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#1
27th June 2022, 06:25 AM
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Silly international embarrassments
I was playing an online Scrabble game with an international player, from Norway if I remember correctly.
I played PENCE, just to see if the game would take it. (Proper names are not allowed.) It did! So I started this chat: Me: "I didn't think that was a word!" Opponent: "It is money." I slapped my forehead  - and said,"Duh! I was thinking of the VP." "What is VP?" "The ex-vice president under Trump." They proceeded to slap their forehead, too. "Ooh, of course! LOL! Mike Pence." Just a funny culture glitch. Can y'all tell any stories like this? 
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#2
27th June 2022, 07:03 AM
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My sister's boss/friend is South African (the same one who once had to climb a tree to avoid an angry mamma hippo) and lived for a while in England. One they had an argument when he asked her to get a bag of chips at the store and she got potato chips; he knew those as "crisps" and what he wanted were tortilla chips, which are apparently what's meant by "chips" in the UK. So she told him that if he wanted crisps to ask for chips, and if he wanted something else to either be more specific or get his own snacks
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#3
27th June 2022, 08:46 AM
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I thought chips were french fries? Shows what I know.
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#4
27th June 2022, 08:52 AM
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#5
27th June 2022, 09:09 AM
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#6
27th June 2022, 09:29 AM
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A few years ago I was in the Netherlands for a conference. Almost everyone spoke English, but not always perfectly. The hotel we stayed in served dinner, which was included in the room rate, so w ate there several times. Each night we had to have someone translate the chalk board with the menu. One night the hostess couldn't come up with the exact correct translation. After some thought, she smiled widely and said dinner was "Boiled Cow." We ate elsewhere that night.
The trip was in August. The tail end of hurricane Gloria was in the North Sea. The temperature dropped into the low 40s. I tried everything I could think of, including a Dutch/English dictionary to find gloves. Everywhere I went people looked at me like I was crazy, even after I found the Dutch word. Finally, a shop keeper enlightened me. It wasn't that they didn't understand, it was because it was AUGUST! No matter the temperature, gloves aren't available until October. 
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#7
27th June 2022, 09:45 AM
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My brother was on a ski trip at Chamonix. He probably remembered more of his high school French than his friends, but that's not saying much.
So, they get a couple of bottles of wine. And none of them know the French word for "corkscrew". So, after a bunch of hemming-and-hawing, one of them is able to ask the clerk for... then mimics pulling a cork out with a "POP". "Oh, oui,oui, misure!"; clerk ducks down and brings up a corkscrew.
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#8
27th June 2022, 09:51 AM
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I hope that clears it up.
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#9
27th June 2022, 10:04 AM
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That’s the way it was explained to me by a young lady from England. Hence Fish and Chips = fish and French fries. Crisps are those things that come all broken in a bag and make you fat. But she also spoke of jacketed potatoes and I’m at a loss on that one. Must be a cold climate thing. I guess we’re more shirt sleeve potatoes here in the US.
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#10
27th June 2022, 10:13 AM
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Jacketed potatoes are baked potatoes.
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#11
27th June 2022, 10:19 AM
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I've always seen "chips" both home and abroad as more steak fry than shoestring fry.
Jacketed potatoes as opposed to the way the Brits usually cook them (and just about anything else!) peeled and boiled to within an inch of their lives.
__________________
I often wonder what people have against the horse I rode in on.
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#12
27th June 2022, 10:25 AM
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Now I am hungry
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#13
27th June 2022, 10:39 AM
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And according to online menus and what people tell me, smaller fries are indeed called "fries" in England as opposed to "chips". Although a couple decades ago, "fries" were not in everyone's everyday vocabulary since when I was working at a Burger King in Florida, tourists would sometimes ask for "chips", so either all types of fries were chips to them, or they recognized different varieties but "chips" was the generic term. Not sure if that has changed in the intervening years.
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#15
27th June 2022, 11:08 AM
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Only maccas (McDonalds, even they now call themselves maccas in their ads now) etc call chips fries. The hot ones of all sizes are chips, for us so are the crispy potato things sold in bags. I have no idea why we don’t call them crisps like the Brits.
The definition of sandwich is pretty specific here, it is something between two slices of bread. It was very confusing for me in the US when it seemed anything that involved any sort of bread at all was considered a sandwich. If I wanted something in a bread roll, long or round or square I’d ask for it damnit. Subway has taught us to say sub but really, they are just rolls. Your butter and chickens are completely wrong colours, they should be reversed.
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#16
27th June 2022, 02:36 PM
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#17
27th June 2022, 02:37 PM
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#18
27th June 2022, 02:42 PM
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#19
27th June 2022, 06:06 PM
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Well, in any discussion of silly international embarrassments, Jim's going to come up sooner or later...
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#20
27th June 2022, 06:41 PM
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Don't think I've ever seen a yellow chicken though.
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#21
27th June 2022, 07:01 PM
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The butter that just naturally formed on the surface of our milk tanks (from the constant agitation) was yellow at all times of the year.
I'm going to guess that any color variation would be from changes in the feed.
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#22
27th June 2022, 07:15 PM
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Our chickens are pinky white, I saw a lot of yellowish chicken in Wisconsin but it may not be noticeable if used to it. Corn as feed was the explanation given
I only saw white butter but didn’t look at a lot of it. Our margarine is dyed yellow to look buttery.
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#25
28th June 2022, 07:45 AM
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Story #1 - It has been suggested that yellow-bellied, meaning a coward, may have been inspired by chicken egg yolks being yellow and chicken meaning coward. However, this cannot be as chicken with this definition didn’t pop up until around the mid-20th century.
Story #2 - This word originally applied to birds that literally have a yellow belly, like the yellow-bellied sapsucker. From there, it came to mean an insult for cowards. If you're afraid to ask someone on a date, you're yellow-bellied. If you're easily frightened or spooked, you're yellow-bellied. This is often used as an insult or challenge, like "What are you, yellow-bellied?!" Some stupid message board - https://www.straightdope.com/2134308...yellow-bellied Three different stories. Pick 'em.
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#26
28th June 2022, 08:49 AM
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I once told my friend's Abuela from a rural Mexican area that it was raining cats and dogs. Idioms don't translate well, even though I used the correct Spanish words. She thought I was facetiously referencing some odd supernatural occurrence.
Similar issue had me speaking of the hot air temp one Summer day as being like the fires of eternal damnation in Hades as opposed to us having uncomfortably warm weather. Silly blonde hair blue eye American teen trying to converse!  
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#27
28th June 2022, 09:09 AM
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It is not silly to be edumacated.
I think you are all missing the Latin, and therefore I am here to make you ever so extremely happy and stuff. capsicum annuum eu - chips/crisps de eu lapides sacculi - bag of chips / crisps scelerisque eu m- chocolate chips - no one outside the Vatican knows what these are lignum eu - wood chips - used to light a fire when a new pope announces/lights his/her first fart Happy to help.
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