Separated by a Common Language: Difference between revisions

** Pants in America are called trousers in Britain, while pants in Britain are called underwear by Americans. A British person's suspenders are an American's garters; American suspenders are British braces.

*** It's odd that nobody thought to change the name of American import "The Sisterhood of the [[Unfortunate Implications|Travelling Pants]]".

*** Though the game makes it fairly clear what she's actually referring to, [[The World Ends With You (Video Game)|Shiki's]] line "Now! Pants! Off!" along with Neku's quite understandable response is even more hilarious for British gamers.

*** Because of the underwear association, in [[British English]] 'pants' can also be an adjective meaning 'a bit crap'. Not something truly dreadful, but underwhelming or a waste of your time. 'I went to the circus, but it was pants'. Has confused US speakers.

** In Israel, french fries are specifically called "Potato chips," and crisps are not widely available.

* Another one is tinned/canned when referring to food. The process of home canning (preserving food not in tin cans, but in vacuum-sealed glass jars) adds another layer of confusion.

** In "Money, A Suicide Note" by Martin Amis, the main character is sent to try to get a very clean cut actor called Spunk Davies to use a stagename instead.

** Nicely played with in [[Black Adder]] Goes Forth, when Melchett assumes the crossdressing George is a woman and says she's "full of spunk." Blackadder is quietly amused.

{{quote| '''[[The Office|Keith]]''': Fanny means your arse. ([[Beat]]) Not your minge.}}

** In the UK, we call a "fanny pack" a "bum bag". Yes, that's a bum as in your gluteus maximus, and yes, we do still wear it on the front...

** The makers of ''[[Goldfinger (Film)|Goldfinger]]'' recall sending early rushes of the Golden Woman Lying On The Bed scene to the movie's producer Cubby Broccoli, who kept telephoning to say the shots were unacceptable as ''her fanny is on full show and we'll never get it past the censors''. The British production crew were perplexed, as her fanny was not showing at all, given that she was lying on her front... her ''arse'' was visible, yes, but not her fanny...

* One example that frequently affects this wiki and other wikis like it: What American TV calls a "season"; i.e., a sequence of episodes produced and aired in a particular year, is part of a "series". In the UK, these are often used far more interchangeably when talking about seasons (although not when talking about ''a series''), although American usage is starting to catch on thanks to the internet.

* In parts of Britain, especially the [[Oop North|North]], a ''mojo'' is a small liquorice-flavoured chewy candy. This causes confusion when coming accross the American usage of the word as either voodou sex-magic, or as a euphemism for an African-American's penis. Therefore listening to a blues singer boasting of getting his mojo working can provoke vague incomprehension of the "so can we, they're sold at four for tuppence down at the sweet shop, what's the big deal?" variety. And the mojo (sweet) is usually black in colour. So it can work the other way too, as when a Northern girl remarked to an American friend in an internet chat-room that she was ''sucking on a big black mojo'' even as she typed and ''it doesn't half taste lovely!''

** Less sexual, but still possibly confusing, the western states use mojo as a synonym of magic. For example, the motto of the Seattle Mariners (a baseball team) is "[[So Do]] Mojo," referring to their stadium in South Downtown.

* What Americans call a purse - a small-ish bag carried by women containing their keys, phone, etc. - is called a handbag in the UK. The small thing women keep their money and credit cards in - the [[Distaff Counterpart|female version]] of a wallet, is what Brits call a purse.

* British ''tights'' and American ''pantyhose'' are exactly the same thing, but it's interesting how a user of one term is often totally ignorant of the other - this has led to polite mutual incomprehension over on the YKTTW page in a discussion of what it means when a female character wears tights with a skirt.

* "Cachondo" is Spaniard for "funny" and Mexican for "horny"; "guarro", meanwhile, is Spaniard for "dirty" and Mexican for "bodyguard".

* The verb "coger" is probably the most (in)famous example of [[Separated By a Common Language]] in Spanish. It means "get" or "pick up" in Spain and a few Latin American countries, but in Mexico and many South American countries, it's an offensive word that means "to fuck."

* Computer-based terminology can be a royal pain to translate depending which Spanish-speaking country you're talking about:

** In Mexico a "Monitor" is a computer screen, but in Spain a "Monitor" is a type of speaker used in music production. (And in the U.S., it can be either, although the "computer screen" definition is probably better known.)

** In Malaysia, the national census is known as "Banci Penduduk". An Indonesian would have presumed that transvestites are banned there....

* There is a line somewhere between the South and North of Germany that marks the separation between [[German Dialects|Bavarian/Alpine and Northern German dialects]]. Everything that claims to be speaking German south of it, including Austria and Switzerland... yeah.

** Which is not to say that the various countries and regions south of the line are not also [[Separated By a Common Language]]. For example, the phrase "Half ten" can shift in meaning by a full hour over a distance of a few hundred kilometers. [[As You Know|In most of the world, this means 10:30]], but in German, it means 9:30; as in "half to ten". People from North America use a different set of phrases for giving the time without reading the whole thing out; half past ten means the same thing as half ten in British English, quarter past ten means 10:15, and quarter till eleven means 10:45.

** Switzerland [[Up to Eleven|is the above countries plus one]]. There are at least three major dialects of Alemannic (Swiss) German (Low, High, and Highest Alemannic), with several minor dialects of each. And then Swiss French and Italian are their own subdialects of archaic dialects of ''their'' respective languages. And the Swiss, needless to say, take extreme pride in all this.

** And "Finken" which is a form of the German word for "finch" and in Swiss German means a sort of shoes you wear inside the house.

* A common occurrence in Arabic, what with being spoken in about 20 countries, some of which have multiple dialects, and whose dialects are often mutually unintelligible (much as in German). NOTE: In general there are two broad dialect groups in Arabic, Western (''Maghrebi'' in Arabic) and Eastern (''Mashriqi'' in Arabic). The line between them falls somewhere in the big desert that separates Libya and Egypt. Within the Eastern group, there is further variation: there is Nile Valley Arabic (Egyptian and Sudanese), Levantine (Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, and Palestinian), Iraqi, Yemeni, and Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait). Each country typically has a unique dialect nevertheless mutually intelligible with the others within its group, and there is often some cross-group intelligibility as well: Egyptians--particularly those from Cairo and northward--can typically understand western Levantine (everything but the far eastern reaches of Syria, eastern Jordan being a desert wasteland), while eastern Syrians can understand at least some Iraqis, and many Iraqis can understand Kuwaiti and northeastern Saudi. Some examples:

*** Related to this, the word ''niswanji''/''niswangi'', "womanizer".<ref>''-ji''/''-gi'' being a suffix meaning "guy who does x"; the spellings are different because of pronunciation differences we'll not get involved in at the moment</ref> In Lebanon it means, roughly, a player or [[Casanova]]: a guy who's good with the ladies, and is vaguely positive, or at least cool. In Egypt, it has historically meant a habitual customer of prostitutes, or at least a guy who consorts with other kinds of low women, and is vaguely negative, although Lebanese influence has toned town the negative connotations somewhat.

** Similarly, in Iraqi Arabic, the word for a woman is ''ḥurmah''. While this has its origins in Classical Arabic and is widely understood, it also sounds a bit like the Egyptian and Levantine word ''khurmah'', which means "hole." Yes.

[[Category:Alice and Bob]]

[[Category:Separated By A Common Language]]