The Language Barrier

You’d think after living in London for almost 4 months, I’d be used to accents, the different words for things, etc. Nope.

First, the other day I was at a seamstress, having my graduation dress altered. We were talking about how it’s good that it’s made of this very light silky material, since it’s going to be so hot in Chapel Hill at graduation. I said something to the affect of “It’s literally going to be, like, 100 degrees there”. But I totally forgot that 100 degrees Fahrenheit is like 500 degrees Celsius… and in England they use Celsius. So I mean, that’d be like I said “It’s LITERALLY going to be 500 degrees there”… which it literally isn’t. Dur.

But this one’s even funnier. I was at school handing in my papers on Monday and I stopped in this little cafe there to grab a tea. The woman working there was, I believe, Scottish. And so I asked, “How much is that?” and she said “It depends.” And I said, “On what…? Like, how much is just that small tea?” and she said “It depends.” And I said, “I don’t understand. Is there not a fixed price for the tea?” and she said “It depends” and kept staring at me like I was insane. I was SO confused. But then all of the sudden it occurred to me—her accent made it sound like she was saying “Itdee pends”. But she was saying “Eighty pence”! So I said “OOOOH oh my gosh I’m sorry I thought you were saying IT-DEE-PENDS” and she laughed and said “Oh yis must be me accent!” and I said “Yeah, mine too!” and we had a good laugh and I got my tea for the cheap price of it depends.