Tuesday, July 7--UK Speak

Since not much else is going on today, I thought I would give my friends and family back in the States a lesson in UK Speak otherwise known as English, my dear friends Margaret and Colin remind me.

First, the food:

Neeps = turnips, tatties = potatoes, baps = soft rolls
White coffee = coffee with cream, biscuit = cookie
Scone = biscuit, chips = French Fries, crisps = potato chips
Aubergine = eggplant, courgette = zucchini
Tablet = hard fudge (kind of like Papa’s)
Scotch pancakes are sold cold in the bread section of the grocers and can be eaten hot or
cold
Potato scones are made of potatoes and flour
Cullen skink = haddock with cream and onions
Cranachan = dessert of raspberries, cream, and toasted oatmeal
Clapshot = neeps and tatties mashed with butter and milk
Jelly = jello, ask for jam if you want to put something on your toast
Pudding = dessert
Uisge = whisky (from the Gaelic word for it--sound it out)

And the worst of all, black pudding, which is blood sausage made of pig’s blood, suet, and oatmeal.

Other interesting differences:

The word pants means underpants or panties. To say pants, use the word trousers or else you may be extremely embarrassed. Oh, and a jumper is a sweater. I’ll never forget the strange look I got from Colin years ago when I said I was just going to wear my black jumper to the party for Rosie.

To do messages means to do errands. If you really are overjoyed, you are gobsmacked. An elevator is called a lift. A baby is a bairn. A pretty bairn is called a bonny bairn. And you change his or her nappy, not diaper.

A croft is a small farm. A dun is a castle or fort. A ben is a mountain. A church is called a kirk, so a graveyard by a kirk is the kirkyard. The laird is the landowner. A lake is called a loch. When you want to leave a restaurant, you ask for the bill, not the check. Those trucks passing you on the motorway are called lorries. An RV is called a caravan. You park your car in a carpark, not in a parking lot. The pharmacy is the chemist. The doctor’s office is the surgery. And a long distance bus is called a coach.

Football is soccer over here and you don’t want to get in a discussion of which is the REAL football. Or declare a favorite team, unless you happen to be in THAT particular neighborhood at that moment.

To buy whisky, you go to an off licence store, not a liquor store. Gas is called petrol. A Band-Aid is called a plaster—guess Band-Aid would be happy about this what with the copyright laws. A cotton bud is what we call a cotton swab or a Q-tip. The mail is called the post, as is the postman. So my old postman in Peachtree City would be known as Robert--The Post.

You might think that a pushchair would be a wheelchair, but no, it is a baby stroller. A grocery cart is called a trolley. A flashlight is called a torch. Restrooms are toilets or loos. And the exit is called the Way Out. And there is such a thing as a car boot sale—kind of like a garage sale and flea market combined. (the trunk of a car is the boot, the bonnet is the hood.)

To order Food-to-Go is to order TakeAway. And if you order a chicken filet, you’d better say it like “fill-it” or else you will get a strange look. So WE are the fancy ones on this bit of language, pronouncing it like the French as we do. And I have already mentioned the milkshakes—enough said on that subject.

And a strange way of showing the number 2 with your fingers--most people over here use their thumb and forefinger to show it. And the letter Z is pronounced “zed” and is written with a line horizontally through the middle of it. And curb is spelled “kerb.” Who knows why? Margaret says it is because kerb begins with a hard c sound. (These British people can be so smart sometimes, you know?)

Checkers is called Draughts here though I believe it is played the same. And Drunk Driving is called Drink Driving—now that sound strange to my ears.

Some of these language differences come from the use of Gaelic, but some are just uniquely Scottish or British. And I won’t even mention the way city names are pronounced over here. Though we try all the time to say names correctly, we continue to butcher the language at every turn. When asked where we were headed next, I told the man at Dundrennan Abbey that we were headed to Kirkcudbright. And I pronounced it as it is spelled. He just smiled at me and said, “It is hard to say some of our city names, isn’t it?” Then he proceeded to say the name, but for the life of me, I can’t tell you what he said. It was so fast and scrunched together, I couldn’t repeat it if I tried. Let’s just say that anything ending with “ham” is pronounced “uhm” very quickly. With “burgh” it’s “bruh.” “Shire” is “shuhr.” So Nottingham is “Notting-uhm, and Edinburgh is “Ed-in-bruh” and Leicestershire is “Less-tuh-shuhr.” I suppose if you grow up learning it this way, it comes naturally.

So that’s my language lesson for today. Hopefully, it will help explain my extreme confusion once I return to the States and call objects by funny names.