Question About An Upcoming Fall TV Program

What are the chances that Fox's new time travel/dinosaur show "Terra Nova" will succeed? The premise looks interesting, but doesn't something like "Terra Nova" better suited for the big screen? My experience with shows like "Terra Nova" is that they do gain some fans but they don't succeed because they are too expensive to make.

Reply to
Matt Casey
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In Australia we use "Autumn" instead of "Fall". I suppose "Fall" is derived from leaves falling in this season.

It is the only American word I just can't get used to. Do Americans use the word Autumn in any context?

Well, also: I have a niece by marriage who lives in America. Her married surname is "Walker", which is pronounced something like "wocker"

When I was in the USA quite some time back, I asked for a "coke", and the girl thought I was asking for a "cake".

In England I was in trouble for not pronouncing words like "Fenwick" as "Fennick" and "Serven" (a river) as "Seven". The famous one is "Cholmondeley" pronounced as "Chumley".

Thank goodness all we people can communicate by posts!

Reply to
David Barnett

If only there were some sort of newsgroup about English usage, where questions like this could be answered. :-) In fact, I'm crossposting to it.

"Fall" is, I think, more common in the US than "autumn", but "autumn" is also used and is not regarded as "foreign", like "biscuit" for "cookie".

That seems odd. Where in the US?

[followups to a.u.e]
Reply to
Stan Brown

WTF? Since when is "biscuit" not in the American dialect?

Cookie maker Nabisco = National Biscuit Company.

History: Nabisco is one of Kraft's billion-dollar brands. Its roots date back to

1898 when the United States Baking Company, the New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit & Manufacturing Company formed to become the National Biscuit Company. The name Nabisco first appeared on a new sugar wafer product in 1901, but the corporate name did not change from National Biscuit Company to Nabisco, Inc. until 1971. Kraft acquired the Nabisco business in December 2000. Today, Nabisco's brands include some of the best-known cookies and crackers in the world, including Chips Ahoy!, Oreo and Ritz.

There are people in the U.S. who collect their 100-year-old biscuit tins.

Reply to
D. Stussy

He didn't say it wasn't in the American dialect.

It's just that Americans call biscuits "cookies", and they call cookies (or something like them) "biscuits".

So the word is certainly in American dialects, but it means something different from what it means to people who speak other dialects.

Reply to
Steve Hayes

...

Wikipedia says that in South Africa, "cookie" means "cupcake", that is, a cup-sized gateau. Is that right?

American biscuits aren't much like that.

Reply to
Jerry Friedman

I don't know about Sth Afr but define "cup-sized". To me cup-cakes are smaller than most cups.

=== = DUG. ===

Reply to
Duggy

About 250 ml or a bit less.

Reply to
Evan Kirshenbaum

I looked to see what Mrs Beeton has to say about "cupcakes". She doesn't mention them, but she does give a recipe for a "saucer cake". This was apparently a cake suitable for eating with a cup of tea. The name comes from the method of serving. A slice of the cake would be put on the saucer holding the tea cup.

Reply to
Peter Duncanson (BrE)

As M. Lyle said, you're better off looking to see what someone like Fanny Cradock has to say on the subject.

Reply to
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard

I don't think Fanny was particularly known for her cakes. Mary Berry would be a better choice.

And, as Mr Lyle has also pointed out, if you snip all attributions the discussion is difficult to follow.

Reply to
LFS

Fanny Cradock is hardly known at all to the Internet generation, it appears. But nonetheless she and her recipes will be a better guide to what constitutes a cake in a paper cake cup than Mrs Beeton is, given that the paper liners don't appear to have become a mass-market item until the 20th century.

Reply to
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard

Mike said (but he didn'#t mention Fanny Cradock): [..]

Odd that you should think so: she is widely mentioned according to Google, but she is not associated with cupcakes.

But nonetheless she and her recipes will be a better guide to

Paper cases are not essential. My mother baked fairycakes (in what would probably now be known as a muffin tin) without paper cases.

You seem to know as much about cake baking as you do about netiquette.

[aue only]
Reply to
LFS

You said "cakes" before, and you haven't done your research. She's widely mentioned in those Google results _in direct association with_ cakes. There's a quotation of her directly dealing with cakes in the much-mirrored Wikipedia article about her. But it lacks a source, and I suspect that, like the several contradictory variations of a much-repeated quotation by Johnnie Cradock, it is apocryphal. For someone who was on television for 20 years, there is very little on the WWW about her in comparison to modern television celebrities (whose every speeding ticket is a matter for news columns, it seems) and very little indeed of her actual cookery.

A cup is essential to a _cup_ cake. How your mother baked a _fairy_ cake is irrelevant to what M. Duncanson was saying, and of no use at all in determining what he was attempting to determine.

Reply to
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard

Who did?

Reply to
Dr Nick

Mary Berry

would be a better choice.

Reply to
lilycheese

I like cupcakes

i can make very best cupcakes,it is my favorite

Reply to
corriejame09

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