2y ago

Does the rest of the English speaking world generally understand what an American means when they say "soccer", or does it help to clarify by adding "football"?

If I'm talking to an English speaker from outside of the US, is there any confusion if I say "soccer"?

For example, when I was in college a friend asked for a "torch". I was confused for quite some time, because I didn't know it was another word for "flashlight". Does the same thing happen with the word "soccer"? Should I clarify by saying, "...or football"?

Thank you!

124 comments

Not a native English speaker, but my hunch is, soccer will almost certainly be understood. Also it will identify you as American.
- And Canada 👋
  
  And Australia, at least when they're not trying to suck up to the British.
  
  Which is America.
- If you really want to throw them off, call it the proper name rather than the nick name. Association football. Most adult non-american english speakers are at least tangentially aware that the name soccer derived from that. But it certainly won't make you sound American.
- Thank you!
- But if an American says football, that can create a bit of confusion.
English people understand the limitations Americans have to live under when it comes to language
Edit: jesus you make little high brow joke and all the idiots gets butthurt.
- We had to call it soccer. We already had a sport called competitive diving.
  
  When I get asked if I watch soccer as a hockey fan I have the same feelings. The Women's version of soccer is much tougher and I would rather watch that. They take a beating and get bloodied but keep playing unlike the men falling over including the coaches from being brushed by a piece of paper.
  This video does a good job capturing the differences between coaches: https://youtu.be/9HxzLEqI-qE?si=VPWHKI081v80eA3k
  This one does a great job highlighting the competition diving angle. I think ~~artist~~ *artistic diving might be more applicable though: https://youtu.be/_OXdfJgCmLc?si=7n-tIrOIsxznm49W
  
  Isn't American football just rugby with padding /jk
- You do realize the word Soccer for the actual game originated in England right?
  It just so happened that “Rugby football” got shortened to Rugby and this “Associa toon (Socker) football” got shortened to Football.
  Since since an American sport came around the same time called “Football” they kept the name “Soccer” for Association Football.
  Just letting you know a little back story.
  A small article about it can be found here. https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer And there are plenty more info out there about it.
  
  I’m going to call them soccer football and American football from now on
  
  It would require more research than I'm willing to do, but the only part of that article that set off my sports-history-nerd Spidey Sense was this:
  In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word.
  I don't know that anyone actually involved in playing or codifying the game ever used "gridiron football" in anything like the same official way that Association football or Rugby football were used. It feels much more like outside observers trying to impose logical categories from afar, British exceptionalism at its finest. AFAIK, gridiron was always used as a nickname for the field, and the sport itself was only ever widely referred to as "football," American exceptionalism at its finest.
- Do English people know that they originated “soccer” as Oxford slang for “association football?” Nothing hits like the English ignorantly shitting on their colonies for adopting the stupid English practices forced upon them by the English at the time.
  
  English shitting on our colonies is our favourite past time. You should come along sometime.
- "English (simplified)"
- One reason it's dangerous for me to drink in the UK is that everyone from the UK sounds like a small child to an American.
  So yeah, big language differences. Some soccer hooligan would get all mad at the telly about his footy and I'd end up being stabbed for laughing.
  
  …and you wouldn’t have your gun to drunkenly shoot a bystander while ‘defending yourself.’
  It’s tough to be an American abroad.
No, we understand. In fact, if anything it's easier if you say soccer! If someone with an American accent says 'football' I normally assume they mean gridiron, so sayings soccer is actually a little clearer.
Of course, in different parts of the world, 'football' might mean rugby (either union or league), Gaelic football or Aussie rules football. So, the potential for confusion is pretty wide!
- This. 'Soccer' is well understood and unambiguous, though it might prompt certain assumptions depending on your audience. There are times and places you might prefer to say 'football' to mean 'Association football,' but if you just need to communicate simple factual information in two syllables, it's probably the best word for that.
  
  There are times and places you might prefer to say ‘football’
  Even countries or continents.
- Interesting, thank you!
- Well it's not actually that bad of a deal to call football "soccer". But what really grind gears is to associate football exclusively to "American football" which is what (American) internet do. Rage over "soccer" is just part of the backlash.
It's ok, we know you guys are weird.
- The word Soccer is actually British - it's short for Association as in Association Football, although it's slang from Oxford University of all places, and is late Victorian.
  Irony is a surprising number of "Americanisms" turn out to be old British terms that died out in Britain but reached and continued in the US.
In Australia we have Soccer, Aussie rules football (AFL), Rugby Union (Union) and Rugby league (Usually referred to as "League" or "NRL") all of them also known as "Football"
I have a pretty deep burning hatred for people who insist on correcting people when they say Soccer. It honestly just makes you look like a twat "yOu mEaN wHaT tHe rEsT oF thE WoRld CalLs foOTbALl!?!" Like you fucking understood well enough to know this was your moment to open your cockholster and needlessly add that little tidbit like anyone else was confused.
- Heh "cockholster". I'm going to work that into as many Christmas conversations as I can.
- senseless pedantry in general is one of the things that annoy me most. i first started realizing my hatred for reddit when someone replied to a comment where i said 'bury the lead' with 'lede*' and i was annoyed enough to not comment for a long time after that. im not a 19th century newspaper columnist so unless youre trying to save the barely literate farmers on computer science subreddits from a minor misunderstanding, thats a comment better left unmade.
Most won't be confused at all. They might be surprised but pretty simple logic would result in a fast realisation of what you actually mean. I am surprised though, that you, as an English speaking person couldn't figure out that a torch might refer to a flash light.
- Torch has another common meaning though. Does soccer?
  
