Mind the gaps

"What do you think of these pants I bought at Reiss?" I asked our British friends Niamh and Jan. They exchanged glances, and I immediately realized my mistake. "Sorry, I mean trousers."

In the U.S. we wear pants on the outside, whilst Brits wear theirs underneath.

Many years ago, at dinner with a bunch of Brits, I said I was stuffed. I, of course, meant I couldn't eat any more. The Brits, however, seemed intrigued that I was being buggered at the table.

Later that night, sitting around the table after way too many pints, feeling no pain with my eyes half-closed, one of the guys asked if I was pissed. "No," I said. "Do I seem pissed?"

"It's all right, mate," he said. "I'm a little pissed myself."

"Is something wrong?" I said.

"No," he said, puzzled. "I actually feel pretty high." He got up from the table, as I gave him a quizzical look. "Right. I'm going off to have a fag."

With that he went outside, leaving me to wonder whether it was a good idea for him to have sex with a man while he was angry.

Even to a native speaker, English can be a foreign language.

British imports like Absolutely Fabulous and the Austin Powers movies have exposed us Yanks to the strange and wonderful deviations of our common mother tongue. But like false friends in languages like Spanish, we have to be careful not to say we're pregnant when we mean embarrassed, as Luis and I were when commenting on a rather large woman wearing a fanny pack. "Bloody hell!" Niamh said. "What's that?"

"You know, those little packs people wear around their waists to carry their valuables in while traveling."

"Ah, you mean bum bags?" Niamh said. After a little language dissection, we discovered that the British fanny is front and center, whilst the American fanny takes a back seat.

In Britain it's impolite to snog and shag a slag, at least in public. Likewise, in the States it wouldn't be cool to kiss and screw a whore on the street.

Everyday expressions differ enough to be noticeable. A Brit almost always says "Right," never "OK." And the universal British expression for "Thanks" is "Cheers," which we Yanks say only when toasting one another.

Signs in England clearly show their Saxon roots. To leave a station, you look for "Way Out." On a road you "Give Way" instead of "Yield." A driveway is marked "In" and "Out," not "Entrance" and "Exit." And to get off the train at a station you "alight from" it. [I noticed, however, that a toilet (or WC, for "water closet") in use on a train is "engaged," not "occupied" (perhaps the French insisted).]

Americans and Brits both like euphemism, but Americans tend to be heavyhanded, whilst Brits are masters of understatement. One of my favorite signs was the following.


Here we simply say "Curb your dog." Everyone knows the consequences if you don't.

Fortunately, though, there are more similarities than differences in the English spoken on both sides of the pond. To cross the street in London, you know that you must look to your right first or risk being flattened. In that case, I'm glad that "right" means "right."