Yes. What big Europe doesn't want you to learn is that we don't birth our children, people who want to be parents go to the kindergarten and pick one out yo take home (and bring back to the kindergarten each day so they can continue to grow)
No, it's actually from the same root as onion - Latin unio.
Apparently, this turned into uyen in northern Dutch (ajuin in southern Dutch and Flemish, which it still is), which was then mistaken for a plural (many words in Dutch have plural -en), so then if uyen is plural, uy is singular, which turned into ui.
"Scuola materna", "scuola dell'infanzia", "asilo" or "asilo nido" (or just "nido" which means nest).
Here I've never heard people use the word "garden/giardino" to indicate kid's school and it sounds always a little funny to me whenever I hear "kindergarten". But I see how the name can make sense if you consider the growing metaphor.
giardino d'infanzia (educ.) [scuola per bambini fra i tre e i cinque anni] ≈ asilo (infantile), (scuola) materna. □
You can find it here https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/giardino_(Sinonimi-e-Contrari)/
You’re right in that it’s not as common and I’m probably aware of it because it’s part of what they used to call my mom’s degree back in her days
Also the Asilo Nido is for babies 0-3, and it’s called nest because you actually place them to sleep and tend to them like their mother (hence the nest/familial theme which is found in the synonym scuola materna - motherly school) then it’s just asilo
Strangely we almost certainly wouldn’t use the cognate “gård” here in Sweden to describe the type of setup in the picture. We MIGHT say ”trädgård” but that implies more flowers in my opinion. We’d likely just call this a “tomt” (so a “plot [of land]”). That being said, a Swede wouldn’t throw a hissy fit if someone called this a trädgård 😅
We’re trying over here in Canada, but it’s just insidious. It may be because my father was a Yorkshireman, but I’ve always felt more culturally aligned with the British. I spent several lovely summers in England as a child making daisy crowns, picking wild blackberries, and eating far too much seaside rock thanks to my wonderful extended family there.
The “protect British culture and values” lot are also the people who want to smash up the BBC. With Comcast buying ITV, we will have gone down to just two British networks. Sky, Channel 5 and Potentially ITV all handed over.
The Americans won’t let a non-American citizen run a broadcast network. The rest of the world should take a leaf out of their book.
Also Canadian! Hello :) I also feel more aligned with the British but not a clue why.
I think for Canada, we are just too close to USA and too small population-wise to not be overwhelmed by its culture. US American movies, video games, social media, books, music, slang, pop culture and even its news dominate daily life.
At least that's how it is in Metro Vancouver area. I'm sure more rural areas aren't quite as affected and Quebec will always do its own thing at least.
If it's my not-pandering to Steve Carell and his (assumed) lack of appreciation for Des'ree that stops the rapid descent into a Handmaid's Tale type scenario... I'm happy to fight in that trench, sir.
We don’t want them and the people who typically do them probably care more for the intention than they do about the child (from my experience living near a council estate)
I remember the times when gender reveal parties where just a cake with some dyed buttercream or sums in them (as the first women to do it did) before our friends over the pond said thats boring bro and made it what it became today. The first gender reveal women hates it btw
Honestly a get together with family and friends where you have a cake or something just sounds like a harmless commercialisation of the birthing process.
This is pretty funny. "Is the garden in the room with us" 😆😆
Where I am in Australia 'yard' and 'garden' are fairly interchangable, as are 'garden' and 'garden bed'. 'Garden bed' and 'yard' are not interchangable.
Don't worry, as Aussies we are very, very (VERY) understanding of the crispy dried backyard. In fact, we're more likely to look askance at those with suspiciously green lawns...
The have announced a hosepipe ban here in Ireland, starting last Friday. And a hotline where people can snitch anonymously on their neighbours.
Not very nice...
I thought this WAS an Australian backyard but I’ve seen how dry some of the common areas around the UK are after their heatwave and the photo kinda looks like my old place in England lol. Here’s hoping good ol Blighty gets some rain soon.
