4 ms·
Yes, but when Americans (e.g. college students) talk about "roommates" they mean they share a bedroom! Literal roommates
by rmc 10y ago
Yes, but when Americans (e.g. college students) talk about "roommates" they mean they share a bedroom! Literal roommates
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jarboot 10y agoWe don't. I'm an midwestern american college student and "roommate" means "someone that shares your living space" whether that be sharing a room to sleep or just sharing kitchen/bathroom/living room space. The only alternative I've heard is "suitemate" in suite-style dorms.
- pitaj 10y agoOnly in dormitories. Roommates in an apartment don't normally share rooms.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- doubleunplussed 10y agoAs an Australian in the US, it seems that term is ambiguous. When a college student talks about their roommate, yeah that's the freaky situation of being an adult and not having your own bedroom. But on other contexts it just means what I would call a "housemate". You're not actually in the same room.
- Anderkent 10y agoNah, that's pretty exclusively a college dorm thing, where it has a pretty direct relation to the price of the dorm. (my uni had both twin and single rooms, and the twin was maybe 60% of the price)
- magic_beans 10y agoThat's not true. Roommate almost always means two people sharing one apartment with their own bedrooms. Dorm-mate, on the other hand, specifically means two college students sharing a dorm room with two beds.
- the_watcher 10y agoThis is not true. Sometimes it refers to this. The vast, vast majority of the time, they are referring to someone who has their own room in the same apartment. Source: I had "roommates" in the way you refer to it in college, and after graduating, most people who I describe this to are actually shocked that this happened after freshman year.