25 April, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I have three languages inside my head — American English, British English and French. In Paris, I totally reverted to using American English, so it’s been an adjustment to begin using British words again. And sometimes they just don’t come into my head fast enough.
Today at school I was running for the elevator — or lift — and the doors were closing, so I wanted to call out to the people inside to hold it for me. And my poor brain is so confused. I called out “Hold the….,” “Uh….hold the phone!” You know, there’s no way to recover from that error, so I just rode up three floors staring at my shoes.
In more English-language hilarity, I was observing a class the other day with a few of my classmates/co-teachers. In the class we were observing, one student was well below the level of his classmates and was holding up the whole lesson with his bumbling and confused questions. The born and bred Londoner sitting next to me leaned over and whispered in a tone of grave seriousness, “He should be put down.”
This made me laugh so hard I had to actually leave the classroom. What this woman meant was that the student should be moved down to a lower level class. But of course, in American English (but apparently not British English?), “put down” is a euphemism for killing an animal that is sick or dying. For example, “Our dog was really sick so we had him put down.”
It was the end of a very long and tedious day and my classmate/co-teacher leans over and essentially says, “This student isn’t as smart as the others. He should be KILLED.” I just lost it. I haven’t laughed that hard in at least a year.
Anglofille said @ 8:20 pm | britspeak |
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Sue Says:
April 25th, 2007 at 10:33 pmHate to break this to yuo, but “put down” means the same in Britspeak too. Hope the guy wasn’t a psycho!
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Sue: It’s funny, but I asked a few classmates and they were not familiar with this term. I looked in my American dictionary and it includes euthanize as a definition for “put down.” My British (Oxford English) dictionary does not list it as a definition for that term. Maybe it’s an American term that has been adopted over here? I don’t know. It’s a rather strange turn of phrase regardless.
Of course, perhaps my classmate actually wanted the student to be killed — and then later played dumb.
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Ouch- us in USA can’t appreciate it that way… We’re way too touchy right now…
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Yep, definitely a standard British phrase too. In fact, we invented it. Probably.
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Anita Says:
April 26th, 2007 at 12:09 amWe are touchy, aren’t we. This too shall pass.
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That’s hysterical