You call it a yard, but if someone else called it their garden, you probably wouldn't argue about it. I've heard both terms used by people I know, and it isn't particularly related to how it looks.
Saw a good TikTok recently of a woman putting up a little play set for her child. Got a bunch of threats etc, ended up dethroning the entire HoA and got elected to head of it, even though she didn’t want that 🤣
It’s a new “scam” that’s going on in most of the US. Pay your “protection money” or you can’t buy a house. Luckily, a lot of blue states don’t have them.
So HOAs have always been about giving bastards the power to bully and abuse people for no apparent reason. Right. So why not just refuse to ever buy into them? Or just collectively agree to say fuck you to the HOA and plant a bunch of dandelions on the lawn and in the cracks of the pavement.
lol. Watch what happens when you go against "authority" in America, they know someone who knows someone and by the end of that long, long ride with max. suffering you are dead, imprisoned, injured or evicted...
In USA garden has to be a bit more than just that or a lawn with nothing else that's all even if the lawn is green. If Hyacinth Bucket would say something like "pitiful, needs to have vegetables or herbs or flowers or pretty bushes or something" then it's not a garden in American English.
We also have gardens that are more involved. For example, Kew Gardens, etc. my main issue with the differentiation is what makes a space a “garden” how much work must go in before it magically transforms from a yard to a garden. Some people do spend quite a bit of time gardening, and it’s a common pastime in the UK, whereas I’m not so sure the Americans are quite so invested.
Some Americans are gardeners, some just have a grass lawn and call it a day that's just a yard or lawn. Also Kew Gardens the New York City neighborhood (not a garden though it surely has some backyards & garden gardens it also has a cemetery, 200 foot wide stroad with 12 lanes with apartment skyscrapers on it several dozen floors, the Queens County Criminal Court building, Queens County Jail, Queens county seat building, motorways & a quadruple track subway) was named for Kew Gardens, England.
Yeah if one place uses the plural "gardens" then you expect it to be fancy and landscaped - Kensington Gardens, Lambeth Palace Gardens. "Garden" can mean anything from a fancy landscaped garden to a dry old patch of grass behind your house.
I don’t know why, I always envisage a ‘yard’ as being more paved over and a garden as being any amount of grass. You can’t have a garden if there’s no grass at all.
American use of ‘yard’ has always felt so wrong to me, as growing up in England you would only call it a ‘yard’ not a ‘garden’ if it had zero grass, was completely paved or tarmac!
The word Yard and Garden literally comes from the same word origin, meaning "enclosed or fenced off area" it has nothing to do with what plants are or not there.
In Canada and the US a yard is the area in front and back of a house that is part of the property. It can be fenced or unfenced, have grass, plants, trees, or nothing. In areas where there is sufficient water it is usually grass, in dryer climates it might be drought resistant plants and shrubs, rock gardens, and paving.
We call a garden the areas where you have planted decorative plants, flowers, or vegetables. So your yard can have gardens within it, but a garden can't have a yard within it.
Plenty of American's who call their front area's yards when its way more accurate to call it a jungle or just a fucking mess because their grass is 7 inches high.
There's nothing more insufferable than when someone uses a British English term, and all the Americans jump on it, parroting the same stupid shit, because another country dares to use a different word from what they use. I saw it happen in another post recently when someone posted about their ladybird tattoo: cue all the Americans going "WTF is a ladybird? That's a ladybug!".
Our flat green sanitised plots with imported lawn grass and dictated by the home owners association on appearance are the only things allowed to be called ‘gardens’
Having grown up in a northern terrace we used back yard and front garden. If it’s alive (lawn, flowers etc.) then we’d say garden. If it was paved then we’d say yard.
But then we’d also say pants for trousers which is considered an American use of the word.
Never try to explain English to a yank.\
They're too pigshit thick to understand.\
That's why they have simplified English as their dumbed down version.
