To learn a new language is to set yourself up for humiliation. But when you move to the country that invented your native tongue, you assume you’re on firmer ground. This is a dangerous fallacy.
The first winter I spent in Britain, as a stripling of a masters student, I lived in a house with four other foreigners—European all but not a Briton among them. It was on a routine shopping trip in early December that mince pies, as much a staple of a British Christmas as drunken office parties, first made their way into my life. I’d never before heard of them but the packaging was irresistible. It was a large red box with a picture of plump pies, one of them cut open to reveal generous amounts of filling spilling out of the glistening pastry. How could I resist? How could anyone?
I bought a couple of boxes thanks to Tesco’s generous two-for-one offer and put a batch into the oven the moment I returned home. When they emerged, they looked as inviting as on the packaging. I put them on a plate and—if you are any sort of purist, look away now—covered them in ketchup and chili sauce.
Readers unfamiliar with mince pies are probably wondering when this story’s punchline will make an appearance. I discovered that unforgettable December afternoon that if there is one ingredient mince pies do not contain, it is mince. (If you speak American English, this means "ground beef".) They did once upon a time—Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the history of the mince pie—but they are now sweet morsels for the festive season.
At the time, I was baffled and complained to some English friends. They were aghast and amused in equal measure. Nothing marks you out as a foreigner more than publicly discovering something every three-year-old knows. The whole thing put me off mince pies for life.
This is not a case of Americanisms versus Britishisms. Nor am I some sort of literalist who expects shepherds in his shepherd’s pie or cottages in his cottage pie. Words often change their meanings as they evolve. Sweetmeats, which mirror mince pies in their vegetarian tendencies, are based on an archaic use of "meat" as simply a word for "food". In the case of mince pies, though, the words stayed the same while the object being described transformed in character.
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.
And then there are those occasions when the dissonance is mainly ironic or metaphorical. Welsh rabbit (also called Welsh rarebit), a kind of British bruschetta slathered in melted cheese, has no rabbit and never has. It probably comes from a snide reference to Welshmens’ poverty or hunting skills. Toad in the hole, needless to say, contains no toad, but is a sausage concealed in batter; similarly, the American pig in a blanket is what the British, being prosaic for once, call a sausage roll.
But what about other languages that straddle various countries, like French, Spanish and Portuguese? Have our readers ever found themselves in similar situations when they travelled to a place where they spoke what they thought was the native tongue?
The first winter I spent in Britain, as a stripling of a masters student, I lived in a house with four other foreigners—European all but not a Briton among them. It was on a routine shopping trip in early December that mince pies, as much a staple of a British Christmas as drunken office parties, first made their way into my life. I’d never before heard of them but the packaging was irresistible. It was a large red box with a picture of plump pies, one of them cut open to reveal generous amounts of filling spilling out of the glistening pastry. How could I resist? How could anyone?
I bought a couple of boxes thanks to Tesco’s generous two-for-one offer and put a batch into the oven the moment I returned home. When they emerged, they looked as inviting as on the packaging. I put them on a plate and—if you are any sort of purist, look away now—covered them in ketchup and chili sauce.
Readers unfamiliar with mince pies are probably wondering when this story’s punchline will make an appearance. I discovered that unforgettable December afternoon that if there is one ingredient mince pies do not contain, it is mince. (If you speak American English, this means "ground beef".) They did once upon a time—Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the history of the mince pie—but they are now sweet morsels for the festive season.
At the time, I was baffled and complained to some English friends. They were aghast and amused in equal measure. Nothing marks you out as a foreigner more than publicly discovering something every three-year-old knows. The whole thing put me off mince pies for life.
This is not a case of Americanisms versus Britishisms. Nor am I some sort of literalist who expects shepherds in his shepherd’s pie or cottages in his cottage pie. Words often change their meanings as they evolve. Sweetmeats, which mirror mince pies in their vegetarian tendencies, are based on an archaic use of "meat" as simply a word for "food". In the case of mince pies, though, the words stayed the same while the object being described transformed in character.
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.
And then there are those occasions when the dissonance is mainly ironic or metaphorical. Welsh rabbit (also called Welsh rarebit), a kind of British bruschetta slathered in melted cheese, has no rabbit and never has. It probably comes from a snide reference to Welshmens’ poverty or hunting skills. Toad in the hole, needless to say, contains no toad, but is a sausage concealed in batter; similarly, the American pig in a blanket is what the British, being prosaic for once, call a sausage roll.
But what about other languages that straddle various countries, like French, Spanish and Portuguese? Have our readers ever found themselves in similar situations when they travelled to a place where they spoke what they thought was the native tongue?
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