Us Versus Them: Installment 1
I am fairly convinced that they don't speak English in the UK. Or we don't in the US. Either way, I think the two languages deserve separate names. At the risk of sounding like our deranged president, I suppose I have discovered I speak American.
Half the time in London I have no idea what is being said to me. I find that the people who are not originally from this country, those whose second (or third or fourth) language is English, those people I understand just fine. I have even looked to them to translate a British person's words for me a couple times. Just yesterday, a woman approached me on the street and spoke to me for a full 15 seconds. The only words I caught were, "twin somewhere," from which (and from her body language) I deduced that she had mistaken me for someone she knew. Granted, I don't think the drugs she was cracked out on were helping at all, but whatever that accent was, it was mostly geographical instead of chemical in origin. At least my smiling and nodding seemed to fit her expectations pretty well, or she would have discovered that not only was I not the drug connection I assume she was looking for, but I also couldn't actually tell at all what she was saying.
I spent the first couple months in my neighborhood forgetting to call them parcels when I picked my packages up from the collection point. Every time I said "package," the attendant would clarify what I meant in a way that made me feel like I had said something dirty. (I suspect I actually had, as it seems they may only use the word "package" in the vulgar sense in England. But, lady, did you really need to make sure I wasn't in the grocery store looking for man parts? I can think of better places to seek that out, and better times of day than 11am when I'm still wearing what I slept in.) Finally, I started saying, "I've got a pickup." Vagueness seems to bridge the vocab gap.
So it turns out I speak French better than I speak England-y English. I've lived in Paris and Italy and traveled a good deal through Spain, all of whose mother tongues I can speak without embarrassing myself extensively. And to be honest, I feel a good deal less like a foreigner in those countries, like I fit in better. Maybe because I didn't expect it here? I do find it less disconcerting to fiddle about with a foreign language than my own. But the only other place I regularly visit where I feel as muzzled as I do in England is Poland, where I'm still at the stage that I worry I'll actually say "pig" instead of "please." (The words are similar.) That's just weird.
Alright, England. I've been keeping score, compiling below a list of vocabulary that one might need to know before one crosses the pond. (And that's to say nothing of the completely baffling syntax and altered grammar the UK has going on. You're on your own there, but I've noticed that it's very similar—ironically, given the English people's professed disdain for France—to the French language. If you translate French literally and directly to English, you can often find some explanation for why the hell that English "bloke" just put his sentence in that particular blender before it dribbled out.)
Piss. They have a fondness for this word. Abrasive? Yes. But often so are they, especially given the amount of time they spend in pubs. Not one to let the opportunity slip by to use it profusely, an British lad has several variations to employ.
pissing it down = raining hard
take the piss = tease someone
pissed = drunk (ha)
Bit. They almost exclusively use this word instead of part. "Fill out this bit and sign the bottom bit." I kinda knew this from Hugh Grant movies. Used to think it was charming. Bah.
Trolley. This is the word for cart. "Go get your shopping trolley up front." Makes me guess there are probably very few British people sightseeing on historical trolley tours throughout America.
Till. They don't say cash register here. I spent 15 minutes my first week in London in a department store trying to pay the idiots because no one knew where the register was and didn't think to tell me they didn't know what on earth I was asking for. I started to suspect something was off when I ended up in the bridal department. (That's what got me into this whole mess of living here in the first place, you lunatics.)
When they say "this weekend" they are referring to last weekend. I'm sure that has caused no confusion ever.
Buggy, not stroller. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
A nappy is a diaper (not that thing my dad does whenever he is in the vicinity of a chair).
Which you can put in the bin when you're through because they don't have trash cans for their "rubbish" here. I had a lovely Three Stooges moment where someone was asking for a bin—nope, not a word I was used to—and I kept trying to hand over a pen.
While we're on the subject of babies, please stop calling that woman your "mum." She's your mom, not a flower that kinda looks like an exploding carnation. Not a word that means staying quiet, though I kinda wish you would.
To take my own advice, I'll leave off for now. But as my head catches fire from more and more linguistic novelties, I'll be sure to complain, ahem, share them. They are as plentiful as the fish in the wide, wide ocean that separates
us from them.
