I hate this sentiment. I’m never going to let go of the word soccer, and it’s irritating to pretend like I would. The Brits have decided they’re done saying soccer and they only say football now, and it’s irritating to pretend like anything the US does will change it. Let dialects be dialects and let’s be done with it.
It’s not an American thing. It’s a posh southern England thing that got exported to the states by American students at Oxford returning stateside and bringing the game back with them, and forgotten by the English because the southern teams pale in comparison to the north’s.
Americans don’t even know that other countries exist. So if you start telling this to an american, they will dissociate and remember something or other about The Simpsons.
A big part of why I will not give up the word soccer is because of the class implications and the association with soccer’s working class and union roots.
Other countries call it soccer (Australia and New Zealand) but don’t get the grief Americans get as we are not playing most sports with ourselves to be special
It’s a shortened word for “Association Football” and it is used in the UK as a term frequently enough
I hate this sentiment. I’m never going to let go of the word soccer, and it’s irritating to pretend like I would. The Brits have decided they’re done saying soccer and they only say football now, and it’s irritating to pretend like anything the US does will change it. Let dialects be dialects and let’s be done with it.
Soccer is a British word though, but predominantly southerner / Oxfordian.
Association Football used to get contracted to Assoc or Soc to differentiate it from Rugby Football.
And in Oxford, they historically liked to add -er to the end of things; still in parlance today is calling Rugby “rugger”, £5 note “fiver”, the Bodleian Library “Bodder”.
Assoc became “soccer”.
It’s not an American thing. It’s a posh southern England thing that got exported to the states by American students at Oxford returning stateside and bringing the game back with them, and forgotten by the English because the southern teams pale in comparison to the north’s.
Americans don’t even know that other countries exist. So if you start telling this to an american, they will dissociate and remember something or other about The Simpsons.
A big part of why I will not give up the word soccer is because of the class implications and the association with soccer’s working class and union roots.
Oxford is hardly associated with the working class.
The what now?
I have never heard the Bodleian get called ‘bodder’ before. Wow. Huge if true.
I think the suggestion was that people who don’t say soccer would have to switch, not the other way around?
I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant, and I don’t like it. I read the community note as the opposite, and I also don’t like it.
Okay maybe I read it wrong but you don’t have to do what people on twitter say. In fact, I’d probably recommend you do not take guidance from it
Fear not gentle potato, there is no danger of me stopping saying soccer no matter what people on Twitter say.
Proud of you
Other countries call it soccer (Australia and New Zealand) but don’t get the grief Americans get as we are not playing most sports with ourselves to be special
It’s a shortened word for “Association Football” and it is used in the UK as a term frequently enough