English/American

chibi_steph18 · Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:33 pm Post subject: English/American

Getting knocked up

There are those phrases that are the same but have totally different meanings resulting in severe misunderstandings. Take for instance the phrase "knock up". In the USA this means get a girl pregnant while in the UK it means knock on someone's door! Imagine someone from the UK in America at a conference. On meeting in a hotel lobby for breakfast, an American asks the Englishman if a fellow female delegate had come down for breakfast yet. It would be quite natural for the Englishman to reply: "No, but I did knock her up this morning!" HEHEHE!!!

Sexual misunderstandings

Another example is the slang word "fag". In the Commonwealth, a fag is slang for a cigarette, while in the USA the same word is slang for a gay man!

The word "rubber" means an eraser in the Commonwealth but refers to a condom in the USA... so an English student in an American college would quite naturally lean over to an American student and ask to borrow their rubber! HAH!

For Australians, they find it amusing when Americans say they are rooting for them - root in Australian means to have sex!

And when you get pissed...

Much the same applies to the word "pissed". In America this means angry while in the Commonwealth pissed means drunk. I recall the occasion when my boss at that time (who was from Britain) and I (then still from South Africa) were in the US on business and were taken out one evening by a junior associate from the local US office. Having way too much to drink, in the cab returning to our hotel, my boss repeatedly announced that he was "Soooo pissed". This elicited much alarm from our American associate who kept on asking, "Why, what's wrong"? To which my boss equally misunderstood and responded, "There's nothing wrong with being pissed." And the response to that, of course: "Oh, I agree there's nothing wrong with it, but why are you so pissed?" And so it went on, and on, until finally, having gotten over my fits of laughter, I explained to them that they had been talking cross purposes for the entire cab ride!

What of course makes this even more complicated is the English saying: "Taking the piss out of someone". This bears no resemblance at all to getting drunk, nor getting angry, nor even urinating!. This simply means making fun of someone!

Bad directions

Then there was the time another boss (a Texan this time) was coming to visit me in San Francisco, recently after I moved to the USA. On asking for directions from the airport I told him to take highway 80. Of course, I pronounced this the English way: Eigh-TEE, instead of the American way: Eigh-DEE (see my section on Pronunciation). Being American, he misunderstood my "eighty" to be "AT" and spent 2 hours totally lost looking for some non-existent road called Highway AT. Well, he was expecting 80 to sound like Eigh-DEE not Eigh-TEE, so who could blame him?

About food

Certain remote areas in the USA have never heard an English accent before, rendering British English into what seems to them like a foreign language. Can I ever forget the morning I was traveling through Mena, Arkansas, and stopped to order lunch from a convenience store. After repeating that I wanted a simple hamburger THREE times without success (bringing the words "blank look" a whole new meaning), my wife finally came to my rescue and "translated" my order into American English! How different really does the word "hamburger" sound between an American and an English accent? Apparently, a lot!

Ever wondered why Wendy's Hamburgers never took off in Britain? Well, who would want to order "Biggie Fries" when a biggie is what a child calls his poo! Another meaning for Biggie in Britain is of course an erection! - just gets better doesn't it?

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Sometimes I don't think birds are really talking to each other. They are just making fun of police sirens.
-Stephanie

knewlove · Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject:

PMSL Steph

Did ya know the Bic Mac in France is called 'Le Big Mac' and a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a 'Royale with Cheese' I don't know why they don't call it Royale avec fromage!

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Serenity · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:39 am Post subject:

lol @ those Steph. love this one.