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Sunday 16 October 2011

American & Commonwealth culture

Sexual Misunderstandings
The slang word "fag" in the Commonwealth, is a cigarette, while in the USA the same word is slang for a gay man!

Also, the word "rubber" means an eraser in the Commonwealth but refers to a condom in the USA. So, an English student in an American college would quite naturally lean over to an American student and ask to borrow their rubber!

Extras: For Australians, they find it amusing when Americans say they are *rooting for them.
*Root in Australian means to have sex!

Getting Knocked Up.
There are those phrases that are the same but have totally different meanings resulting in severe misunderstandings. Take for instance the phrase "knock up". In the USA this means get a girl pregnant while in the UK it means knock on someone's door! Imagine someone from the UK in America at a conference. On meeting in a hotel lobby for breakfast, an American asks the Englishman if a fellow female delegate had come down for breakfast yet. It would be quite natural for the Englishman to reply: "No, but I did knock her up this morning!"

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