British English

This reminds me of a classic Belgian anecdote: "baguette" is called "pain français" in Belgium. Many Belgians go to a bakery in France and order some "pain français" only to hear "but Sir, all our breads are French".

There is a well-known example of this kind of misunderstanding in the Romance languages: in Italian, the word for butter is "burro". However, in Portuguese, this means "idiot" and in Spanish "donkey" (both languages preferring manteiga and mantequilla, respectively, to refer to the creamy bread-spread).

American tourists ask for a cheque (check) in British restaurants.
British tourists ask for a banknote (bills) in American restaurants.

Considering the quality of food in both of these until very recently, I sympathize with both their sentiments.

"Changes in society can also affect meaning: British “public schools” are, famously, private schools, but public in the sense that anybody who can afford to pay the fee can enrol, as opposed to private tuition. The description only started sounding odd after the expansion of education and the rise of publicly-funded state schools."
I have not read all the comments and so this may be redundant. Public schools are call public not because they are the opposite of private tution but because they are not parochial schools, that is, students from outside the parish may attend if other requirements are met.

While being different languages, Chinese and Japanese did share the same set of Characters, and this resulted in divergence of meaning of words with same characters:

Word Chinese meaning Japanese meaning
手紙　 Toilet paper Letter
汽車 Automobile Locomotive
湯 Soup Hot water

As a lad in South Dakota, I learned to call long thin fried potato strips "shoestrings," short for "shoestring potatoes". Arriving in New York as a teenager in the 1960s, I attempted to order a hot dog and shoestrings at a local stand. The plump older female stand operator spent about two seconds figuring out what I was saying, and then said, in the most contemptuous possible tone, "Call them a Frankfurter and French fries, boy."

Years later, right after Thatcher's election victory, staying in a let-by-the-week flat off Baker Street, I went out and purchased items that included, as I remarked to the sales clerk, "minced beef". "Or as we Yanks say it, HAMburger!"
"Ah! Gak!", said the clerk. "It has nothing to do with ham!"
I chuckled, and said in a quieter voice, "It's from the German city of Hamburg. Beef Hamburg style."
"Oh, I didn't know that" said the clerk.

The literal translation of "ty bach" in welsh is "little house" hence dotted across the welsh countryside are delightful little cottages called by their English owners "ty bach". It actually means "toilet".

Studying abroad in England I got a lot of strange looks when I described someone as having nappy hair. I got the joke when someone explained nappy meant diaper and I had to explain that nappy hair in the States means fuzzy hair.

And I also heard another weird Scandinavian reference. My dorm building was described as a 'Swedish prison' which my jet-lagged self couldn't fathom. It seemed a lot nicer than any prison I'd ever heard of and even nicer than most dorms back home. I can only assume that Swedish prisons aren't all that bad.

In Colombia, "le provoca un tinto?" is an offer of coffee. Elsewhere, it means "does the red wine make you angry?"

My father, a seafaring man, asked many years ago for fruit salad and cream during a run ashore in Hong Kong. He was delighted with the dish of lychees and other exotic and yummy desert components, less so with the dollop of Heinz Salad Cream. Easy mistake to make, I s'pose.

I've always resented mince pies for this very reason. It might be different I enjoyed dried fruit baked into pastry, but as it is, the whole notion of them is just a big let down.

Back in the 1970s my mother moved to Mexico equipped with basic get-by Spanish and on her first morning went to a local restaurant. She proceeded to ask the young, handsome waiter, '¿Tiene huevos?', literally 'Do you have eggs?' The waiter nearly died laughing and explained to her that 'huevos' was slang for testicles, i.e. she had just asked if he had any testicles. Apparently the way to ask about eggs was '¿Hay huevos?', or 'Are there eggs?'

Good to know for those with a fondness for eggs.

Haha I enjoy this article so much.. The same happened to me withe. mince pies .. I'm not a native speaker.. I actually learnd about mince pies in New Zealand and also expected meat instead of sweet stuff... I noticed though when I opened the package and saw suger on the top..(His thing still happen to me with german for example: I went to a typical restaurant in Cologne, and ordered Tartar and potatoes.. I was expecting the white sauce whith herbs.. Instead I got a little volcano formed pile of raw minced meat with a raw egg in the middle and an other little mountain of sliced onions. I was happy that Kartoffeln were Kartoffeln...:)

I have grown up an Israeli and got relocated to the US and then to Australia. The US-Australia transition was - I felt - going to be much smoother. It was the other way around.

While growing up in Israel the prevalent exposure to English I had was of the American variety - mainly because of the media and its bias. In Australia I have encountered myriad differences that I found curious - from the ubiquitous use of "keen", through the use of "serviettes" instead of napkins, the unfamiliar spelling of words like "centre" and "behaviour" and the common greeting of "cheers!" which I had to adapt instead of the US pacific "take care".

The difficulty in transitioning to English from speaking mainly Hebrew was easy in comparison - I had a relatively good grasp of the former. The hardest part was learning the idioms - some of which can be quite confusing. For the longest time I would confuse "the deal went through" with "the deal fell through", for example.

-- Arik

Living in Ghana, we often took the "tro-tro," the local name for minibus-style public transport. Holidaying elsewhere I've found them to be called "colectivos" or "tap-taps." Travelling recently in Guyana I asked a taxi driver what they called their minibuses. There was an awkward pause, then he said: we call it "mini-bus."

In Egyptian Arabic "maccwa" means "an iron" ,But in Gulf countries it's name of " Buttocks ".

Also the word "al-afeah" it means in Moroccan Arabic "the fire".
In other Arab countries it means "the health" ,so you should never say
to Moroccan "I wish for you al-afeah".

Yes, these days, mincemeat pies contain no meat (although the did in the South of the US when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s). Welsh rabbit contains no rabbit. Toad in a hole contains no toad. And then, of course, there's spotted dick...

neddie, be careful with the word "bicho" if you visit Puerto Rico. Down there, tires are called 'gomas." "Bicho" is something very different indeed. ;~)

In European Portuguese, "bicha" means a queue and "puto" is a boy.

In Brazilian Portuguese, "bicha" is old-fashioned slang for a male homossexual and "puto" is the same for a male prostitute.

You can imagine the confusion and embarrasment sometimes.

Also worth noting: "loup en papillote" is NOT wolf-meat. Sadly.

People in North Korea call what is called a squid in South Korea an octopus, and what is an octopus in the South a squid. It's a very strange swap given that the two countries had been one only until 63 years ago and both squid and octopus have been on the Koreans' dinner table for hundreds of years before the division. Oh, maybe we Koreans are the only people who care about how to call those creatures? You need to try some: then you will understand they taste (and wiggle on your tongue) very differently.