Americans don't use the word 'mate' for friends and ordinary people

[Greipel]

Discuss.

[The Thorn]

It's there right not to

[Greipel]

In ordinary speech in the US, “mate” means “the breeding partner of a specific animal”, or the verb for such activity.

“Look at the lion: he’s watching his mate drink water.”

If you’re at a bar with an Australian coworker and he refers to someone else as “my mate”, it causes a moment of incongruity or even bafflement while the American either matches up the syntax to what was meant, or explicitly asks what’s going on. Humans don’t have animal mates, and we don’t refer to our partners or spouses as mates, either, except for some nerds.

I’ve sometimes heard it said sarcastically or satirically in a (really horrible) accent attempting to imitate someone’s idea of Australians or Brits, but even that isn’t common.

If you asked most Americans to describe how an Australian talks they couldn’t do it. Speakers of AuE are just not shown in media very often. Aside from Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin (who was not necessarily known to be Australian by many of his viewers — “foreign”, yes, but not necessarily localized to Aussie), there have been very few public figures or popular characters who speak AuE.

Randomly from Quora.

[The Thorn]

Good post, mate

[Greipel]

Strange differences between British and American English imo.

[The Thorn]

There are some strange things in this world, mate.

[Jimmi]

There are some strange things in this world, mate.

Like Americans.

[The Thorn]

There are some strange things in this world, mate.

Like Americans.

Well said. Mate.

[Randall]

My best friend is in texas
We often discuss the variance in our language

[vizIIsto]

This is because America is hostile as shit and everyone is out of the ordinary.

[Jimmi]

There are some strange things in this world, mate.

Like Americans.

Well said. Mate.

Except skweeze

[The Thorn]

There are some strange things in this world, mate.

Like Americans.

Well said. Mate.

Except skweeze

We all love Skweezy but he is far from ordinary! Which is why we love him