English as used by the English.

[colin (imported)]

Subject: Council complaints

These are genuine clips from letters sent by local authority housing tenants to their council:

1. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it.

2. He's got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.

3. It's the dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.

4. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.

5. I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.

6. And their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

7. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them off.

8. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?

9. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.

10. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.

11. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen 12.50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster and 50% are plain filthy.

13. I am still having problems with smoke in my new drawers.

14. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.

15. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.

16. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces.

17. I want to complain about the farmer across the road; every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up and its now getting too much for me.

18. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.

19. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third so please send someone round to do something about it.

20. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.

21. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.

22. I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

23. This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2.

LOL

[skivvynine (imported)]

I lived in a British colony some years back. The meaning for some words are not the same in American English as it is in British English. One example is the word intercourse. It means people conversing with each other in British English. It means something else in American English.

[JesusA (imported)]

These point out the truth of the common aphorism that “The British and Americans are two nations divided by a common language.”

It’s been attributed to a number of famous people on both sides of the pond, from Mark Twain, to Oscar Wilde, to George Bernard Shaw, to Winston Churchill. Regardless of who said it first, it’s certainly true, and these are some of the funniest examples I've seen.

[A-1 (imported)]

First of all, Colin, you had me rolling on the floor laughing my BIG ass off...

I lived in a British colony some years back. The meaning for some words are not the same in American English as it is in British English. One example is the word intercourse. It means people conversing with each other in British English. It means something else in American English.

...second...

Skivvynine,

...around here, conversing? ...maybe, maybe not...

[Dave (imported)]

Women in Britain never wear fannypacks in public.

[colin (imported)]

It can be quite innocent to tell someone that you will 'knock them up in the morning'.

LOL

[strassenbahn (imported)]

And in the UK if someone is "pissed" he is drunk, not angry. Of course from an EU perspective perhaps the most important difference is between the American "balls" and the English "Ballocks". And while the graphic expression "get one's knickers in a twist" is starting to make its appearance in the US, I bet not one person out of a hundred here knows that in the UK "knickers" are "panties".

[colin (imported)]

And in the UK if someone is "pissed" he is drunk, not angry. Of course from an EU perspective perhaps the most important difference is between the American "balls" and the English "Ballocks". And while the graphic expression "get one's knickers in a twist" is starting to make its appearance in the US, I bet not one person out of a hundred here knows that in the UK "knickers" are "panties".

You are more or less right, but don't forget that it is sensible not to get a brit 'pissed off' at you, especially if he is pissed at the same time.

To me, knickers are navy blue, made of combed cotten with elastic at the waist and legs, which was the place that the girls who wore them kept their handkerchiefs. Of course, the term is simply a shortened form of knickerbocker which were loose breeches (or shorts) gathered at the knee and could be worn both as outer or under wear. As a boy, I was always embarrassed when my Mother took me to get school clothes and insisted on calling my gray school shorts, knickers.

LOL