Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

the language barrier: part two.

Oh, the "English" language. From talking to people more, I'm realizing that American English is so much more different from English English than I thought.. it's weird. (I don't even know if that sentence makes sense in either English??) But regardless, it's really funny and entertaining to listen to at the same time. For instance, they still say 'plait' instead of 'braid' ...it's seriously reminiscent of the 1700's. I'd feel like a settler on the prairie if I said was going to plait my hair. They also pronounce a lot of words strangely to me. Here are a few that stick out to me; 

- "Z" ..Sure, this isn't a word but I'm including it on the list because they pronounce it differently. While learning the alphabet, as I hope anybody who is reading this did, Elmo taught us to say the letter Z like 'zee.' Here that's not the case.. Z = 'zed.' I do not know how that happened to get warped when the Puritans got their colonial on, but it's really confusing at first. For example; there's these map books called London: A to Z which the college has. Bill kept saying 'if you need to rent out the A to Zed's.. blahblah' and so I just thought the title of it was London: A to Zed. I don't know, maybe Zed is some kind of cul-de-sac or map term or something.. who knows. Regardless, when I get to my internship they also have different codes of which were referred to as 'Zed-1, Zed-2, etc.' It wasn't until I saw that all of these things were Z1, Z2, Z3, etc that I realized 'zed' is just how they pronounce Z. So I'm giving you super helpful advice if you have any encounters with letters or codes, see? Moving right along...

- "Status" ..Believe it or not, British people use Facebook. With Facebook comes statuses; completely commonplace phrase. However instead of the traditional 'st-aht-us' as any American would say, they pronounce it 'stay-tus.'

- "Literally" ..This one is Abby and Melissa's favorite word pronunciation of the Brits, so I'm including it. Instead of saying it as it's spelled - 'liter-allee' - they shorten it a bit to 'lit-rellee.' I have no idea if those phonetic spellings make sense to you, but they do to me. If not, oh well. It's my blog, not yours.
- "Aluminum" ..A completely random word, yes. But instead of 'aloo-min-um' they pronounce it 'al-you-min-ium' or something along those lines. It's completely hilarious to me.. it sounds like a Harry Potter spell. If you ever meet a Brit, just ask them what the silver tin foil is. It's really funny, I swear. I may start using this in my everyday life, if I can remember how to pronounce it.

- "Tomato" ..You know that really catchy Top 40 Pitbull song 'You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato'? That's a real thing. Indeed here it's called a 'toe-mahhh-toe' not 'toe-mayyy-toe.' But they to say potato, not usually 'po-tah-toe.'

They also say 'wingardium levi-OH-sa' instead of 'wingardium levio-sahhh..' [sad trumpet wah wah wah plays here..]

After that pathetic joke/reference, I will now leave you with this quip about British accents that was actually in a pros and cons chart about American English versus British Pronunciation: "Americans love RP [Received Pronunciation]. If you speak RP in America, people will think you are intelligent and the opposite sex will take more interest in you."

Right you are, about.com. Right you are. Thank you for publishing that jewel of an article.
(Bolding for emphasis in that section not provided by me.. that was seriously there.)


Until the next time I plait my hair with aluminium and write a status about it;
 xx

it's 18:00 and i want some biscuits.

Although it's still 'English' over here, it's more than a bit different from the American version of English, in fact I would go so far as to say there is a *language barrier.* Here's a few terms that I've picked up/had to decipher so far:

- On a menu, the item "jacket" is not referring to something to put on your body in cold weather. British meaning: Baked Potato. They also enjoy putting such things as prawns (never referred to as shrimp) and tuna and things on them. I like mine with cheese and bacon.

- When telling a Brit that you are attending 'school' here, do not be confused if they seem perplexed. To Brits, 'school' is equivalent to primary/secondary (elementary/middle) school.. Not college. Which is another word that isn't understood sometimes - it's best to refer to it as 'university' (or 'uni' if you're feeling daring.)

- What is this "8 o'clock" you speak of? Here, everything is referred to in military time, which is probably much easier to adapt to had I been in the military at any point in my life prior to this. But, alas, I was not, so military time gets a little difficult because I have to use my brain. For MATH. The horror! (Seriously.. I suck at math [referred to here as 'maths'] in my head.) I haven't been so bold as to refer to times as 17:00 or 22:00 out loud, but I'm slowly getting used to the system.

- Cheers! = Thanks! It's hard to get used to. I feel like I'm at a wedding or celebration or something all the time.

- Crisps = Chips, Chips = Fries, but sometimes Fries = Fries and Chips = Chips. It gets a bit confusing..

- This one was told to me by the woman who is my internship coordinator; do not refer to pants as pants.. they are trousers. I sincerely hope I won't ever have to talk about what I wear on my bottom half, because I know for a fact that I won't ever remember to say trousers. When I think trousers, I think grandpa-pants. ..I don't know why. I just do. People wear pants, and grandpas wear trousers. It's just the way it is. Nothing against grandpas...

- The next one isn't actually that difficult, probably from my years of mastering what is known as "Rollercoaster Tycoon." Lines, lining up, get in line - these words/phrases mean nothing. You "queue up," etc.

- It took me a while to realize (spelled realise here..) that 'estate agents' are in fact what is known in the States as 'realtors.' We went through one to find our flat (..aka apartment), and it didn't really dawn on me until I saw that the word 'realtor' was nowhere to be found. Everyone is an 'estate agent,' which sounds more like somebody who writes wills and distributes dead people's property if you ask me..

- The last word, but certainly not the last word that is different.. by any means, comes to you from a host who seated us at a restaurant here (Navajo Joe's in Covent Garden.. fabulous food! Highly reccommend it.) Anyways, the word 'vacation' is nonexistent here. Instead, vacation = holiday. Used in a sentence: I am trying to plan a holiday in Italy in October.

And there you have it! Hopefully after reading this, you've felt culture shock. But most likely you probably haven't, but you have been saying all the British forms of words in a British accent in your heard, haven't you? Hehehe. But it's late, I'm clearly delirious (and hungry :'( ) but hopefully you've enjoyed all this reading and no photos. It's almost a chapter of a book! ...Okay. No it's not. I'm going to get some rest, so until the next time I post..

xx

(PS: One term I still haven't figured out is "tikka chicken" ..!? What is 'tikka'? I do not comprehend?