Lingo

Living in an area where there are a lot of other languages has made me become accustomed to not always understanding what people are saying.  Most of the time it is because of their accent but sometimes it is due to the local lingo.  My latest experience with this was with two of my native English speaking friends.  One is from Liverpool, England and the other from just north of Sydney, Australia.

We were chatting at work yesterday and I did something that frustrated me and I said "dang it" aloud.  One of them looked at me with a puzzled look.  She asked if I meant to say darn it and I had to say no and repeat dang so she could hear it properly.  She then asked me what it meant.  Her response after hearing my explanation was that she though Americans only said "darn" while most English typically say "damn".  Dang/damn/darn are all such simple words...who knew they didn't use dang in England.

I'm having the same two friends over for dinner this weekend and am making sloppy joe's (which warrants an entirely different blog post sometime in the future).  I asked if they had a preference on the meat and they proceeded to talk about pork mince and beef mince and lamb mince.  That is also what it is called in the grocery store here...it isn't ground but instead is called mince.  To me, mince is more of an outcome from chopping whereas ground comes from a grinder...hence the past tense use of the word grind and end result ground.  Again, simple words that are both used properly but mean different things to different people.

We also had a conversation about the difference between burger buns and rolls and buns but I won't get into that...

Here are few other examples (not necessarily associated with the Brit & Aussie):

• lift = elevator
• boot = trunk
• lorry = truck
• holiday = vacation
• garden = lawn
• pissed = drunk
• queue = line up
• football = soccer
• jumper = sweater