Come Again?

[Sprailenes 47]

Every time I go out and have anything to do with bread, I ask for it to be brown and they don't know what I mean. I need to learn to say "wheat".

[SapphireDreams 71]

Another that came to mind is I say "bun" as in a round piece of bread.... everyone here says roll! I went to this place in the food court and got some chili, I asked for some buns with it.... the lady looked at me so funny, as if I was asking for some butt with my chili!! She said "what is that" so I said oh I mean a roll? Then she clued in!! My husbands family also calls them rolls instead of buns.

Haha R and I discuss buns vs. rolls in great detail. He just can't believe we call them buns... it's funny!

[Emancipation 2]

Kitbag?

[BH45 0]

Every time I go out and have anything to do with bread, I ask for it to be brown and they don't know what I mean. I need to learn to say "wheat".

Tell me about it.....LOL.

[cherylc522 0]

My husband now calls his winter knit hat a "toque" because I just Cannot call it a toboggan! WHY do they call it a toboggan? It's just crazy!

And why is the dog IN the floor, and not ON the floor? Whenever he says that, I have this vision of our house sucking up the dog INTO the floor, and it scares me!

And why, when he is helping me put groceries away, is he putting them UP, even if he has to bend down to do it? Why can't he just put them away?

And don't even get me started on "you'uns" ugh...####### is that?

so my fiance makes fun of me for calling it a toque, still calls it a toboggan or a beany? what is a beany?? and ya putting things up? not away? or getting off the car? for the longest time i was like what the hell are you doing ON the car, took me a while to figure out that thats getting out of the car. and getting down?? didn't have any idea what that was but thats when your getting out of the car to go into the house, your just getting down.

Edited January 19, 2009 by CherylandRichard

[Ban Hammer 13,343]

i gave up trying to tell people what time it is, as i use military time, which europe and south america also uses. 1800 hours gets a blank look from people, you have to say 6.

[trailmix 77]

Kitbag?

Well, your 'kit' is your stuff, so i'm assuming that it's just your bag of stuff.

[Emancipation 2]

Kitbag?

Well, your 'kit' is your stuff, so i'm assuming that it's just your bag of stuff.

tee hee.. yep.. it's a backpack.. I was actually just submitting it as a word that people here look at me funny for using (hubby included)

[Krikit 1,164]

Another that came to mind is I say "bun" as in a round piece of bread.... everyone here says roll! I went to this place in the food court and got some chili, I asked for some buns with it.... the lady looked at me so funny, as if I was asking for some butt with my chili!! She said "what is that" so I said oh I mean a roll? Then she clued in!! My husbands family also calls them rolls instead of buns.

That's happened to me too!

Every time I go out and have anything to do with bread, I ask for it to be brown and they don't know what I mean. I need to learn to say "wheat".

I learned my lesson after I asked for brown toast and the server looked confused and said "Do you mean you wanted it toasted really well?"

i gave up trying to tell people what time it is, as i use military time, which europe and south america also uses. 1800 hours gets a blank look from people, you have to say 6.

Haha. I understand the 24-hour clock. In fact, it's easier to understand than someone telling me it's a quarter of five.

Edited January 19, 2009 by Krikit

[Tracy 0]

My big word that i laughed about with my Canadian husband is he says decal as deckal. I told him he could not call it that down here or no one would know what he was talking about.

This is a funny thread because it is all things we have talked about!

[Emancipation 2]

My big word that i laughed about with my Canadian husband is he says decal as deckal. I told him he could not call it that down here or no one would know what he was talking about.

This is a funny thread because it is all things we have talked about!

Oh my gosh.. thank you for validating me.. I thought I was nutters!! I say deckal...

[TheATeam 0]

I do too, and hubby had no idea what I was talking about when I said it the first time. He says dee-cal.

[DeadPoolX 9]

the funny thing about the washroom - I ran into that here in the South and so now say restroom - BUT I was watching an old Andy Griffiths show and what do you think they said? They used the word washroom! Aunt Bea was telling Opie to go to the washroom and brush his teeth before bed or something like that - so they did use to use that word here!

The word that surprised me here was calling license plates 'tags'. We need to get new stickers for our tags at the tag office! It sure was confusing untiil I figured out what tags were.

