Tuesday, February 06, 2007

You Say Tomato I Say Tomahto

difference in language english american



















Writing a blog in English may seem easy but when lots of your readers are American and you are English it can be difficult at times.

I have compiled a little list of confusing words. They are as follows - from top to bottom:
Fall - This is what we do when we trip over something. The season is Autumn to us.
Fanny - This is a good one, it is completely the other side of the anatomy to us. I'ts always a bit shocking when we hear it.
Biscuits - We dip them in our tea and they are flat. What you call biscuits we call Scones.
Chips - When ordering my first meal in the States I asked for a side order of Chips. I got what we call Crisps.
Gas - We cook on it and heat our homes with it. We call it Petrol.
Pillows - We sleep on them when we go to bed. We call them pillows. Hence all those pillow/cushion references on my blog.
I did a post on my guest blog at This Next last year called - Not In The USA You Don't - it lists all the things we have that Americans don't. Clike here to view

5 comments:

Gypsy Purple said...

Di, I love both post...very very entertaining. Thanks for that

Had a lovely time

Chamara

kstyle said...

I had the same experience when we moved to austraila. We asked for french fries and they had no idea what we were talking about.Then we tried catsup and got another blank stare. Finally realized that what we wanted were chips and tomato sauce or even better dead horse. They were however fabulous french fries. k

Anonymous said...

In the Land Down Under, Biscuits are also flat things that get dipped in tea. But Scones are a different thing - a caky-bready-thing that are served with jam and cream and people argue about the pronunciation of. Am I missing something obvious? Love your site. Quite enjoyed Not In The USA You Dont on ThisNext. Bonza.

Muse of Ire said...

Just a little correction from a Yank, here. What you call biscuits we call cookies. What we call biscuits look sort of like a scone, but ours are generally savory rather than sweet and have a much different texture.

Anonymous said...

In Canada, we call them pillows..on couches (sofas) we call them cushions.
I thought americans also called them pillows...