  I'm not comparing them as it is not relevant.
  I'm simply stating that it should be pretty straight forward to figure out that they don't mean the other kind of torch and if not, it should at least be deducible
- Because we have actual torches too. You guys don't have actual soccers to get confused by. Given the right context we can figure out when you mean flashlight, but said torch.
  
  I understand this, but still one should be able to figure out that a person wouldn't ask you for a flaming torch, in a dark place, especially when there isn't one around, but there instead is a flashlight near by that they originally meant.
- Haha it's true! When my Malaysian friend asked me for a torch, I was running around for five minutes looking for a lighter, like this one.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aKrxd1q3Mw&t=8
  It's all I could picture, no one ever asked me for a TORCH before. Like in Indiana Jones?? 😅
  Until I stopped and asked, "Wait, what do you need it for?"
  "To look at my car, something is wrong with the engine."
  ...and that's when I realized. We had a good laugh.
From now on I’m calling it Foot Football. That other game is Hand Football.
- Football and handegg.
  
  Footsphere and Handprolatesphereoid.
- Jokes aside, for those who don't know, the real nomenclature is association football (origin of the word soccer) and gridiron football, respectively. Many more types and subtypes of football too!
I'm an American who lived in England for a couple of years. Due to American media the majority of everyone understood what I meant when I said things like soccer, trunk or hood of a car, fries, etc. Words with different meanings between the two could get confusing like biscuit, chips, or pissed.
Since soccer doesn't have another meaning I never ran into someone who didn't know what I was talking about. However, when saying football in an American accent some thought I was referring to American Football by default.
I can only remember one instant where someone did not know what I was talking about. That was when I asked someone at work where the dumpster was and I got a blank stare. I explained, the big metal thing outside for trash and they were like, "oh the skip"
While it will absolutely out you as a US American, we will understand - same as when you say "Candy" and similar common Americanisms
Edit: Also, while mostly used to refer to flashlights as you guys call them, torch can also refer to other non-lantern light-emitting instruments
- ... wtf else do you call candy?
  
  As others have said, sweets
  
  Wee Confectionary Yum Yums
  
  Confectionery...sweets
  
  Sweets?
  
  Lollies, or a lolly.
- I don't think all the people saying soccer in an Australian accent would appreciate being identified as an American.
  
  True - I had forgotten you guys call it footy and soccer. Though I suspect the Aussie accent would give you guys away before we got to the topic of footy
  
  We're just happy that you mostly leave us alone
- Thank you, I didn't know!
Everyone understands, most gringe.
As a non-native English speaker I fully understand what it means and will happily correct it to football for you :P
It is just football all over the world, in contrast to American "football".
- Australians also call it soccer.
  
  Not sure why you got a downvote on this - it's entirely accurate. We have our own local football code that we call, you know, football.
- It is "Fußball" in German which is what I speak natively. But I still usually say "soccer" when I speak English because that is unambiguous.
Ah yes no worries, we even heard about them Soccer moms here in Europe.
Australia and nz say soccer too
It's soccer here in Australia too. Like the US, we have our own local football code too.
I’ve been kind of wondering that as well. A few months ago, I was in a call with a colleague in UK and we were chatting about our kids’ playing the same sport . Then his kid wandered into the picture and asked what “soccer” was and we had to translate American English to UK English
It's only Americans that have this problem. Our TV and movies have been exported all over the world for decades.
I found Monty Python early in my life and it touched off a life long love of British TV and learned the lingo. ☺
- Shouldn't that be British telly?
  
  It absolutely should be. ☺
I've heard gridiron. Just not "gridiron football" together.
There's more problems that occur when you talk about American Football as just football solely because people will attempt to follow along before getting blindsided by something that doesn't make sense. At least when Americans talk about Soccer, everyone knows what's going on. Seems like there's often miscommunication that people are getting annoyed Americans refer to Football as soccer and not that your refer to American Football as football. Makes sense when you talk to people in your own country.
This isn't American Centric. Whenever I've talked to people about Gaelic Football, it's discussed as Gaelic football, not football.

124 comments