I think that's because "washroom" was originally used in the U.S., but for some reason or another, it got changed later on. Apparently, Canada decided to keep it.

LOL yes pissed means drunk. "I got pissed out of my head last night" does not mean angry!

And Kathryn, the tags issue happened to me just weeks ago! When I went to register my car, my husband said I had to go to a tags place. I said you mean the DMV? What are you talking about, tags? I had never heard plates been called tags before.

I call my "gym shoes" sneakers, I never call them anything else! My husband calls them gym shoes too, even though he doesn't wear them to the gym!

Another one is my purse. People here call it a pocketbook, and I didn't understand what a pocketbook was at first.

I think the whole "pissed" thing depends on how it's used. If someone says they got "so pissed they couldn't stand up," it'll probably mean they're drunk. Likewise, if someone says "so-and-so really pissed me off," then that'd mean anger.

I say "sneakers." I've never liked "tennis shoes." As I've said before, in Texas they often prefer "tennis shoes," but since my parents were from New York, most of the terms I use were learned from them.

I've heard "purse" referred to as a "pocketbook." I like "purse" better, but the other works.

Here are a few more that I've noticed. Regarding school, I say grades and he says marks. Also, he differentiates between college and university. Americans use the word college to cover both. I say 5th grade or 8th grade and he says grade 5 or grade 8. Along that same line, he doesn't use the terms freshman, sophomore, junior or senior to denote 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades. In fact, he'd never heard of those terms.

Yeah... I had to remember to say "university" instead of "college" around my wife's parents. I once had a criminology professor from Ontario and when she learned I was visiting my in-laws (for the time), she specifically told me to say "university" and not "college," since the latter means something entirely different in Canada.

Truth be told, my in-laws have traveled to the U.S. plenty of times and so they knew how Americans use "college." I just think it's funny that they still use imperial measurements (which I, of course, find easier than metric). Actually, what's really interesting is that although Canada adopted the metric system some time ago, all of the people I've met still use feet and pounds when describing height and weight.

I guess old habits die hard.

I tend to keep things simple myself. To me roads are made of either concrete (boooo, too noisy and bumpy) or they're made of blacktop (yaaaay, now if only Houston would build their roads of it)

Shoes are shoes or running shoes. Same thing. I never have used sneakers although I know what they are. I suppose tennis shoes would be clean running shoes that are never worn outside.

I still get a kick out of being asked if I'd like a sack instead of a bag. To me a sack is something potatoes come in.

For Christmas, the threat of being bad when I was a kid was to get rocks or coal in your stocking. My wife said switches was what she dreaded as a kid.....So I bought her a light switch for Christmas. She was wondering what the heck was the reasoning for it. Then I told her "it's a switch." She said you silly goof. A switch is a tree branch. Tree branch? Learn something new I guess.

The "tags" thing in TX seems to refer to both the license plate and the window sticker (rear plate sticker in other states). To further complicate things, they also refer to tags as the registration tag. But to me it's always been the insurance sticker. Because in BC, you don't get a registration sticker for your back plate. You get an insurance sticker for the back plate. But in the US, insurance is simply a piece of paper that goes in the glove box. I'd never registered a car before I moved to Texas.

How bizarre to me it was, when I figured out that in Texas a car can have 2 license plates and 2 windshield stickers (one inspection, one registration), but there is no way of knowing if the car is insured or not unless you look at the paper inside the glovebox (which can easily be fraudulent because if you cancel your insurance, you get to keep the paper. And the police can't verify if the paper is good or not)

Yeah, the whole "two windshield sticker" thing can be a nuisance, but at least you don't need to carry your vehicle registration around with you. It's funny to watch movies where the cops ask, "License and vehicle registration, please." In Texas, all you need to show is your license.

I've mostly heard "bag" and maybe on rare occasions "sack" was used. Although I tend to think of "sack" as in "we're going to sack the town" or "we were good in the sack."

