7 phrases in English that piss everyone off

1. London is the capital of Great Britain

The innocent start of the London topic has become a symbol of school English. No wonder: after seven years of studying the language, many have only this phrase in their memory. It can be considered a synonym for the level "I studied for a long time, but I don't remember anything."

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2. Moscow never sleeps

Tell this to Vykhino and Tekstilshchiki. Or someone who is trying to catch the subway, which closes at one in the morning. Not only is this statement not true, but it is also plagiarism. City That Never Sleeps is the nickname for New York, immortalized by Frank Sinatra in the song New York, New York. In 1979, when the nightclub closest to Moscow was in Helsinki, the artist sang: I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps (“I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps”). Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Las Vegas, Chicago and many others tried to share this title with the Big Apple. Moscow began to be called that 10-12 years ago, so it is at the end of the line for the title.

3. Ouch

"Ouch, I hurt my knee!" It must not have been that much bruised if I could remember the extremely Americanized "ouch" instead of the native "oh" or something stronger. By the way, this very ouch is not so American - some linguists believe that the exclamation autsch got to the States together with German immigrants. While the British from time immemorial spoke ow and ay.

4. Dance like nobody’s watching

One of the permanent leaders of the status hit parade. The authorship is attributed to Mark Twain - which, of course, is nonsense. We somehow hardly imagine the venerable writer making a knee as if no one was looking. This call is actually from the country song Come from the Heart, which was written by Suzanne Clarke in 1987 and performed by Katie Mattea two years later. And if none of these names tell you anything, we're not surprised.

5. Keep calm and carry on

We got tired of seeing a poster with a crown and numerous variations of this motto 10 years ago, when every mug, T-shirt and cushion advised us to keep calm. And it is all the more surprising that even with such popularity, almost no one knows that this poster was not created by a hipster-designer, but by the British Ministry of Information in 1939. He was called upon to maintain the morale of the British on the eve of the war. The poster was part of a series: besides it, copywriters of the ministry came up with two more motivational statements: Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might and Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory.

6. Let me speak from my heart

Alas, even the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation, who on duty often had to communicate with foreigners, spoke English like a caricatured Russian villain from a Hollywood movie: stammering and with an accent thick as millet porridge. It seems that he was just reading from a piece of paper an English text written in Cyrillic. 10 years have passed since Vitaly Mutko's speech in Zurich, and “Let me talk from may hart” politics is still remembered today. Although many fans of this meme have no better pronunciation than the former Minister of Sports.

7. Who is on duty today?

A phrase that many have heard three hundred times at school and never after the last call. But then we learned that duty is not only the need to wipe the board and water the stunted school ficuses. It is also a "duty", "function", "task" and even a "church service".

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