Well sometimes there are problems between people of different ages and they don’t understand things which someone else is saying or something gets lost in translation. A few years ago on a radio station I work at, I was listening to the presenter talk to a boy from a school choir which was performing on the programme and the presenter asked him “What form are you in?” And he went “I’m all right” he meant what class are you in. But on another occasion on a bloopers programme it showed a reporter from Britain asking a boxer in America
“What state were you in after that fight?” and he said “Illinois” he meant what state are you in physically. Any more stories of odd things that happened between Britain and America in relation to people not understanding each other.
Famously, British and American military nearly cam to blows about use of the word ‘table’ - for the British “tabling” an idea meant to bring a topic to the table for discussion while for the Americans it meant to put a topic aside for later discussion. Thus the Anericans insisted a particular topic was too important to table while the British thought the same topic was to important not to table.
Does “getting the wrong end of the stick” mean something different in the British Isles, too? Because here in the US, it means getting treated unfairly, not misunderstanding an expression.
That’s not how I’ve always interpreted it (USA born and bred). It means misunderstanding something, often due to choosing the wrong meaning to a key word.
eta: I think you’re thinking of the short end of the stick.
Um… all of them? Wouldn’t be much of a story, otherwise.
Here’s an old commercial about the different meanings of Durex in Australia and England
Auto parts store. Story from yesterday’s Facebook group:
“Hello, what can I do for you?”
“I need a replacement high beam halogen bulb”
“OK, what for?”
“Well, I need to be able to see at night”
:smack:
In Australia, there was this story https://lightersideofrealestate.com/real-estate-humor/news-reporter-confronts-home-seller-over-racist-real-estate-ad
Seller asked for ad that said “No Agents” - but the newspaper ad seller heard “No Asians”
Sarah Palin published a book in '09 called Going Rogue - blissfully unaware that this is British slang for unprotected anal sex.
There is the (apocryphal) interview with Marilyn Monroe about the pinup photoshoot early in her career:
“Miss Monroe, what did you have on during the session?”
“The radio”
nm
I wish I could remember the name of the academic. He wrote about his own mistake in some article I read way back in the 90s.
He had written an entire book based on a mishearing. It was a John Wayne movie, and he thought that Wayne said that the fight between the families was “feudal.”
So he wrote a whole book about how Westerns presented fights between families, and society in general, as feudal, like in the middle ages. He had some good arguments for it, too, and the book was fairly well-received.
Years later he realised that John Wayne hadn’t said feudal at all. He’d said futile. In the UK that’s pronounced /ˈfjuːtʌɪl/, like fyoo-tie (like Thai food) - ul. It’s not very similar to the American pronunciation at all, so it’s an understandable mishearing, but to write an entire book based on one mishearing is pretty unusual. Wayne’s line was a throwaway comment without nearly as much meaning as the academic assigned to it. He had wondered why nobody else had picked up on it, and now he knew.
The American pronunciation of missile as missal also sounds a lot like they sent a Catholic book to attack people (they’re homophones in US English, but not in British English), but fortunately people are likely to double check what they heard with that one.
On a less serious point, a friend of mine from Essex (where the accent is similar to London but not exactly the same) was once telling an American bloke we’d just met that she’d recently got a new house. In her accent (and mine sometimes), that’s pronounced like ass, but you draw out the a. He was genuinely baffled about why this woman he barely knew was telling him she’d got a new ass and was really happy that it was so much bigger even though it needed a lot of work. He kept looking down at her backside and saying it looked fine. I probably should have stepped in to explain sooner but I was enjoying the confusion. I didn’t add to it by asking things like whether the plumbing in her “ass” was OK but I really wish I had.
DP
(Potential misunderstanding with that acronym too :D)
*Why Britain Is Having a Whale of a Laugh Over ‘Free Willy’
By DAVID GRITTEN
NOV. 23, 1993 12 AM
SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
LONDON — The Warner Bros. summer-hit kids’ movie, “Free Willy,” about a boy who helps return a captive whale to its natural habitat, is to open in Britain in February–but English audiences are already reacting.
The trailer for the film, which grossed nearly $77 million in the United States, is already playing at several theaters around England. But instead of the misty-eyed heartstring reaction the film received in the States, the trailer is being greeted with giggles and guffaws.
If that surprises you, then you’re probably unaware that in Britain “willy” is the common slang for penis. Which gives the title of Warners’ feel-good family film quite a different spin.
. . . .
