What trips you up when reading books from different English-speaking countries?

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

Sort of like when the characters have a conversation over dinner or in the car. The conversation seems short on paper but suddenly they've completed a four-course meal or a 200 mile drive.... I guess we're supposed to assume there was more to the conversation but not all of it was worth including.

Also happens in movies.
One of my little annoyances is when it is in broad daylight and the character says we need to get to 54th Avenue (or whereever) and it is 4 blocks away, and when they arrive it is the middle of the night. How did it take 6+ hours to go 4 blocks.

Yes, yes it adds to the suspense element, but in a stupid way in my opinion.

[hobnail]

Back to food terms, what about boiled candies? When I see the word boiled I think of something in boiling water, like a boiled egg. So reading boiled candies would bring up weird and confusing mental images. I finally figured out that they were talking about what we in the US call hard candies, like Jolly Ranchers or Life Savers. The boiling was the sugar syrup, which is when you need a candy thermometer.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And seeing y'all used as a singular form is annoying as well.

Bingo!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by davidfor

It also sounds weird to Australians. Here, a "public school" is a government run and funded school and a "private school" is, well, a privately run school. They do get some funding from the government, but, charge fees to the students. The latter includes schools run by a religion.

It's the same in the US.

[gmw]

Hmm... no one has mentioned thongs. When an Australian puts thongs on their feet it can - so I am told - conjure strange imagery to residents of other countries.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

For me, it's the punctuation that catches the eye. Single vs. double quotes for direct dialogue, and the fact that in the UK they put certain punctuation outside quotation marks that would go inside them in the US.

I agree. It's when a book uses single quotes that does it for me. I much prefer double quotes. The thing is, in the UK, it's odd. Some books use single quotes and others use double quotes. So if you prefer one or the other, you get stuck with both. In the US, it's just double quotes unless it's a UK version with single quotes published that way in the US.

[JSWolf]

I like the imagery you can get when UK readers read US English.

When a character put on pants and that's it, in the UK, that would be putting on your underwear. You would have to put on trousers to cover the pants.

In the UK, going outside to have a fag is smoking a cigarette. In the US that's something completely different.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by gmw

Hmm... no one has mentioned thongs. When an Australian puts thongs on their feet it can - so I am told - conjure strange imagery to residents of other countries.

I never know what to call them and they go by a lot of names. When I was a kid, back in the 1950s and 60s we called them go-aheads. Now I'd call them flip flops. Maybe call them sandals but I think of sandals as being less casual, made of leather.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I never know what to call them and they go by a lot of names. When I was a kid, back in the 1950s and 60s we called them go-aheads. Now I'd call them flip flops. Maybe call them sandals but I think of sandals as being less casual, made of leather.

When I was living in Japan, they were zoris. When I moved back to the US, they were flip flops and people wondered what the hell I was talking about when I mentioned zoris.
Apache

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In the UK, going outside to have a fag is smoking a cigarette. In the US that's something completely different.

You may appreciate this page.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In the UK, going outside to have a fag is smoking a cigarette. In the US that's something completely different.

And doubtless get yourself arrested for public indecency...

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Apache

When I was living in Japan, they were zoris. When I moved back to the US, they were flip flops and people wondered what the hell I was talking about when I mentioned zoris.
Apache

I believe that in New Zealand they are called jandals, apparently a contraction of "Japanese sandals" in one of those delightfully common misattributions.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

You may appreciate this page.

How about a Golden Gaytime?

It was advertised for a long time with the tagline, "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own".

[Quoth]

I think if you have read widely (in time and space) and know what origin the book is nothing linguistic will trip you up.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by davidfor

How about a Golden Gaytime?

It was advertised for a long time with the tagline, "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own".

In 2018, several Indonesians attempted to boycott Unilever over the product due to its name and the rainbow variant in 2017 that was released to support the LGBT community. Unilever Indonesia released a statement in support of the boycotters, but also pointing out that Gaytimes have never been sold in Indonesia.