It’s a strange thing…
Not understanding your own language.
But that’s what happens when Americans visit the UK.
This week, I’m visiting friends I met 20 years ago in Prague.
They taught English for a while in Prague, got married, then moved to England (she’s English and he’s American).
And while I’m here in the UK, I’ll share with you some of my English language discoveries.
Let’s go!
An English Lesson from England
While the rest of Europe bakes in the sun, the English are still wearing their coats and sweaters.
And yesterday – big surprise – it was raining!
But when my friend Katy came home soaking wet, she didn’t say “It’s pouring,” like her husband would say; instead, she said, “It’s chucking it down.”
I immediately added that expression to my English to English dictionary.
TOMORROW: Lesson #2 from England
So, the Americans say, it’s pouring?
why not just say, it’s raining?
in Hebrew: Yored Geshem
Is something as usual to rain in England , but to chuck it down means, I read, to rain very heavily.
I’m surprised. I would expect the husband, as an American, to say “It’s chucking it down” rather than “It’s pouring” and the wife, as a British woman, to be more reserved in an expression. It’s probably because of stereotypes. 🙂
Anyway – interesting expressions, good to know!
Now it’s the same situation in Netherlands. Usually there the rain is constant and light. But lately often it’s pouring rain. I know this phrase for similar situation: “It’s raining cats and dogs”. In Bulgaria wesay: “It rains like of bucket”