USA 101: Language

Although we both speak English, us and the Americans don’t speak the same language.

You won't believe the miscommunication. Sometimes funny, but once or twice, quite life threatening. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but comms once got muddled up and we fucked up our work totally.

Unfortunately, we’ve been the ones to adapt to their language. Here some examples (you’ll probably know most of them from the movies, but they’ve made a lot of people laugh)…
- bathroom = restroom (”you wanna go bath?”)
- robot = traffic light (“you have robots that control your traffic?”)
- boot = trunk (they laugh hysterically at this one)
- petrol = gas
- tomato sauce = ketchup
- milk – cream
- muesli = granola
- jam = jelly
- jelly = jello
- cooldrink = soda/pop
- filter coffee = drip coffee
- varsity = school/college

Some instances of total non-understandability:
- half past nine – they have no clue - it’s nine-thirty
- are you winning? – “winning what?” was a response I got. Sean got “what are we playing?”
- ag - “is your throat sore?”
- DESHTROY – hehe
- matric
- bakkie (as in “Jirrie, but that’s a big bakkie”)
- surname – it’s last name
- manual car – huh?
- and they don’t seem to understand the words “keen” and “reckon”

Things they say that we have fokol idea about:
- ounces, gallons, miles, Fahrenheit etc – do Americans have to be different about everything?
- lucked out – not sure if this means to be lucky or unlucky?
- sophomore – I still have no clue what this is!
- twelve thirty one – this is not the time, but the date, December 31. The whole backwards date thing screwed us over big time: Is 5/6/05 the 5th of June or 6th of May? Much confusion on our part, makes a HUGE difference to calculations!

When greeting people:
Us: Hi, how you?
Them: Good.
{awkward silence}
Us: (I’m also okay, but thanks for asking you rude mu’fucker!)

OR

Them: Hey, how ya doin’?
Us: I’m well thanks, how are you?
{awkward silence}
Them: {blank stare, total shock} Um, uh, okay, what can I do for ya? – basically, they get quite a shock when you ask back how they’re doing.

Then they difficulty with our names, in particular, my surname, excuse me, my last name. I have to pronounce it with a nasal “Lah”, with a hard roll on the L, and then still spell it. And for Sean – it’s not Shorn, it’s Sharn (nasal influence again!).

But chick’s luuurve our accents…