You got the hickory dickory?
January 21, 2006 | Travel
Over at one of my favorite blogs, whingingit there has been some discussion about fun brittish words which has inspired me to post the best of our ‘English as A Foreign Language’ list that we compiled while living in Liverpool for a year. Husband was getting his master’s at The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. We were pretty challenged, linguisticly, over there. If you have never heard a Liverpudlian accent (Beatles don’t count, a proper scouser), it is an unholy mixture of English, Scottish, and Irish and it’s proximity to Wales probably factors in as well. I must specify that I love language, have an aptitude for foreign languages and had lived aborad before, so it never even occurred to me that I would have any problem in ENGLAND where they speak ENGLISH. Silly, silly me. It is not just the accent, either, it is the intonations as well. When we first got there, before we got the hang of it, someone would say something to us, our poor little brains would still be a few beats behind, deciphering, when we would realize, ‘Oh. That was a question.’ Nice. I worked at a rental property company (a Lettings Agent in britspeak) and the first job they gave me to do was to go around to all the student properties and take an inventory of things that needed to be fixed. This was a fascinating job, by the way, because I got to go into so many people’s houses, like an anthropological study of the Brittish college student. One day, I went to a house whose tennant’s main complaint was that they needed a new ’snib for the git’. Not understanding, I asked questions that made her repeat this request a couple of times, to no avail. I had no freaking idea what a snib or a git was so I carefully recorded her complaint and reported back to the office. Of course, my co-workers understood right away that she had said ‘a snib for the GATE,’ and that a snib is a latch. This was the first of many good laughs they had at my expense.
So here it is, English as a Foreign Language:
quid = pounds, like ‘bucks’
chemist= pharmacy
flat = apartment
biscuit = cookie
bin = garbage can
hoover = vacuum
trainers= tennis shoes
stone = 14 lbs
loo = restrooms
cashpoint = ATM
skint = broke, as in poor
nick = to steal
rota = schedule
pissed = drunk, not mad!
snib = latch
hacked off = mad
boffin = clever
jumper = sweater
skip = dumpster
cotton buds= Q-tips
plasters= bandaids
done a bunk = took off, disappeared
lorrie = semi truck
slapper = slutty woman
first floor = the 2nd floor
garden = yard
asain = indian or pakistani, not japanese, chinese, etc
crackin’ = cool
chocker = full, busy
hob = the top of the oven, the burners
minging = gross
mac = raincoat
boot = trunk of car
fringe = bangs
naf = not hip
munter = unattractive person
moaning = complaining
whinging = pronounced ‘win-jing’ = whining
chuffed = pleased
budgie = small bird, like a parakeet
cant be bothered = its not worth it, thats annoying, ‘I cant be bothered to call her back’
fancy a pint? = duh. I just love this phrase!
The creative use of the word fuck, like, ‘he was wearing this big fuck off hat’ and fuck all = nothing
The title of this post is in honor of a dreamy member of Husband’s acting program who once sauntered up to me at a party and oozed in his south London speak, ‘Hello my china plate, you got the hickory dickory?’ *swoon* I am pretty sure he was just asking for the time, though.
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