Do you mean association football or rugby football?” whenever anyone uses either :P
I refer to Soccer the football played with your foot and then the American version as " Egg-ball" played with your hands.
That said I’m also Canadian and for many years in our small “hand egg-ball” league we had 2 teams with very similar club names called the Rough Riders and the Roughriders so I shouldn’t be throwing so many stones…
I love it!
Do English people know that they originated “soccer” as Oxford slang for “association football?” Nothing hits like the English ignorantly shitting on their colonies for adopting the stupid English practices forced upon them by the English at the time.
English shitting on our colonies is our favourite past time. You should come along sometime.
America isn’t a British colony, we won a whole war about that.
Imagine going from one of the biggest powers in the world, owning more than 25% of the entire Earth and having one of the biggest navies on the planet, to losing nearly all of it and returning back to an island approximately the size of Madagascar. Even losing a war of independence, and having to ask the winner that beat them for help in WWII because they were losing. All that, and it’s citizens have the audacity to keep making fun of Americans.
You know, looking at it that way, it really makes Britain look really petty. Which is rather appropriate.
Did you know making fun can be friendly and fun
“English (simplified)”
One reason it’s dangerous for me to drink in the UK is that everyone from the UK sounds like a small child to an American.
So yeah, big language differences. Some soccer hooligan would get all mad at the telly about his footy and I’d end up being stabbed for laughing.
…and you wouldn’t have your gun to drunkenly shoot a bystander while ‘defending yourself.’
It’s tough to be an American abroad.
Right? So many unique challenges lol
At least you don’t need to know geography to get on a plane.
I am amazing at geography, so that’s not an issue.
The real problem is getting around once you land, and I can say with absolute confidence that is universal.
Me too, show me a map of the US and I can show you which one is Texas.
No, we understand. In fact, if anything it’s easier if you say soccer! If someone with an American accent says ‘football’ I normally assume they mean gridiron, so sayings soccer is actually a little clearer.
Of course, in different parts of the world, ‘football’ might mean rugby (either union or league), Gaelic football or Aussie rules football. So, the potential for confusion is pretty wide!
Interesting, thank you!
Well it’s not actually that bad of a deal to call football “soccer”. But what really grind gears is to associate football exclusively to “American football” which is what (American) internet do. Rage over “soccer” is just part of the backlash.
It’s ok, we know you guys are weird.
The word Soccer is actually British - it’s short for Association as in Association Football, although it’s slang from Oxford University of all places, and is late Victorian.
Irony is a surprising number of “Americanisms” turn out to be old British terms that died out in Britain but reached and continued in the US.
Most won’t be confused at all. They might be surprised but pretty simple logic would result in a fast realisation of what you actually mean. I am surprised though, that you, as an English speaking person couldn’t figure out that a torch might refer to a flash light.
Torch has another common meaning though. Does soccer?
I’m not comparing them as it is not relevant.
I’m simply stating that it should be pretty straight forward to figure out that they don’t mean the other kind of torch and if not, it should at least be deducible
Before he hit the end of that sentence, I thought torch was going to turn out to mean a lighter. :(
That’s exactly right! I wrote about it in another response. :)
I disagree, because in American english, the object you’re talking about has a word (flashlight), and it is expected that people use the accepted words if they want to be understood.
How would you like if someone was asking you for a pair of scissors but they called them a knife, and got incredulous when you handed them a knife? You’d expect them to call them scissors, not a knife.
I take it you don’t talk with many people who are not Americans
Because we have actual torches too. You guys don’t have actual soccers to get confused by. Given the right context we can figure out when you mean flashlight, but said torch.
I understand this, but still one should be able to figure out that a person wouldn’t ask you for a flaming torch, in a dark place, especially when there isn’t one around, but there instead is a flashlight near by that they originally meant.
Right, with modern context we can figure it out pretty quickly, after we learn that the term torch is used for flashlight. The first time I saw it i thought they were talking about a cigarette lighter
Torch is a ligher
I’d have just chalked it up to good ol’ British humour.
Haha it’s true! When my Malaysian friend asked me for a torch, I was running around for five minutes looking for a lighter, like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aKrxd1q3Mw&t=8
It’s all I could picture, no one ever asked me for a TORCH before. Like in Indiana Jones?? 😅
Until I stopped and asked, “Wait, what do you need it for?”
“To look at my car, something is wrong with the engine.”
…and that’s when I realized. We had a good laugh.
In Australia we have Soccer, Aussie rules football (AFL), Rugby Union (Union) and Rugby league (Usually referred to as “League” or “NRL”) all of them also known as “Football”
I have a pretty deep burning hatred for people who insist on correcting people when they say Soccer. It honestly just makes you look like a twat “yOu mEaN wHaT tHe rEsT oF thE WoRld CalLs foOTbALl!?!” Like you fucking understood well enough to know this was your moment to open your cockholster and needlessly add that little tidbit like anyone else was confused.
Heh “cockholster”. I’m going to work that into as many Christmas conversations as I can.
senseless pedantry in general is one of the things that annoy me most. i first started realizing my hatred for reddit when someone replied to a comment where i said ‘bury the lead’ with ‘lede*’ and i was annoyed enough to not comment for a long time after that. im not a 19th century newspaper columnist so unless youre trying to save the barely literate farmers on computer science subreddits from a minor misunderstanding, thats a comment better left unmade.
From now on I’m calling it Foot Football. That other game is Hand Football.
Jokes aside, for those who don’t know, the real nomenclature is association football (origin of the word soccer) and gridiron football, respectively. Many more types and subtypes of football too!
I’m an American who lived in England for a couple of years. Due to American media the majority of everyone understood what I meant when I said things like soccer, trunk or hood of a car, fries, etc. Words with different meanings between the two could get confusing like biscuit, chips, or pissed.
Since soccer doesn’t have another meaning I never ran into someone who didn’t know what I was talking about. However, when saying football in an American accent some thought I was referring to American Football by default.
I can only remember one instant where someone did not know what I was talking about. That was when I asked someone at work where the dumpster was and I got a blank stare. I explained, the big metal thing outside for trash and they were like, “oh the skip”
As a non-native English speaker I fully understand what it means and will happily correct it to football for you :P
Everyone understands, most gringe.
It is just football all over the world, in contrast to American “football”.
It is “Fußball” in German which is what I speak natively. But I still usually say “soccer” when I speak English because that is unambiguous.
It’s soccer here in Australia too. Like the US, we have our own local football code too.
Australia and nz say soccer too
I’ve been kind of wondering that as well. A few months ago, I was in a call with a colleague in UK and we were chatting about our kids’ playing the same sport . Then his kid wandered into the picture and asked what “soccer” was and we had to translate American English to UK English
I’ve heard gridiron. Just not “gridiron football” together.
