So the Swiss think we are all "English speaking". I beg to differ! There are many differences in the every day use of our language where we can get quite confused.

I always get caught out by my English friends when I ask my son to put on his pants. He wears them on the outside. Always! Not only when he is dressing up as Superman!

Take the simple verb - to p*ss. To be on the p*ss, to get p*ssed, to be p*ssed, to take the p*ss, and to be p*ssed on, can means a variety of different things in different country. (To those who don't understand - either to be drinking, get drunk, angry, to make a fool of, to be urinated on (or to have been "mean" to) ..)

How can we teach English here? The poor students will be brainwashed into thinking the teachers way is the only way!

The only hope they have is to realise that, just as every village here has a different dialect, so do no two English speakers agree on anything.

Do you have problems communicating with other people who think they can speak your language? When you ask for a pen, do they expect you to start sewing? Can you hear the difference between Truck and Chuck? Or should that be written Chook?

What happens at your place of work? Does the Boss get you to correct his/her Powerpoint presentations- and you correct the American spelling?

I'd love to help you, but I can't understand a word of what you've just written.

A Dutchman at my work launched a product called "Roger"

I can't even begin to imagine the looks on their faces in the UK head office when they heard about it. I *did* warn him.

An explanation of the use of Bring and Take in Ireland, as discovered by my Swiss wife:

Bring and take: Irish use of these words differs from that of English, because it follows the Gaelic grammar for beir and tóg. English usage is determined by direction; person determines Irish usage. So, in English, one takes "from here to there", and brings it "to here from there". In Irish, a person takes only when accepting a transfer of possession of the object from someone else – and a person brings at all other times, irrespective of direction (to or from).

• Don't forget to bring your umbrella with you when you leave.
• (To a child) Hold my hand: I don't want someone to take you.

My American father-in-law went on a bus tour of New Zealand. He commented at one point that at the end of every day, as they were approaching whatever hotel they would stay in that evening, the tour guide would start talking about chicken (which he assumed to be the dinner). Sometimes they would have this "chicken" for dinner, other times not.

I had to break it to the poor man that the announcement was not in fact about his meal selection but how they will "check-in" to the hotel.

Worse yet was me having to explain during a job interview years ago in Germany why it wasn't a good idea for this software company to name their product "The Final Solution".....

English spelling can be a bugger too.

I saw this sign at the Acropolis this summer.

It seems someone thought Cloak Room was actually spelled Cloackroom. Thankfully, they realised their mistake, took out the offending c and corrected the sign to read:

What happens when you ask for six pens?

Just don't ask someone to root something out for you in Australia!

We love it when girls root for their team. Don't "get the hump" there either.

Strangely enough they were looking at my legs..

i never understood that one...

You think this situation is unique to English? Put it in a perspective: all languages have dialects, some dialects then get 'an army, a navy and a flag' and they become languages. Then real trouble begins.

At some point in my life had I asked for a pen at a wrong place and at a wrong time I could have easily got my brains blown out. Literally. With an AK-47.

I picked up a prescription from the chemist recently and the pharmacist very kindly put the dosage instructions on the packaging in English rather than French.

It said, "One coffee spoon three times a day".

I'm presuming she took a guess that a tablespoon is called a coffee spoon in English, since the smaller measure is a teaspoon

I sure wouldn't reckon with that. I suggest you check back. In my youth at least, our coffee spoons were quite a bit SMALLER than a teaspoon!

We had table-spoons, dessert spoons, soup spoons, fruit spoons, grapefruit spoons, teaspoons and coffee spoons - and none of them 'tallied' with a similar spoon in my husband's household. I think a metric measure might be safer if the amount is important.

Oh no...maybe I overdosed the kids!

Thankfully, I checked the French instructions inside the packaging and got the right dosage. But it was so nice of the pharmacist to try and accommodate me. I am pretty loyal to that pharmacy ever since.

..........

It's good that you checked, but maybe next time you see her, you could ask the pharmacist what size she did mean. Someone else might make the same assumption as you but not read the French instructions.

I know this is off-topic, but I honestly don't think it is enough for the pharmacist to be 'kind' and 'nice'. There is really a lot of difference between a table-spoon and a coffee spoon - especially when measuring something in the mediciine line for a child.

I really think you should explain to the good lady at the chemists that it wasn't clear to you - and might not be clear to someone else. She could keep a spoon handy to show what she means if she wants to help her 'foreign' customers.

Some time ago I was asked by a rather good looking secretary at our office in south africa if I had a stiffy.
It turned out she was only after a 3.5" disk for the PC! ( the 5.25 used to be called floppy and the smaller ones were more rigid hence the name)

And of course Australia/UK/USA all have very different meanings to the word "spunk"

My American ex went into Boots and asked for band-aids, which of course no one understood.

But the funniest for me has got to be "eraser" and "rubber". I asked for the latter in the midst of a lecture and he said "now??????!!"