Heading into London from South America, I was looking forward to being able to communicate in the same language, instead of relying on Google Translate.

Ha!

The young lad at the botanic garden ticket booth has repeated a question for the third time. Each time my reply was “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” And I’m still staring at him blankly. I’m wondering if I can ask him to say it in Spanish; that might be easier to understand. (Google Translate really needs to expand their functionality to include British to American translation!) I’m too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it a fourth time, so I answer “no” and hope it’s the right answer. (It seems to be, because he hands me my entrance ticket.)

And it’s not just the accent. I notice on a walk yesterday a whole new vocabulary out here. It looks like fly-tipping is bad (criminal, even), but the ha-ha deserves a “save the ha-ha” campaign. I’ve heard cow-tipping is illegal in the US; wonder if it has something to do with that?

It turns out it’s the ha-ha that has to do with cows—it’s a ditch used on farms to keep farm animals away from private gardens, and some people are not happy about its demise. And fly-tipping means illegal dumping. (From Wikipedia: The term fly tipping is derived from the verb tip, meaning “to throw out of a vehicle”, and on the fly, meaning “spontaneously or extemporaneously; done as one goes, or during another activity” – to throw away carelessly or casually.)

So there you have your (British) English lesson for the day.