A small linguistic cry of confusion - help, USA-based friends!

[heliophile_oxon]

Well I thought I knew ... that when people in the USA say "yard work" they mean what we Brits call "gardening"

But what is the difference in the USA between yard work and gardening?

I have to translate, would you believe a sentence from USAnian to Brit-speak, that refers to doing "yard work or gardening" and one that refers to "digging in the garden

Comments

[draycevixen]

I'm not a native but...

Yes, yard means garden.

However, "yard work" usually means things like raking and mowing and "gardening" usually means activities involving the actual plants like planting bulbs, etc. This isn't true all the time though and to a lot of Americans "yard work" would include gardening.

[heliophile_oxon]

Thank you, this is extremely helpful! And I see that you and merentha13 coincide pretty much exactly on your definition and distinctions, too.

How very tricky that the concepts don't cover exactly the same ground (as it were) - ain't language wonderful :-))))

Nothing like consulting the experts! (I thought of you, actually, as someone who would know both languages! *g*)

[draycevixen]

As you are converting this into "Brit speak" though I think it makes it much simpler in a way because Americans might consider them different things but we don't so... "gardening" and "digging in the garden" is all you really need.

[heliophile_oxon]

"gardening" and "digging in the garden" is probably pretty much what I'll go with ... but do you think it might be worth trying to do something with "grounds"?

[merentha13]

Usually "yard" refers to the lawn around your house and a garden is where one plants flowers or vegetables. So you would dig in your garden. Yard work would be cutting your grass, removing weeds, trimming bushes, trees etc.

Does that help?

[draycevixen]

We must have been typing at the same time. :D

[merentha13]

I was going to type that - but you beat me again!!

Great minds...

[heliophile_oxon]

Thank you very much, getting coinciding info from you and drayce is ideal! Definitions and distinctions match what I've heard elsewhere too, which is a great help.

Like I said to Drayce, it's a pain for me that the concepts don't cover exactly the same ground (ha) - but language wouldn't be half as much fun if it were always perfectly straightforward I suppose :-)))

Nothing like consulting the experts! Thank you!

[gilda_elise]

For me, the yard is the grass, so yard work is mowing, raking, and trimming the bushes that surround the yard. The garden would be a specific area where flowers or vegetables have been planted.

[heliophile_oxon]

Brilliant, thank you! I'm just in the middle of this thing at the moment *g*

Would you say that USA "yard" = UK "lawn", then? I get the impression that they wouldn't be quite the same, if yard work includes things like trimming trees?

Perhaps I should explain that this is in the context of physical exertion; I am getting the idea that generally speaking "yard work" would be more physically taxing than "gardening" in the USA use of the terms - does that seem right to you?

(how brilliant is it to be able to just ask something like this across the ocean? *vbg*)

[gilda_elise]

Usually when someone is talking about doing yard work, it's the heavier work; mowing, weeding, trimming, that sort of thing. Most Americans probably have only grass, so would have just a yard. And I do think that our yard is your lawn, but I'm not 100% sure. But if someone is saying that they'll be working in their garden, they're talking about either a flower garden or a vegetable patch.

It's sort of funny, while I plant flowers in the spring, they're either in pots or in a tree well, so I don't think of myself having a garden.

[heliophile_oxon]

Thank you so much! This is so useful; I never realised any of this before, but just assumed that your yard is our garden, nice and simple *g*
It totally never occurred to me that your yard might be more like our lawn ... or that your garden might be our flowerbeds and vegetable plot ... when you get into detail, there are a lot of differences that can potentially be quite misleading! (I'm doing this for a questionnaire on physical activity, which has got to make exactly the same sense to UK readers as the US version does to US readers, so all this weird nit-picking is really really helpful!)
I dunno, you come for the fandom and you stay for the brilliant helpfulnesses *g*
Thank you!!!!!

[catalenamara]

Interesting question. I grew up in a desert area. We had a front yard and a back yard, though not much of anything actually grew there except some sticker plants and some shrubs my father grew as a windbreak when he set up an irrigation system. The only time I heard the word "garden" used was when someone tried to grow a vegetable patch, such as when my neighbor managed to successfully raise tomatoes, lord knows how he managed it. When I moved to California, the term "garden" was used for both vegetables patches and flower beds, and I've learned since then that seems to be the common usage, with yard mostly referring to grass and trees.

[heliophile_oxon]

Thank you very much for giving me your thoughts (and sorry I took a while to get back to you!)

It's been quite an eye-opener for me, finding out just how much the concepts don't map onto each other between USA and UK usage - for instance, I've been speaking to one person born and brought up in the USA (though I don't know where) and now living and gardening in the UK, who reckons there could be gendered connotations - and possibly connotations of high- or low-skilled work - between USA-yard work and USA-gardening that just don't translate easily to UK usage (>.<)

I know the old divided-by-a-common-language thing, but this is proving quite curious :-)

Anyway, juuuust in case you have a minute still - would you say there's any notion that either of yard work or gardening is definitely more or less physically taxing than the other?

Many thanks for your help!

[catalenamara]

Yes, the person you were speaking with is correct. My understanding of yard work is it was a descriptor of a primarily male activity as it is more physically taxing than gardening. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, the gender division of work involved what was done in the house was women's work EXCEPT for any kind of repair to equipment and carpentry. What was done outside was men's work, except for the purely ornamental work of gardening (i.e. flowers). This is the message I got from media, with its focus on white middle class suburban life. However, I was raised in a rural desert area, and gardening often referred to vegetable patches, which was not a gendered activity. (Additionally, grass was non-existent except with a considerable expenditure of and wasteful use of water, so lawns were the exception, not the rule. Many front yards consisted of no-maintenance native plants, cacti, etc). All we did to keep the shrub windbreak alive (it consisted of three bushes and a spindly pomegranate tree set in depressions with

[heliophile_oxon]

Aha, thank you for that - I feel pretty confident now that the intention of the questionnaire is to make sure that everybody who does do any kind of outdoor work - of whatever type - is going to tick yes, and avoid any possibility of people mistakenly under-reporting their physical exertion because they feel the question doesn't mean them ("I can't tick this one, because I don't do gardening I only do yard work" sort of thing, or vice versa "I only do gardening, somebody else does the yard work"). It's been extremely helpful being able to get these responses from a range of people - thank you so much!

Eh, I'm pretty bloody shocked too to learn there is no mandatory paid holiday time in the USA. And no mandatory pregnancy leave - afaik the only first-world country in the world not to have any! All of which is particularly close to home right now, with our shoot-ourselves-in-the-head brexit disaster going on, that I see a lot of our tory party apparently hell-bent on copying only what's bad from the USA (like gutting the NHS even more

[fiorenza_a]

This was very educational - from a Brit perspective - 'yard' to me (in this context) has always carried the meaning of 'paved over' - although the 'paving' is more likely to be cobbles or asphalt/tarmac.

I'm only sorry this isn't fic related...

[heliophile_oxon]

Oh yes, I'm so disappointed it's not fic-related! *g* And yes, yard to me is definitely paved - or at least, it's more paved/bricked/concreted than earth, even though there could be tubs or bordery bits round the edges. Which is why I can't use "yard" in the UK version, it would be quite misleading!

Anyway it's always fun trying to make a patchwork of concepts (though more fun if it's in fic, of course!) *bg*