this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Americans are goofy af "criss cross applesauce" bitch that don't even rhyme
Am American, I know the phrase criss cross applesauce, but have never heard it used seriously. I've always said and heard, cross legged. Years ago it was called Indian style but I haven't heard that in years.
Yeah, was Indian style as a kid in the early '90s. Little kids need some mnemonic device to literally just not fly off the face of the earth, and so that was the replacement they came up with. Cross-legged just doesn't grab a kid's attention like mashed apples.
uk we say "cross legged" or "cross leggéd" if you're feeling Shakespearean
Fun fact: in Hungarian we say "Turkish sitting" (törökülés).
In German we call it "tailor's seat" (Schneidersitz).
Boring fact: it's also "sit like a Turk" or "sit the Turkish way" in Russian (сидеть по-турецки).
Now I'm curious what they say in Turkish.
UPD: me and @[email protected] are referring to the Lotus position which is what it is called in Turkish.
I'm always feeling Shakespearean
American accents seem to prefer the Shakespearean version: "Wicked", "Dogged" but not "Curved" for whatever reason. Maybe it has to do with the tendency for the word to be used as a verb. "Curved" is usually an adjective but sometimes a verb, while "Wicked" is nearly always an adjective.
I think it's often to distinguish between two words that would otherwise be homophones.
There's "wick'ed" (two syllables) as in "something wicked this way comes" and "wicked" (one syllable) as in "Grady wicked away the spilled avocaat from Jack Torrence's jacket with a towel".
There's "dogg'ed" (two syllables) as in "dogged perseverance", but also "dogged" (one syllable) as in "Javert dogged Valjean for many years".
I don't have one for "curved" though. I think i've only ever heard it as one syllable, except for maybe in cases where poetic meter requires use of an "èd". Although, I think "curv'ed'ly" has three syllables, but I might be making that up. Typing up this comment has given me semantic satiation.
But, yeah, I think you're right about the adjective vs verb thing. The two-syllable examples are adjectives, while the one-syllable examples are verbs. Except for curved...
Is this a quote? I don’t understand how it doesn’t rhyme.
It does in an American accent, I guess
In my accent (UK), "cross" rhymes with "boss", and "sauce" rhymes with "horse". Pretty sure boss and horse don't rhyme.
If I'm understanding correctly then the words "sauce" and "source" are indistinguishable when spoken by a brit?
Source will have emphasis on the r.
Its important because if youre at the dinner table and ask for sauce wrong, mum will pass you 273,000 lines of javascript.
That's borderline child abuse
and horse doesn't??
Pretty much yeah!
It’s the same in Aussie English
Wait, so the non-rhotic accent adds an "r" into words that don't have one? I guess all your "r"s at the ends of words need to go somewhere...
...which UK accent? Big place, loads of regional differences.
"Why Im I being fired, Bauss? Is it because I pronounce it 'Hoss?'"
Because sauce and horse are long and cross and boss are short, right?
I'm not a native speaker but our lord and savior Dr Lindsey made a great video about British English and what Americans get wrong about it.
For me as a second language learner, cross rhymes with boss but sauce neither rhymes with horse nor boss. But that's just me tho.
Great video! His stuff is brilliant. I'm a native speaker but every now and then one of his videos will pop up in my feed and I'll end up learning about how I talk lol. Highly recommended for anyone interested in fascinating deep dives into speech.
Whenever there are these kinds of threads there's always loads of people posting things like "sauce rhymes with boss not horse" or something.
This rhyming and text based approach is confusing because in different accents words might be pronounced differently than how the writer is pronouncing them and they may all rhyme or none of them may rhyme.
If you're not familiar with phonetic spelling (most people I know aren't) then audio clips with the differences are probably the way to go. Just typing random words isn't a great way of comparing accents.
I need an example pronunciation of how it doesn't rhyme because the only way I can hear it in my head rhymes. I've never heard of this name for the seating method though.
Cross rhymes with boss, toss, moss, loss, Ross.
Sauce rhymes with horse, coarse, force.
So for them to rhyme you would either have to say "crawse" or "Soss"
"Soss" is how we pronounce "sauce" and I don't know where you're finding the "r" sound.
the "au" makes a sound like 'oar' like in "pause"
Wait.. if "sauce" is "sorse", how is "source" pronounced?
Those are homophones. If I told you about the source of the Nile I could be talking about something Egyptians put on their chips.
In the US, it really doesn't.
The proper American phonetic for sauce is "saas". The proper american phonetic for cross is "craas".
I think you MIGHT be able to defend it for British English, which use phonetics "kros" and "haws" and "saws" for above words. But I would say "aws" and "os" phonetics are close enough to to count as rhyming by most standards, and classical poetry uses far less clear rhymes commonly.
I (Brit) didn't even recognise it as intended as a rhyme until I read this comment section
Sorry sauce rhymes with horse? Y'all say source?
Yeah, why do think people as for a "sauce" when someone posts a picture on the internet?
Oi! D'you 'ave a loicense for that criticism bruv?!
BEHOLD FOR I (a brit) HAVE RECORDED AUDIO!
this is why the phrase "criss cross applesauce" does not rhyme in British English. cross rhymes with boss, sauce rhymes with horse. Criss cross applesauce. (sorry for quality - I didn't realize my phone mic was such garbage)
I think that was the transitional terminology from when they used to tell kids to sit "indian style"
Rhymes in my dialect.