#326 Language Confusions

Made a quick late trip out to the gas station to refuel for a trip tomorrow.  $2.67ish per gallon.  "Tall Dark and Handsome" was on the register tonight - haven't seen him in a while.  I noticed they had "Sugar Daddy" bars for sale, and got all excited.  I used to love Sugar Daddies when I was in the fourth grade.  (They used to be a lot bigger then.)  I haven't seen them in ages.  TD&H kidded me about loving sugar daddies (the male type), and that led to a discussion about where the term came from.  The old Sugar Daddy was the biggest sucker (as in lollipop), and a person who will believe anything is a sucker, so the biggest male sucker is called a sugar daddy, because it fits beautifully on two levels. 

That led to a discussion about how differences in the use of language (he's from Pakistan), and the phoneme set you are exposed to as a child, can lead to mishearing and misunderstanding.  For example, he has difficulty hearing the difference between "can" and "can't".  If one does not pronounce the "t" distinctly, then the only difference is a glottal stop, and glottal stops are not easy for one raised on Urdu to hear.  It's not a part of the "phoneme set".  Also, some words in American english are used very differently from in the British english he had learned.

Which then reminded me of when Daughter and I visited England (we rented a houseboat), in the mid-80's.  She was about 11 or 12 at the time, and had gotten her ears pierced, and they had gotten infected.  We were in tiny villages along the canals when I went looking for a drug store to buy some alcohol for her earrings.

I asked people on the street where I could find a drug store.  More than once, they  reared back and said "We don't do that kind of thing here!" and hurried away.  Once I stopped a woman and asked for a drug store because "I need alcohol for my daughter".  She looked me up and down, looked at Daughter, then back at me, and said "People like you don't deserve children!"  She looked like she wanted to spit on me.

Eventually it dawned on me that they misunderstood "drug store". 

I asked for a pharmacy, and got a friendlier reaction.  (Actually, it's called a "chemist's", but at least they knew what I meant by pharmacy.)

So, we got to the chemist's shop, and I searched the shelves, but couldn't find alcohol.  I went to the counter and asked for alcohol.  They said I had to go to the pub for that.

Boing.

I had to describe what the problem was, about the infected ears, and they said "Oh.  What you want is medicinal spirits!"

Such simple words.  Such a difference in meaning.

(I went back to England ten years later, and I was amazed at the difference.  England had, in the space of ten years, become so much more "Americanized" that I doubt I would have had the same problem.  Pity.) 

~~Silk