Posted by Zombie69 on 2009-11-29 18:56:42

Ah, you mean soccer? For a moment, i thought you were talking about the Grey Cup that's about to start in a few hours.

Posted by bobafettsmum on 2009-11-29 19:03:38

I'm guessing your american as to the rest of the world soccer is called football. What you're talking about is American football which has little to do with kicking the ball. So it would be better to call it handball or refer to it as Grid Iron ;)

Posted by Zombie69 on 2009-11-29 19:41:04

I'm not American and i'm not talking about American football. I'm talking about Canadian football.

There are many countries where football means something else (it can also mean rugby union, rugby league, aussie rules football), and for your information, no form of football was ever called that way because of kicking, but rather because they were played on foot (as opposed to on horseback), which is still the case for all forms of football today.

Posted by bobafettsmum on 2009-11-29 23:02:23

What the heck is canadian football? If you're from Canada you are American. North American. ;) For your imformation your horseback explanation is only a theory it has never been proved. And I'm sure that the majority of people refer to Rugby Football as Rugby but I do accept that in the US when someone talks about football they mean American football/grid iron or if in Australia they'll be refering to Aussie rules but to the vast majority on the planet football means soccer, as you call it.

Posted by Zombie69 on 2009-11-29 23:30:59

Americans come from the United States of America. Canadians come from Canada. Big difference. Way to insult Canadians! Canadians are North Americans, but they're not Americans.

Canadian football is a lot like American football but with different rules. The two were developped independantly and derive from rugby, another form of football. Today is the big final, the Grey Cup (the equivalent of the Super Bowl). So your timing, choosing to post this today, certainly made a few people click thinking this would be about Canadian football.

For sure, Association Football (or soccer for short) is one of the different flavors of football, but it's not the only one, and to think otherwise is just arrogant. The word football just refers to whatever kind of football is most prominent in any particular country/region. When posting a message that will be read across different countries, it helps to mention what kind of football you're talking about.

Posted by pythrr on 2009-11-30 08:21:56

"to the vast majority on the planet football means soccer"

---

Actually, I think you'll find that to the vast majority of the planet whatever
"football" is in Spanish, Chinese (Mand or Cant) or one of the subcontinent languages means soccer...

Posted by bobafettsmum on 2009-11-30 08:46:22

Hey Zombie. I thought you'd like my 'you're american' comment. ;) I have cousins in Canada and I love to wind them up with that comment. I hope you weren't really offended. You have enlightened me on Canadian football and I take your point that the word 'football' means a lot of different sports to people in different countries.

Pythrr. le football, Fußball, futebol, voetbal all sound pretty similar to me. And I suspect that in the global village certain words like 'football' are recognised even if a person doesn't speak english.