With one full week under my skinny belt, I'm even more glad that I decided to come on this adventure than I thought. This is truly an
I thought it best to begin a diction-ry of new words I've learned and will be using, as well as document some of the differences I've noticed between New York and London, or the U.S. and the U.K.
Alors, I present The Blonde Parisienne's Diction-ry/Guide to the Brits.
thick - what the English use for stupid. However, usually referring to a person or a thing being thick.
I.E. A thick bloke, would be appropriate.
crisps - chips. Which does seem to make more sense since there are are, in fact, crispy. Not to be confused with chips (below).
chips - fries. A la - Fish and Chips. A very popular dish of fish fingers and fries. This makes no sense as fries are, in fact, fried and in no way resemble the shape of a poker chip or Chip, of Chip and Dale. This leads to a lot of confusiosity for me.
jelly - jello. So, telling someone here that you are American and love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches gives them a very strange mental picture of peanut butter and wiggly jello on toast. No wonder they think we are nuts. What we call jelly, they exclusively refer to as jam.
having a laugh - this does not mean laughing about something, but rather making a joke.
I.E. "Are you having a laugh? means "are you kidding me?" My English friend Amy always says this, and the mere expression causes me to laugh - but one would not say that I am actually "having a laugh" - get it?
fancy dress party - costume party. fancy meaning goofy, which is quite confusing, really. I'm not sure what they use for an actual party where you must dress fancy by American standards. Perhaps an unfancy dress party?
smart - stylish. I.E. "Don't you look smart," is a very nice compliment and not something you say only when someone tries on reading glasses. Smart is used in place of nice. Which actually does make sense when you consider the opposite terms. If you don't look smart, then you look the opposite, which is stupid. As opposed to looking mean, the opposite of nice. It is important to look smart everywhere you go in London. Which means, no more running about in my Lululemon clothes and no makeup all day. Which is really not brilliant at all.
trolley - this is not an old fashioned train you board to take a nostalgic ride, but instead a cart at the grocery store. I got quite excited when I first heard there were trolleys at the grocery store and was quite disappointed when they turned out to be plain old shopping carts. Oh well.
tick - as in "tick the box," instead of check the box. Not a little bug that is found in the woods.
top-up - refill, load. As in "top-up your oyster card." An Oyster card refers to the pass one uses for the tube, not a greeting card with animated oysters on it, as I initially thought.
One of my favorite differences so far is grocery shopping.
I couldn't up make things as absurd sounding as one can find in the Marks and Spencer. Like Reversy Percy, Bacon Lollis, Curly Wurly. A lot of things are also named things that describe their contents rather than a brand name
thick - what the English use for stupid. However, usually referring to a person or a thing being thick.
I.E. A thick bloke, would be appropriate.
crisps - chips. Which does seem to make more sense since there are are, in fact, crispy. Not to be confused with chips (below).
chips - fries. A la - Fish and Chips. A very popular dish of fish fingers and fries. This makes no sense as fries are, in fact, fried and in no way resemble the shape of a poker chip or Chip, of Chip and Dale. This leads to a lot of confusiosity for me.
jelly - jello. So, telling someone here that you are American and love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches gives them a very strange mental picture of peanut butter and wiggly jello on toast. No wonder they think we are nuts. What we call jelly, they exclusively refer to as jam.
having a laugh - this does not mean laughing about something, but rather making a joke.
I.E. "Are you having a laugh? means "are you kidding me?" My English friend Amy always says this, and the mere expression causes me to laugh - but one would not say that I am actually "having a laugh" - get it?
fancy dress party - costume party. fancy meaning goofy, which is quite confusing, really. I'm not sure what they use for an actual party where you must dress fancy by American standards. Perhaps an unfancy dress party?
smart - stylish. I.E. "Don't you look smart," is a very nice compliment and not something you say only when someone tries on reading glasses. Smart is used in place of nice. Which actually does make sense when you consider the opposite terms. If you don't look smart, then you look the opposite, which is stupid. As opposed to looking mean, the opposite of nice. It is important to look smart everywhere you go in London. Which means, no more running about in my Lululemon clothes and no makeup all day. Which is really not brilliant at all.
trolley - this is not an old fashioned train you board to take a nostalgic ride, but instead a cart at the grocery store. I got quite excited when I first heard there were trolleys at the grocery store and was quite disappointed when they turned out to be plain old shopping carts. Oh well.
tick - as in "tick the box," instead of check the box. Not a little bug that is found in the woods.
top-up - refill, load. As in "top-up your oyster card." An Oyster card refers to the pass one uses for the tube, not a greeting card with animated oysters on it, as I initially thought.
snog - you must know this one. Snog means kiss. But in a make-out, wet, tongue involved sort of way, not a peck. One would not snog their mom, for example. It is also the name of a frozen yogurt chain here similar to Pinkberry. Why they chose the name - I do not know.
curly-wurly - a delicious strand of caramel covered in chocolate, which is in a curly, long strip. I also had a grown man describe one of our products at the office as "the curly wurly one"
reversy-percy - a pig-shaped gummy candy. Percy pig was apparently a character created by the popular store, Marks and Spencer, and now has a line of sweets. This is one of my favorites to say with thick english accent.
zebra-crossing - a bit of road with white stripes painted across where it is safe for pedestrians to cross without having to dodge double deckers. Crosswalks are few and far between here, so when you find a zebra crossing you are relieved! However, it is pronounced zeb-rah, and there are not actually any live zebras involved, as I had hoped.
One of my favorite differences so far is grocery shopping.
I couldn't up make things as absurd sounding as one can find in the Marks and Spencer. Like Reversy Percy, Bacon Lollis, Curly Wurly. A lot of things are also named things that describe their contents rather than a brand name
Grocery shopping is one of my favorite activities in other countries. One would assume that groceries are more or less the same, but oh how wrong one would be. I remember my first trip to the grocery store in Paris. I couldn't understand a single label, so after staring at the dairy isle for nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out which type of "creme" was a delicious low fat yogurt, I remembered that I was in Paris - where is nothing is low fat, and everything is delicious - so I grabbed one of each type and called it a jour.
What differs in England is that while everything in France sounded mysterious and appealing, all the products in London have these ridiculous names, that literally cause you to walk down the aisle laughing, making grocery shopping a very comedic experience.
I am also completely puzzled by the complete lack of trash cans, or bins as they say. Apparently, one day some thick bloke started a fire in one, and so they removed them from the streets for safety. Way to pull an Eve and ruin it for the rest of civilization! This morning I literally had to carry my empty Starbucks cup for a full twenty minutes before I came across a bin to throw it in.
That's right - there is Starbucks, and it is just as same as in good old NY except that they sell mince pies instead of bagels. I'm still not entirely sure what a mince pie is, nor am I entirely sure that I want to find out.
I'm sure there are many more interesting discoveries ahead and new words to learn and incorporate into my British vocab-lry. Two of my best friends arrive in London today for the weekend, and one of them is actually English, so she should be able to teach me loads of new things to say.
I am full of excitedosity about their arrival! Tonight we're meeting for dinner at the Wolseley, so I've been eyeing the menu to decide what delicious thing to eat. According to the website, the plat du jour is a "Daube of Beef."
Daube....?
I'll be sure to let you know when I find out what that means!
Bon appetite tout le monde!
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