And as far as concrete vs blacktop goes... well, I haven't noticed a real difference. I think it depends what car you're driving (they all ride differently) and the condition of the roads. Unfortunately, the most heavily trafficked roads in Houston (i.e. Westheimer, Richmond and pretty much anything around the Galleria or Katy Freeway) are difficult to keep in good condition. The worst road around that area is probably Post Oak Blvd. That thing is a mess. It doesn't help that Houston seems to be in a perpetual state of construction.

i gave up trying to tell people what time it is, as i use military time, which europe and south america also uses. 1800 hours gets a blank look from people, you have to say 6.

I really don't understand why military time is so difficult for some people to understand. Just subtract 12 from the number. If something is 1500 hours, then subtract 12 to make it 3:00pm. Seems easy enough to me.

[Reba 2]

Truth be told, my in-laws have traveled to the U.S. plenty of times and so they knew how Americans use "college." I just think it's funny that they still use imperial measurements (which I, of course, find easier than metric). Actually, what's really interesting is that although Canada adopted the metric system some time ago, all of the people I've met still use feet and pounds when describing height and weight.

I guess old habits die hard.

Has more to do probably with education than habit. I'm 41 years old, and when I started school, we were learning Imperial measure. Then we switched to metric, confused the heck out of me. All of a sudden, I didn't weigh as much, but the speed limit on the 404 went up by 40! My parents generation never learned metric in school (they're 61 & 62 y/o), nor did my grandparents. So, only the last 2 generations have really been "all metric", except for the next generation after mine, which would really have been about half and half, because while at school they learn metric, at home it would still be confused because the parents learned sort of both, and measure distance in time, and don't quite know what a kilo is, so they weigh themselves in pounds, and yet they're 178 cm tall. Heck, even at the doctor's office you get weighed and measured in pounds and inches. Only at the licensing office do they want kilos and centimetres! And no one knows how to convert miles to kilometres, so distance is measured in time. Like "how far is it to Barrie eh?" "OH, it's bout 45 minutes or so".

It took me a couple of years living down here though to figure out what temperature it was outside. I couldn't tell you anymore what -10C is like. It just sounds dang cold now!

[SomberCat 0]

Truth be told, my in-laws have traveled to the U.S. plenty of times and so they knew how Americans use "college." I just think it's funny that they still use imperial measurements (which I, of course, find easier than metric). Actually, what's really interesting is that although Canada adopted the metric system some time ago, all of the people I've met still use feet and pounds when describing height and weight.

I guess old habits die hard.

Has more to do probably with education than habit. I'm 41 years old, and when I started school, we were learning Imperial measure. Then we switched to metric, confused the heck out of me. All of a sudden, I didn't weigh as much, but the speed limit on the 404 went up by 40! My parents generation never learned metric in school (they're 61 & 62 y/o), nor did my grandparents. So, only the last 2 generations have really been "all metric", except for the next generation after mine, which would really have been about half and half, because while at school they learn metric, at home it would still be confused because the parents learned sort of both, and measure distance in time, and don't quite know what a kilo is, so they weigh themselves in pounds, and yet they're 178 cm tall. Heck, even at the doctor's office you get weighed and measured in pounds and inches. Only at the licensing office do they want kilos and centimetres! And no one knows how to convert miles to kilometres, so distance is measured in time. Like "how far is it to Barrie eh?" "OH, it's bout 45 minutes or so".

It took me a couple of years living down here though to figure out what temperature it was outside. I couldn't tell you anymore what -10C is like. It just sounds dang cold now!

The metric system for my generation in the US is laughable. I am 38 and was in elementary school when the US decided to go metric. I remember in either 3rd or 4th grade (late 70's) all of a sudden they started laying this meter and celsius stuff on us. We did it for a year or so and by the next year, we never heard about it again. I've had extensive conversations with my SO about this and from what I understand, both Canada and the US were supposed to convert at the same time. However, we backed out and you kept going. From everyone I've spoken with and work with in Canada, it seems that if they're my age or older, they're great with Imperial, but if they're younger than me, they're metric only.

My son did spend a lot of time last year (6th grade) on metric which kind of surprised me. I have no clue about metrics, but have caught onto celsius pretty well with the cheating method (double and add 32). I also LOVE to drive in Canada as it seems like I get everywhere so much faster than I thought I would. When I see the distance signs, my mind always thinks miles and calculates ETA accordingly, but a while later I realize I had a brain fart and then I get there a lot faster than I thought I would!