What is the meaning of this cartoon? It is what can happen when you depend on a translating dictionary and when you are unaware that British and American English have some surprisingly different meanings for words that are spelled and pronounced the same.
Not long after I had started teaching ESL in La Jolla, a Swiss student arrived early to class and described what happened to her the evening before and how terribly embarrassed she was. She was working on homework and had made a mistake while writing in pencil, so she asked her 'father' for 'a rubber.' Her homestay mom explained that 'a rubber' in American English means 'a condom' and that we use the term 'an eraser' for the rubber object that removes pencil marks from paper. For more on the divide between these two Englishes, visit 'Many Englishes', and be aware that many translating dictionaries use British English rather than American.
Some other confusing words are the slang word,'pissed,' which in British English means 'drunk' but in American English means 'very angry or annoyed.' Car vocabulary can be quite different too. For example, 'the boot' is the trunk of the car in British English while in American English, a boot is a sturdy shoe for work or hiking; 'the bonnet', on the other hand, is the hood of a car in British English whereas in American English, it is a kind of hat which is tied on using fabric string that fastens under your chin. Finally, 'a torch' means 'a flashlight' in British English, but in American English, it represents a flaming stick like Indiana Jones carried to see inside dark caves.
As the BBC pointed out in an article comparing Bush and Blair's language, George Bernard Shaw's observation that the US and the UK are "two nations divided by a common language" is perhaps more accurate than many ... might suspect." Some useful lists focusing on specific vocabulary differences can be found at projectbritain.com.