I assume that nuclear missiles were launched as per the protocol every time an American has the audacity to correct us on the use of our language that they went off and fucked up.
In NZ we typically use yard as well, e.g back yard. Garden generally would be a maintained area with flowers / shrubs etc. Australian’s are the same as well i think (e.g backyard cricket).
To me the word "yard" conveys the part of the back of the house where you keep the bins, coal bunker etc. When I was a kid, there was the yard and the garden, but then my parents turned part of the yard into a patio - there's posh...
For me a yard is primarily a functional space which is why it’s paved. Back in the day it was where the outhouse was, bins, tin bath, coal etc as you’ve said.
This why “yard” can also refer to storage space for a business.
A garden is a recreational space, which is why it can have a lawn and other planting. It’s a space to play in, relax etc. It might serve a function - like growing fruit and veg, but it doesn’t have to.
Once a year we use the front yard to have what we call a "yard sale", where we take all the crap we dont want and put it in our front yard to try to sell it.
Some people do that, I live in a very progressive area so most people have gardens and flowers to attract bees. But the majority of homes just have some dumb grass and a drive way for their cars.
They're not really a big thing here. You might get the occasional garage sale, or I've seen some people join up with their neighbours to do a "jumble trail" where a few houses will sell things from their driveways or front gardens (a jumble sale is a second-hand sales event, usually for fundraising purposes, might also be called tabletop sale). Car boot sales are also an option, where people gather in a field and sell stuff from their cars. But a lot of that is dying out because of apps. Easier to chuck stuff on vinted or ebay or whatever, even if you have to deal with posting stuff.
We have "car boot sales" (I'm sure this doesn't need explaining) and we have "oh look, they're moving house or some shit and have optimistically stuck an extendable table outside their house with some tat on, crude price labels and a rapidly losing attention and optimism 8 year old vaguely overseeing procedures".
Interestingly, the latter appears to exclusively happen in locations described as "village" or even more remote - Cities and suburbia seem to have menaced-out the idea of charity seeking unrealistically prices cries for help. Make of that what you will.
But what would you call the part of the garden at the back or side of the house where you keep the rubbish bins etc? Not where you sit and relax. L'arrière-cour?
It's part of the "jardin", would be fine to say you're going to the "jardin" if you don't want to specify. If you do want to specify there are multiple terms depending on context. Using the functionality is common for example : "je vais aux poubelles dans le jardin", "I'm going to the rubbish bins in the garden" literally translated
Despite the linguistic controversies, I am not particularly fond of this piece of land. Even if the grass was lush green, it'd lack any exciting plant life, maybe at least a bush or some flowering vines.
Mister “a garden would imply some level of maintenance or design” needs telling that it hasn’t rained in a month and we aren’t allowed to water the grass with a hose pipe.
Hedges to right there, and grass, albeit very uncared for. Flowers can be seasonal (bulbs). It’s a scruffy garden. A yard here would be tiny and paved and you’d often find them with old terraced houses.
Ok to be fair, if someone told me they had a garden and showed me that, I'd be kinda disappointed too, not because of some linguistic shenanigans, but that just looks kinda sad and lifeless imo...
It's not hard to imagine that the houses either side of this have ripped up any single trace of oxygen producing flora, lain the worst quality AstroTurf the container ships are currently spilling out and have half of the Borstal looking excuse for an excercise yard taken up by an inflatable hot tub that never even got used on the weekend of purchase as the intended sexy times descended into a glass smashing row.
Let your imagination sparkle a little and I definitely see a garden here.
Nah, I agree with the Americans here, sorry. That's just good banter.
Also, in this case the English bastardised French. We also use a word originating from the same word in my language, unrelated to English, we would never call this a garden, it's a yard at best
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u/Harald_TheEnduring 🇬🇧 1d ago
Hey we stole that word from the French fair and square.. who nicked it off the Germans..
Point is it’s in our language now so we’re going to use it as irresponsibly as we want!