English words which confuse foreigners - how do you explain them? Owing to and due to

Owing To and Due To
I wrote this on the polyglot page in Facebook in reply to a query about which words people find confusing.
Owing to and due to are confusing. Owing to means because of. Due to is caused by. You start a sentence with Owing to. Owing to bad weather, the trains will be late. The lateness of the trains is due to bad weather.

Several times a week I visit Toastmasters Speakers' Clubs in Singapore and the UK and worldwide. I am often invited to be the Grammarian or Language Evaluator because I am a native English speaker.

I present a word of the day. Here is one I presented recently.

American - British English

automobile - car

hood of car - bonnet

cookie - biscuit

fall - autumn

cookie - biscuit

faucet - tap

pants - trousers

sidewalk - pavement

truck  -  lorry

trunk of automobile  - boot of car 

underpants - pants

British English - American

autumn - fall

biscuit - cookie

bonnet of car - hood

car - automobile

Lorry - truck

pants - underpants

pavement - roadway

tap - faucet

trousers - pants

boot of car - trunk of car

Taboo word – Actually!

*Please tap/clap if you hear the word of the day

or the taboo word!

LANGUAGE EVALUATION

COMPLIMENTS I shall be back to compliment those who used the word of the day. J

DELIGHTS I shall listen for delightful words and phrases:

alliteration; assonance; similes; metaphors; repetition, triads.

TIPS I shall offer free tips on:

Americanisms. British English. Singlish. Accents and Vocabulary.

Practising Perfect Pronunciation: l, r, s, t. Intonation and rhythm.

Good Grammar. Tenses; present and past. Articles 'a' and 'the'.

Come and visit one of Singapore's Toastmasters clubs.

Useful Websites
visitbritain.com
visitbritainshop.com
visitlondon.com
visitsingapore.com
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/07/flags-and-food-for-singapores-national.html

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and language teacher to individuals and companies.

Angela Lansbury, the author, - not related to Angela Lansbury the actress nor any of the other dozen people named Angela Lansbury or Lansbury.

I have many more posts on Americanisms and language. I teach English and other languages. I am a polyglot. Please share links to your favourite posts.

This Will Make You Laugh At Language Misunderstandings

Problems
You ask, 'Where do you live?'
Somebody replies, 'America'.
'Oh, yes,' you reply. 'Where?' (You mean which city.)
They repeat, 'America'.

Where can mean which country, which city, or which type of building, or what is the name of the street or block of flats.

Singaporeans use the word 'stay' to mean living. They ask, 'Where do you stay?"

Stay also implies overnight.

If I am going to Malaysia for the weekend, "I might reply, I'm just doing for the day. I'm not staying there."

You stay in a hotel. Few people are lucky enough to live long-term in a hotel nowadays.

Problems

Where do you live, exactly?Interesting, it is a curiosity - that the questions 'where?' can mean in general, which area or city, and specifically, which building. 

Do you know it?

I had an experience of misunderstanding of a basic, common question. I got off a bus in Singapore, map in hand, and asked a passer-by, "Do you know Sixth Avenue?" 

She replied, "No. Where is it?" 

For a second I thought she was being unhelpful and sarcastic. But she simply looked baffled. 

Back then, I reckoned her native language must use a different construction. 

Any English person would recognize, 'Do you know it?' as short for, 'Do you know it? If so, tell me where it is.' 

The answer would be, 'Yes over there,' or, 'Sorry, I'm a stranger.' 

I should have been more specific and asked, 'Where is Sixth Avenue?' 

Literally

An additional factor I did not know then, but know now, is that it might not be a question of linguistic confusion, but autism, taking everything literally.  

Newspaper Headlines

Newspapers use a lot of metaphors. I remember reading: Kinnock hits Thatcher. I assumed they meant it literally. A member of the opposition party had resorted to physical attack. I read on and discovered he had merely verbally hit her ideas.

Metaphors and Messages

English is full of metaphors and messages 'between the lines'. That makes it confusing initially, but full of long-term treasures and discoveries.

