August 24th, 2007
The Little Differences
How silly of me! I almost let the opportunity pass me by. Having just visited a country other than the US, I owe you an entry about all the things that are different there than they are here.
So…(ahem) the biggest incongruities I noticed between the US and Britain were with our shared English language. Of course I was aware before I went over that they use alternate words for certain places/objects/actions, but what I didn’t realize was how startling actually hearing people use them in conversation, without snickering, would be. Let’s look at some examples:
While we would say we are on “vacation,” they informed us we were on “holiday.”
What we call an “elevator” they call a “lift.”
And “soccer” to us, is “thing we should spend every bit of our time watching/thinking about/reading about/writing about/talking about/dreaming about” to them.
The unit of currency is, of course, the pound, so when a price tag reads “5.00” it means “five pounds.” Cashiers, however, do not say “That will be five pounds.” They say “Five quid, please,” which is like us saying “Five bucks, please,” if “bucks” wasn’t quite so slang and even your grandma said things like “This cost me five bucks!” Though, that “5.00” tag actually means “almost ten bucks” as the American dollar is wimpy Monopoly play money in the eyes on the pound. Also, if something is “5.50” it’s not “Five fifty,” it’s “Five pounds fifty.”
And here’s another phrasing difference: “5:30.” In American, if your watch reads this, you would say “It’s five-thirty.” Or maybe “It’s half-past five,” whereas a Brit says “It’s half-five.” Not terribly different, in theory, but when you hear it come out of their mouth, it takes you a minute to realize they are referring to a time of day.
Don’t walk up to an English person and say “Do you like my pants?” To them, the word “pants” means “underwear.” (This is not the only reason you should not be grilling the English about your pants, but it’s a good start.) What we call “pants,” they call “trousers.”
They pronounce the letter “H” like this: “Huh-aech.” And for the letter “Z” they say “Zed.” These things sound kind of pretentious, and are a bit irritating.
“Mate” is, of course, their “man/bud/bro/hoss.” Also “‘mate’” (the quotes signifying the use of this term of endearment, in reference to you, by someone who does not actually know you, resulting in you feeling some uncertainty about the person speaking to you) is their “‘man’/‘bud’/‘bro’/‘hoss’.” ““Mate”” (these quotes signifying the use of this term of endearment, in reference to you, by someone who does not actually know you, and is currently in the process of doing something incredibly un-“mate”-like to you, like cutting in front of you at the bar, resulting in you feeling some loathing for the person speaking to you) is their ““man”/“bud”/“bro”/“hoss”.”
“Cheers” is to London what “Aloha” is to Hawaii. It can mean “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Sorry,” “Thanks,” etc. When in doubt, just say “Cheers.” Or, if you mean it sarcastically, “‘Cheers’.”
“Cool” there means only “slightly lower than normal temperature.” Their multipurpose word for “neat/interesting” is “brilliant” or “brill.”
There, “pissed” means “drunk” and “mad” means “crazy.” Here, of course, being “mad” means you’re pissed (the “mad,” er “angry” kind of “pissed”).
Signage stuff:
You will never see an “Exit” sign showing you the way out of a building in London. The signs showing the way out say, even more simply, “Way Out.”
You will never see a “Bathroom” or “Restroom” sign in London. After all, this is not the room where you go to bathe, or to rest…unless you are beyond filthy…or you have narcolepsy…. The signs showing you the place where the toilets are located say “Toilets,” plain as that. Score another one for our more practical, less-stuck-up counterparts. Then again, sometimes the signs say “Water Closet” (or “WC”) instead, which makes less sense than all of the other terms put together…. So, on second thought, we’ll call this a draw.
While the appropriate wording for something you would exchange money for the temporary use of is “For Rent” here, there it would get a “To Let” sign if it were an apartment or office and a “For Hire” sign if it were a car.
Things don’t go “On Sale” there. They go “On Offer.”
Before every crosswalk, on the ground in front of you, they have printed “Look left” or “Look right” on the ground, depending on which side the left-driving traffic could be coming from. It was a nice touch, and without those little reminders I probably would have looked the wrong way every single time I crossed and eventually gotten creamed by a bus. (Buses there have two stories, by the way.)
On to food terminology:
You don’t get “take out” from a restaurant, you get “take away.”
“Fries” to us are “chips” to them. “Chips” to us are “crisps” to them.
As you probably know, London has plenty of “pubs.” We have places that call themselves “pubs” here too, and they are pretty close to what they have there — quiet, shabby places to talk and drink, that usually serve food. We also have “bars” here that are like this. Then we have “bars” that are more like clubs, loud and crowded and full of scary people looking to hook up with other scary people. This is what all the places that call themselves “bars” over there are like. Interesting side note: for as famous as the UK is for drinks and drinking, most of these sort of establishments shut down at 11:00 — much earlier than they do here. And that’s not just last call. That’s finish your beer and get out. Now. To keep the magic going you have to know the location of select places that have “late licenses” and will still be open, serving drinks. Most of these are “bars.”
Probably the biggest point of adjustment for the whole trip, was the overall beverage situation….
Being Europe, the water does not flow like, um, water. Forget that free, bottomless glass of “huh-aech”2O with your meal. You can buy a bottle for £1.50 if you want. When that’s gone, it’s gone. I tried to combat this by filling up the Nalgene I was carrying from the tap in our room every morning, but I was thwarted by the fact that London water tastes like it has bits of pulverized fish floating in it. I know, I know, it’s an old, dirty city. I don’t know what I expected. I do know that I am not picky about water — to the point where it annoys me when people express grief over minute changes in “flavor” from one place to another — but this stuff, I could not choke down without feeling like I was going to throw up.
If you’d like a Coke with your dinner, £1.50 will get you a can and a glass to pour it in. All beverages are served at room temperature. Ice is extremely hard to come by. To my knowledge, ice is a distinctly American institution. All of Europe has something against it. Maybe because it melts and waters down your drink or something. The one liquid that is absolutely, positively always frosty-cold is the beer, which leads one to conclude that at least the English have their priorities straight. The one way to obtain cubes of ice over there, it turns out, is to order a hard cider in a bottle. They will go into their special reserve for this, and you will be presented with a pint glass filled to the top with glistening, crystalline cubes.
Finally, coffee is an interesting predicament, as you might expect in Tea Land. Your options, pretty much everywhere, are a cappuccino, a latte, an espresso, or an “americano” (a shot of espresso diluted with water). In the grocery stores, the only kind of coffee they have is instant. They aren’t big on cream either. Even at bonafide coffee shops, they provide lowfat milk rather than half-and-half. For some reason, you can almost always order an americano with the milk added to it for you. It’s called a “white coffee.” There is really no such thing as a standard cup of coffee, unless you wish to lose a piece of your soul and duck into a Starbucks. Which are everywhere over there. Proving that, fundamentally, our two great nations are not that different from one another.
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