Since moving across the Atlantic from the USA to London, one American expat has revealed five words and terms that her colleagues often use but has left her confused as to what they mean
An American woman living in London has shared the top five British words and expressions that her colleagues has said to her that made her confused as to what they mean.
Moving to a new country brings plenty of funny misunderstandings and culture shocks, and one American woman living in the UK has taken to social media to share the biggest differences she’s experienced since moving across the Atlantic ocean.
Known on TikTok as ‘AnAmericanLivingInLondon’, the female content creator has gained over 22,000 followers sharing her life as an American in London and the confusions that can come with it. This includes the differences in language, houses, and night life.
In one video that received over 122,000 views in just a couple of days, she shared the common terms she had to learn the meanings of when starting her job in the English capital.
“Things my English colleagues say to me that confuse me as an American working in London,” she said at the start of the video.
The first word that’s sparked confusion for her was ‘fortnight’, saying: “I thought that this was a video game, so when people said ‘put in fortnightly catch-ups’ I was like ‘so you got a PS4?'”
While ‘fortnight’ refers to a period of two weeks, Fortnite is the name of an online video game and game platform that’s available on most gaming consoles, including Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, as well as PCs and Macs.
She then moved on to the second saying on her list that she claimed she’d never heard before moving to the UK. The woman said: “Okay this might be more continental Europe and less British, when I came over, people were saying ‘vis a vis’. And I was like ‘what in the world does vis a vis mean?’
“Like they said it all the time and honestly I probably still don’t understand what it means.”
This weren’t the only things that confused the American, as she went on to explain: “Oh another thing, in emails, British people always write ‘RE’, like re, and it took me ages – I was like responding, recruitment, retelling? But no, apparently it means regarding. Maybe that’s me, maybe I’m just dumb and it’s not British.”
“Oh another thing,” she said as she quickly moved on to the fourth thing. “British people love to say diary instead of calendar – yeah like diary like when I was 14 I wrote in my diary about the boy I liked in high school.
“And still every time a British person’s like ‘you alright’ I’m like ‘do I have a tumour on my face? Yes I’m alright, are you alright?'”
