What are you doing right now?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

[Xuut]

People from my junior high/Spryfield area use "Cuz Bud" but nowadays I use it to be facetious. Also "cuz".

[Omega]

"cuzzy" is ubiquitous over here, as is "bro", which might reference anyone, regardless of gender. Same with "mate".

What about "gutted", or going on a "mish", use those?

And everyone else's schooling systems are weird as.

[Xuut]

Same! And it's used without actually being cousins. No one over here ( western Canada) gets it, so I've stopped using it other than being facetious. We don't use "Cuzzy" though. XD

Nope. Never heard of them. XD I hear some of our slang is derived from French, but can think of any right now...

Canadian schooling is done by province so each province has its own school curriculum in addition to individual school boards. There's public and Catholic, plus home schooled kids in their own little world and of course, Private Schools which are all kinds of confusing. How does NZ schooling work?

[Omega]

Yep, true for Cuz(zy) here too.

Gutted, by the way, means 'very disappointed'. As in, I was really gutted when I failed my exam. Or even as just an exclamation on it's own "I couldn't get any pizza because they were sold out!" "Aw, gutted! (bro)"

New Zealand's all under the same system, and every school (including the homeschooled types) is answerable to the Education Review Office. ERO are the bad guys. School boards have only a little say in what a school can/can't teach, and that's true for even the private schools.

We have 13 years of schooling, and 11 of those years are compulsory, although you can drop out at age 15 if you are going into an apprenticeship or other training. The last 3 years you're assessed for high school qualifications - Level 1, 2 and 3. University Entrance is separate to Level 3, but based on the same assessments. If you get Level 3, you've got UE by default almost, but you can get UE without getting Level 3.

(It's all moot because anyone is entitled to attend University after age 20 anyway. Uni numbers aren't really capped, although certain programs/degrees have capped numbers.)

Schools are broken up into Primary (years 1-8) and Secondary (9-13). Separate intermediate schools do exist (years 7 and 8), but they're not as common.

Public school money is almost all from the government, as you're not actually allowed to charge school fees for public schools. Almost all schools ask for 'compulsory donations' - mine were about $500 a year - which get the school a bit of extra dosh. Private schools get no, or very little money, and thus are allowed to charge vast amounts (~45k a year for the nearest one! Mind you, they've got stables and almost everyone rides horses, and they have 100% pass rates because if you're not you're tutored extensively, and if you still fail you're politely asked to piss off and not bring down their averages).

[EndOfTheEarth]

You pick up a few of these words in the US by reading the right books...mostly books dating before the 1900s, but yes, unless you watch enough things on BBC, much of that means something completely different to most Americans.

Admittedly, I have a general understanding of all of those listed except for 'ute'. Never seen that used in context before.

[Omega]

Ah, the Beeb. Foreign new outlets are often very interesting to read/listen to/watch, because the biases are different. I went through a phase of reading russian newspapers because their foreign news was way better than anything over here.

'Ute' is short for 'utility vehicle', and you'd call it a pickup truck.

[EndOfTheEarth]

XD That's for sure. To get my full round of biases, I tend to stick to CNN, Reuters, and the English version of Pravda.

[o0_flying high_0o]

I know there are some language differences, but it honestly wouldn't occur to me that we'd have problems with any of those phrases. 'Cept cuzzy, only because we don't use that one. And I do know 'bro' is more NZ. But 'heaps' 'ute' 'gutted' and 'peckish' I would have thought would be fairly global... Specially those last two. 

What is the US alternative for trolley/ gutted/ peckish, btw? 

[Omega]

You'd be surprised...

Shopping cart is trolley, don't know about the others. Ute is 'pickup truck' in the states and something weird in the UK.

[Nighthawk]

Unless you're in the South; it's apparently called a "buggy" here. I call it a shopping cart anyway.

Rednecks and Southerners have weird words for everything.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Peckish, in the context I'm familiar with, means "Hungry, but not hungry enough for a full meal. More of a light snacking mood."

[Omega]

Yep, that's peckish. It's a good word for the feeling you have when you kinda wanna eat something but not enough that you want to get off your ass to get it.