I was born in Britain but like all babies I was born not knowing a single word of the local languages. I learned the essentials of grammar at primary school, a simple sentence, the cat sat on the mat, teaching me that you put the word the before the important subject of the sentence when talking about something else.
An Office and The Office
Nowadays in Asia, I hear Indians say, 'I go to office,' which should be, 'I go to the office'. As a language evaluator at clubs online, and an English language tutor to individuals, I point out the importance of A and the. The technical name for a and the is determiners.
A President and The President
You can address somebody or refer to somebody as Mr President, President, or President Obama. However, otherwise you must specify and distinguish between a president and the president. There's a distinction between a president and the president. A is short for any or one. The means the important one or the only one. You might ask, is there a president who can open the meeting? This would mean the president of your organization or another organization, one of several. But if you are asking for THE president, the important one, he is the president of this club or this organization.
British sentences go subject, verb, object.
Years later I learned that the Germans and Japanese in WW2, Word War 2, put the verb at the end of the sentence, which is why the British and Americans interrupt. But the polite Japanese listen like nodding dolls. The scientific Germans are observing and checking every word of your sentence. Like Einstein, whose name means one stone, waiting to hear the end of your sentence to find out what you are doing to do.
Euphemisms
As a child I had to learn euphemisms, polite words to hide facts from children, such as death. When I was under ten years old, at granny's, I heard somebody say, "She lost her husband". I replied, helpfully, "My mummy lost me in Woolworths. She could go and look in Woolworths." I was upset when everybody laughed at me. Nobody would explain why.
At school my mother paid for me to have elocution lessons. She wanted me to bilingual, to learn French and go to the Lycee Francais but they admitted children who had one French speaking parents so I did not qualify. However, I learned French O level and A level at school. After I left school and married and our son was born, I employed au pair girls to help in the house, choosing French speaking girls to keep up my French.
Language wise, all went well, until we visited our au pair girl's family in France. They offered me a cup of coffee and I said, merci, which is French for thank you. I never got my coffee. The reason was that the French say merci as short for, 'no, thank you,' and please is short for 'yes, please'.
From Europe I went to the USA.
Some Americaniiiisms we already knew were fall, for autumn, diaper for nappy. What I didn't know was that rubber is not sttionery. What the British call rubber, they call eraser. When I asked for a rubber in a shop in Washington DC, the assistant thought I wanted a condom. In the UK for a comdom I would have asked for a brand name, Durex.
You might think that in Australia, language problems would be fewer. So long as you know that good day is shortened to gdday, that a Sheila is any female, not necessarily named Sheila, a babie is a BBQ.
However in Australia I was told I could not enter a beach bar wearing thongs. Since I was pretty covered up in a beach robe, not wearing a swimsuit which looked like a g-sting,ght my outfit was acceptable. However, Austrlians saying thongs mean what the British would call flip flops.
About the Author
Angela Lansbury B A Hons is the author of ten books by regular publishers plus another ten self-published books.
About Angela The Speaker & Trainer
Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.
Angela has several blogs on speeches, comedy and song writing and organizing, writing intermittently, but writes almost daily on these three:
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