Mispronounced misunderstandings.

Yesterday I went shopping for tea pots and tea infusers on Glen Huntly Rd, a relatively well-to-do part of town.
I went to one shop where the sales ladies were chatting away and didn't stop when I came in and looked around. When I asked them if they had teapots the conversation went like this:

Lady 1: there's some floral ones over there if you are into that sort of thing

Me: ah ok, hmmm

Lady 2: we also have the bogan collection, that might be more your style

Me: excuse me, what collection?

Lady 2: the BODUM.

Me: oh goodness, I thought you said bogan!

Lady 2: no, but I'm going to call it that from now on.

I'm jolly glad I clarified that one, and would have been very shocked but slightly amazed that a nice lady who works at a fancy homewares store would have the balls to call #nomakeup me a bogan. I also told her I would have been suprised for someone to refer to one of their own products as bogan as well, not really a way to up sell in Elsternwick. 



This is not the first time words or accents have been confused and upset people I have been involved with (autocorrect not included as this is a whole different category)..

Being from NZ, I had a few accent difficulties when I moved to England on my GAP year. I was working as an assistant in the P.E department, and things such as asking for a pen used to strike fear into my heart for the mickey would be taken out of me, or I'd be told that there are no pins in the office.

One afternoon I went to a fair amount of effort trying to retrieve the ball pump from the kit store, carrying it to the office, finding a space to plug it in and clearing the area for the potential of pumping balls.
When the teacher who made this request came back she was suprised I was gone so long and why I had not bought back the BOARD PEN she asked for.

 
Ball pump... Board pen.
Whether I messed up or misheard; I certainly felt deflated.

See, in England, they call undies pants. We call trousers or trackies pants.
You can imagine the looks of horror on the children's faces when after their P.E warm up I asked them to take their pants off.

"But Miss Simmons, we can't take our pants off!"
"Yes you can, warm up is over, it's time to play, hurry up and take your pants off!"
I can't remember how I clarified what I meant and how I managed to keep my job, but I had to quickly adapt.

Living in Denmark, like any foreign country, has it's language faux pas. When I broke my ankle doing gymnastics, being rushed to a foreign hospital was as scary as that feeling you have when you are travelling and go to find your passport in your bag and you search many different pockets and can't find it so you rewind in your mind where you could have left it, and start planning how you are going to get out of that country with no passport. (Usually you find it inside a book or something)
Yes it was scary!

Fortunately it was Scandinavia so everything they did to me, including the operation, was free- but back to the story.
After X-rays in my sweaty gymnastics clothes, and an embarrassing one legged shower, they came back with the results. It was like this:

Dr: Ok, your ankle is broken here and the bone is rotated out like this

Me: is that the bit I could feel sticking out?

Dr: yes. We are going to operate on you tomorrow, but first we will put you in a casket.

A casket?!!! What, so the operation is free but they shove you in a coffin overnight so that they don't need to use anesthetic because you are already dead??
Turns out casket is Danenglish for plaster cast. And they only gave me a half one since they were cutting me open the next day, which made my break out of hospital that night easier, but that is another story too..... 



What prompted me to write this, aside from hopefully entertaining you with some jovial anecdotes, is that 2 things have become apparent to me.

1. In our lives nowadays, we could go through without talking to anyone and thus never have these social kerfuffles: self serve checkouts, online shopping, walking around with earphones in.... I don't know if it's me, or people are being lazy or what, but lately I have had people skulking over my shoulder or behind me waiting for me to sense them (and probably get a fright) instead of saying excuse me. EXCUSE ME. Perdon, Excusez-moi, unskyld mig, Arohaina mai. It's not something that can get lost in translation is it?

2. Our vocab, comprehension and grammar is slipping away as fast as those polar ice caps melting. 

 It's not what you say, but it's how you say it. And if you say it at all. 

Jj