Separated By A Common Language and All That

American Rachel Lucas is still getting used to living in England:

Also, beyond TV, I’ve noticed the press even occasionally changes an actual quote. I’ll save and quote next time I see an example of this, but a few weeks ago, there was a story in one of the British papers here about the American woman who called the police and said she and her kid had been kidnapped, and that she was calling from the trunk of the car (which turned out a hoax). Except the story here (before hoax was known) was written something like, Desperate mum tells police: “I am in the boot and we are on the motorway!”

The snorfles never end here; I love it.

The other day, I had to look up “WAG” on Google because I saw it in headlines here so much. Means wives and girlfriends, but they use it to label any individual wife OR girlfriend of a famous man, particularly football players, by which we hillbillies mean soccer players. It confuses me a little, because a woman is EITHER a wife OR a girlfriend, is she not? They call Victoria Beckham her husband’s “WAG” and that makes me tilt my head like Sunny does when she senses bacon. Victoria is his wife. Not his wife and girlfriend. Mayhap an English reader can set me right on this.

I also had to look up “natter” because I see it in so many ads, usually for phone plans, as in “Have a nice natter!” and I was all, that sounds dirty. And they pronounce it nattah, which makes it sound even more naughty somehow.

But it simply means a long, idle chat. What I love is the site I landed on gives synonyms, and they touched my ‘Murrican heart: “chew the fat” and “shoot the breeze”. They natter, we chew and shoot.

Comments

[Spartacus]

Except, of course, for the infamous "nattering nabobs of negativism" (uttered by Agnew but conceived by Safire).