Rhana Griffin

Ahhhh… the English language. It’s a wonderful thing isn’t it?

NO! ITS BLOODY WELL NOT! Its confusing as all hell!

The other night, I was having a conversation about jelly wrestling. Only, I was speaking with some stateside buddies who, of course, were referring to it as JELL-O wrestling. So I had to explain. Your Jell-o, is our jelly… while our jam is your jelly.

You can imagine their sentiments of “ick” when I mentioned jelly wrestling!

And I got to thinking, because this isn’t the first time I have had problems with the so-called “English language”

Whilst in New Zealand I had cause to wonder why the hell my aunt was going to the DAIRY for milk – and what the hell they were doing selling newspapers and cigarettes! I mean milk COMES from a dairy, but you buy it from the shops. I then found out (much later) that New Zealanders call their local deli/corner shop the dairy. Go figure!

Reading my young mans cook book I discovered a whole page dedicated to the different uses of words for different “English” speaking countries.

I will concentrate on the Australian vs American.

Our biscuit is your cookie, but your biscuit is our scone.
Our capsicum is your bell pepper.
Our pan is your skillet.
Our spring onions are your scallions.
Our Hundreds and Thousands are you nonpareils… WTF? I cant even SAY that! And I simply cant imagine asking my kids if they would like some nonpareils on their icecream! They would probably scream and run away!

Oh… and don’t even get me STARTED on polony. Our polony is your bologna. Only in Tasmania, my adopted home state, it is not polony it’s devon. And if you travel to SOUTH Australia its bloody FRITZ!!

How many words can their BE for mushed up offal and butcher floor scrapings?

It’s confusing as all shit as it is, but when you throw an accent or two into the mix well…. you may as well just throw the bloody towel in RIGHT now!

Lets go back to the New Zealanders. Their ‘i’ sound is pronounced more like an ‘e’ for example. I say fish and chips, a NZ’er would say fesh and cheps.

You can just imagine it.

Me “Gosh those donuts are yummy, I could eat a few more of them”

NZ’er “Really? I had sex the other day”

Me “Oh… well that’s just grand but…. I thought we were talking about donuts”

NZ-er “I WAS talking about donuts you dumbarse. I said I had SEX”

Me “Ohhhhh…. so you had some kind of weird sex involving donuts. It all becomes clear now”

NZ’er smacks me over the back of the head

You see where I am coming from?

It’s the whole you say tomato, I say tomato thing. And see that? For you to read that properly, for it to sound right in your head I would have to write TOMARTO. And that’s just bullshit!

I have an unusual name and so I usually tell people to remember banana and they will remember my name. Because that is what it rhymes with. But for my stateside buddies… that COMPLETELY goes out the window because you pronounce banana completely different to how Aussies do!

So you know what. I give in. I give up. I throw in the towel because it is NOT all English.

Starting now, I am only speaking French. You should try it. No one will understand you but you are guaranteed to get laid. French being the language of lurrrve and all ;)

Maintenant, je dois pas faire cuire quelques francs dans ma poêle, sans nonpareilis merci beaucoup. Amour à tous