or: English Expressions Can Be Tricky
It has been a fantastic weekend mostly because I have friends in town for the weekend who came for no other reason than to catch up with each other.
That’s not entirely true.
One arrived at the start of the week, from the UK, for work and caught up with a few other people too. One flew in from Bangkok on Saturday and flies out on Monday and is also catching up with some former work colleagues and other friends. Another lives here all the time (and by “all the time”, I mean that she doesn’t leave the country for extended periods, comes back for a little while and goes again, she takes the standard sort of length holiday when she travels).
Ok, they weren’t here to just see each other. That’s not the point.
The point is, these are some of my long-standing travel buddies and long-time HK friends so when we all catch up, it’s like we haven’t all been apart. You know, the great kinds of friends where conversations pick up where they left off. The kind where you have in jokes and don’t even realize they are in jokes unless other people are around and don’t laugh when you all do. The kinds you have Whatsapp group chats with at all hours of the day and night (not just due to time zone differences). The kind who comes and visits you in Tokyo when things are particularly difficult. The kind that bring you Smith’s Salt n Vinegar chips when they go to Australia and carry them back in their hand luggage so the packets don’t burst. The kind that bring you chocolate, and try to make it dark mint, from whatever country they happen to have travelled through before seeing you again.
The best kind.
What’s funny about these kinds of friends is that you are still able to surprise each other even after all this time. You think you have heard all their expressions but you haven’t. Yesterday was no different when we all caught up over lunch followed by an afternoon tea at the new Mum’s place. Though she would write “Mom’s” since she’s American.
Which is actually part of my point.
Two of us are Australian, one is English and the other is originally from the US yet we still encounter unusual expressions from each country which are open to misinterpretation.
Normally the greatest difference is between the UK and the US since for Australians, we have had both subjected to their television programs most of our lives. The US and the UK people both struggle with a lot of the Australian expressions but that’s not a surprise, they only have Neighbours and Home & Away in the UK and the Americans have managed to dodge those shows.
On this occasion, it started with a conversation about someone being “laid off”. While the Australians, Americans and anyone remotely involved in Human Resources would take this to mean a redundancy, it turns out the English person of our group sees this as having something to do with sex.
I can see the link.
It was then followed by the question from her to our American friend, “if you were talking in the context of a couple and I asked you ‘should I buy a hat?’ What would you think?” To which the American friend replied “something to do with putting a condom on it.”
I burst into laughter since it’s a funny response and was there whenthe question was originally asked (at a dinner with her and another friend the previous night and I was just as confused then) and had then been told what it meant, the other Australian laughed since he was taking an educated guess based on the context of the question, the American laughed because she just thought it was a weird question in the first place (I’d agree with this too) and our UK friend, her laughter shook her whole body so much that I was concerned she may stop breathing as tears started to run down her face.
It took her a while to get her breath back.
It does make sense that she would think this given the question was right on the back of the laid off one.
Turns out that it actually means “is there going to be a wedding soon?”
I think it’s much easier just asking that question rather than causing all this confusion though it’s not nearly as funny.
Maybe I just need to watch more English television.
* Thanks to Cricco Castelli for the title to this post.