One recent London theater audience seeing the trailer was reduced to helpless laughter from the moment the title came on screen.
And at least one heckler in the audience offered his own punch line: “Free Willy? That’s not a film title–that’s a special offer.”*
I’ve told the story here before about witnessing a child speaking on the phone to her little brother. He’d called to say he’d been stung by a bee. She asked where a few times, repeating the question with mounting urgency, and finally blurted out, “No! What part of your body?” Her little brother had been saying, “In the kitchen.”
Only a little off topic: I had a hilariously embarrassing moment in an upscale Japanese restaurant. An elderly woman in formal dress served us appetizers that included some kind of deep-fried crab eggroll. It was about as long as your outstretched hand and reddish-orange the way crab is, and it was covered in crusty goodness. There wasn’t anything but chopsticks and I didn’t want to shove it in my mouth in such a fancy place, so I asked the server how I was supposed to eat it. She came to full attention, practically glaring, and said, “Excuse me?” I repeated the question, smiling and adding that it wasn’t a big deal for me and that I just didn’t want to offend anyone. She let the slightest smirk emerge and explained that it was a rolled-up towel for cleaning my hands. I’d mistaken the orange loops in the terrcloth for crusty goodness. I had a good laugh, but boy did I feel stupid, which probably fuelled my nervous laughter. The elderly server just stood there looking at me with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and contempt. I never did get to eat that fantastic eggroll that I’d imagined. Maybe after I see an optometrist.
Well I forgot to add that many years ago when my grandfather went to the hospital at the age of 86 when he had a problem with his urine not getting away, he was asked Have you ever been in hospital before? And he said Yes! Visiting people! Also, my aunt went to the hospital a few years ago for an appointment and the doctor asked her Why are you here? And she said Because you sent for me! It’s a bit like asking if the Pope’s Catholic! Talk about begging the question! Some of these things were actually really funny in fact.
American author has something similar happen to her when she thought the British legal expression “death recorded” which she thought to mean “execution” when in fact it meant the exact opposite thing — that the prisoner had been pardoned. She wrote a whole book based on the notion the British had executed men for homosexuality when in factor they had been pardoned. She found out she was wrong during a live BBC interview. More here:
https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/naomi-wolfs-new-book-canceled-after-major-errors-discovered.html
I was told a beaut of a story by a senior co-worker a few years ago – related to me as the absolute truth, so I take it at face value. This co-worker - let’s call him Dave - was Scottish, but had spent a few years working in the US office, and took the opportunity to do a bit of sightseeing with his young family whenever the opportunity presented itself. Finding himself with a few days free in July, he picked a destination and rang up a hotel in order to book a room - from the 4th to the 6th.
Hotel clerk said: *Sir, we have no rooms for those days. That’s Independence Day. *
Dave said:* I’m sorry, I didn’t appreciate that.
*
Dave meant: Oh Dear! I failed to pick up on the fact that this was a major US public holiday. Of course you’ll have no rooms at this late date – so sorry for my foolishness!
US Hotel Clerk understood this as: Really! How dare you – I did not like that at all!
This only works if he wasn’t shitting me about (certain) Americans thinking that the British are still so angry about independence that it’s provocative to even mention it in their company (the truth being, of course, that the date and event meant so little to Dave that he failed to even pick up on the significance of it).
j
My uncle used to love having his wife tell people about the new wooden deck they were building. She’s from New Zealand, so to American ears her short "e"s sound a bit like short "i"s.
Here’s one from maybe thirty years ago, pre-internet days. There were two erudite articles in one of the quality Sunday newspapers, the second a week after the first. I didn’t see the first article (and despite everything being on the internet, I have never found it), but it was a discussion by a Learned Professor of the line from Hamlet:
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.
A hawk from a handsaw? These days you’ll find discussions of this in a few internet forums (like this), but back then debate took place in newspapers – and this Learned Professor had argued at length and with great persuasiveness that what Shakespeare meant by handsaw was, in fact, heron.
I saw the second article a week later which, if it showed nothing else, proved that plenty of plasterers are readers of quality newspapers, and that they were happy to take the time to chime in on the debate and enlighten the Learned Professor. A handsaw is, well, a handsaw. And a hawk is one of those things you use to hold plaster as you are plastering a wall – as in lath-and-plaster construction. Which was kinda popular when Shakespeare was around. (And which also requires, y’know, a handsaw.)
Ah, feet of clay. It was a very funny article. The debate rumbles on – but I know what I choose to believe.
j