Why You Should Watch What You Say, Especially Metaphors, When Speaking To Foreigners

Problems:
1 You ask for something in a foreign country or in a foreign country, but the other person treats it as a joke. (Probably disguising and deflecting from the fact that they can't help and don't want to admit it.)

Singapore
Mostly Singaporeans understand English jokes and irony. If I get into a lift (called an elevator when you are in the USA), if it stops at floors two and three, I might say, "Now it will stop at floors four and five!" If I say this in a sarcastic tone, I will usually get a Chinese (facial type, orlanguage type) answering, "Yes, and after that six and seven!"

More rarely, I would get a scientific minded person telling me about how lifts are designed to remember or stop and how many lifts you need.

Joking in Florida, USA
Once I was at an airport in Florida, at the checkin desk, and I heard an announcement about anybody late should go to the check in immediately. I grinned as I said to the girl on the check-in, "I"m here. they must be calling the pilot. He can be late, because it won't go without him!"
She replied, absolutely stony face, in a factual tone, as if I was making a serious point, "The pilot is never later".

2 You make a joke and the other person takes it literally. For example, I arrive in Singapore and, with map in hand ask a passer-by the way, saying, "Do you know Orchard Street?"
She replies, "No, where is it."
I reply, "I don't know. That's what I am trying to find out?"
I puzzled over that a long time. "Do you know ...?" when asking the way is short for, "Do you know the way to ...?", or, "Do you know it? If so, tell me the way."
I wondered whether:
1 She is completely stupid.
2 The phrase, Do you know, just does not translate as a direction enquiry in her language.
3 She is the literal type.
4 When translating a foreign language, you concentrate hard on the exact meaning first. Understanding metaphors comes later.
5 Some languages don't have metaphors.
6 Some languages are very flowery, full of metaphors, whilst others are more practical.

English is full of metaphors, mostly literal descriptions from forms of transport or trades which were common in our grandparents' time, so their phrases have come down to us.

I was talking to a friend about visiting the Welsh ferry port village of Fishguard, taking the passenger and car ferry from Wales to Rosslare in Ireland. He said he had driven to Cork without stopping in Rosslare, and used the phrase, 'Rosslare was just a port of call'. 

I have often used or heard the phrase 'a port of call' without stopping to think about it. In the days of transport by boat, before planes, a port of call would have been used frequently to describe a port or route.
Nowdays, we usually say, 'a port of call' meaning a stopping place, where you don't stay long, which is not a port at all.

Later, a friend of mine on Facebook, looking at a giant see-saw, asked which friends wanted to ride. 

I embarked on a discussion of where it was, whether we could build one in a park in Singapore, and who to approach for permission. 

Her reply was that she was merely joking, answering the question, who do you want to ride with, not issuing a literal invitation.

Interesting. Some people - at one extreme treat everything, including serious things, as a joke. Others, at the other extreme, treat everything, even a joke, as if it were literal and serious. Most of us are in the middle. Some people, ultra-cautious, or keen to please, try to do both.

Flowery French
It is important to understand other languages in order to understand other people. For example, when I was single, I met a boy in a French-speaking country. He wrote me a letter full of flowery phrases. Now, these would sound great in a poem in English, a song in English, a translation of the Biblical Song of Songs. However, English is a more practical language, and I just thought it was too much too soon and he was not grounded in reality, an obsessive, a nutcase, a potential stalker. When I learned, years later, that French is a much more flowery language, I wondered whether he was merely writing in the style which he had learned at school was the best writing in French.

English Metaphors
The translation of common phrases can also create an odd impression. I said to a pupil in Singapore when I was a teacher, "It's raining cats and dogs". He looked out of the window and replied, "I see cats. No dogs."

I explained it was an idiom. If I had not done so, he might have thought I was completely mad.

Useful Websites For Travellers
duolingo.com - learn languages for free. I have several posts on leanring languages.

Author
Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer.