It’s not an American thing. It’s a posh southern England thing that got exported to the states by American students at Oxford returning stateside and bringing the game back with them.
It’s not just to distinguish it from rugby football. There are dozens of different types of games of football. Association football is just the one that got particularly popular across the world.
I watched several documentaries over the years that said it is because at the time Football Clubs were referred to as Social Clubs and the team was just part of the Social Club. The clubs were referred to as “Socs” pronounced like the footwear Socks, and the Teams would play what was referred to a s “Soccer” as in Sock-er. Then this got exported to various people in North America, mostly from the South and West of England. Then it fell out of usage in England but no one told us over here in North America so we kept using the term.
Soccer is a British word though, but predominantly southerner / Oxfordian.
Association Football used to get contracted to Assoc or Soc to differentiate it from Rugby Football.
And in Oxford, they historically liked to add -er to the end of things; still in parlance today is calling Rugby “rugger”, £5 note “fiver”, the Bodleian Library “Bodder”.
Assoc became “soccer”.
It’s not an American thing. It’s a posh southern England thing that got exported to the states by American students at Oxford returning stateside and bringing the game back with them.
It’s not just to distinguish it from rugby football. There are dozens of different types of games of football. Association football is just the one that got particularly popular across the world.
So it should be pronounced like so-ser?
In Scotland, yes.
I watched several documentaries over the years that said it is because at the time Football Clubs were referred to as Social Clubs and the team was just part of the Social Club. The clubs were referred to as “Socs” pronounced like the footwear Socks, and the Teams would play what was referred to a s “Soccer” as in Sock-er. Then this got exported to various people in North America, mostly from the South and West of England. Then it fell out of usage in England but no one told us over here in North America so we kept using the term.
So is it “sock-urh” or “soe’sh-ur”? The latter being like “social” but with an -er ending. Because that’s how ‘association’ is pronounced.
Where is “association” pronounced like that, if I may ask? I could only find the pronunciation I’m familiar with, which is this: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/association
To maybe be more clear: you are implying that the c in “soc” is pronounced like a “sh” when it’s the t in “tion”.
(Edit: missed some letters.)
Yeah, that’s how I pronounce ‘association’ as well.
I see now that I said it wrong. The ‘c’ in ‘association’ is pronounced like an ‘s’, so is it ‘so-ser’? Like saying “so-so” but with an -er at the end?
So, if I may ask, how do you pronounce soccer?
I pronounce it the same as other people here: “sock-urh”. I was just confused about the “association” thing, so thanks for clearing that up!
Counterintuitively it’s “sock-urh”.
Yet there is not a single British person who calls it soccer.
This isn’t a strong argument; Brits mangle the language every time they open their mouths.
It’s not just Brits, literally the whole world calls it football except for one country which thinks it is right and everyone else is wrong.
So, what you’re saying is the majority of first-language English speakers call it soccer?
Also, show some fucking respect to Canada.
If that makes you feel better then sure, let’s forget the billions of other people in the world who also call it football.