Are there any words or phrases that seem to be unique to your country?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by C the Changeling on November 26, 2012 at 1:03pm

In my country Romania, you can't find a translation in english for the substantive dor only the verb miss, but it doesn't count.

Permalink Reply by Cheryl Lindworm on March 2, 2013 at 11:04pm

this is a site I found about Canada, I am from there, I can say that because Eastern Canada is older than western Canada many of our sterotypes originate there. Many of the things on the site are tongue and cheek, but some of them are very true.

http://members.shaw.ca/kcic1/canisms.html

Permalink Reply by Cheryl Lindworm on March 2, 2013 at 11:26pm

loonie for a one dollar coin, toonie for a two dollar coin, garburator for garbage disposal, toque, Timmy's(specific coffee) double-double(2 cream 2 sugar), timbits (doughnut holes), brown bread instead of whole wheat or wheat toast, Chinook(severely fast warming trend), giv'er.....to do anything with lots of effort or haste, servietee (napkin), skookum --good quality/awesome, 2-4-----case of beer (24 pack), kerfuffle-(bad situation or fight)

That is all off the top of my head, there is lots of local terms that differ from town to town or province to province and territory ect. Our country is the second biggest so it makes sense that there's so much differing from coast to coast to caost (yes we have 3)

Permalink Reply by Emma Petersen on July 29, 2014 at 2:20pm

In Denmark we have the word "hygge" that cannot be translated exactly  to English.=)

Permalink Reply by Lilygwen (Käreitär) on September 17, 2014 at 1:37pm

Ooh, well I'm from Finland so where to start. :D We have roughly around thousand different words or meanings for different kinds of snow. Majority of them not translatable. There's also few local foods etc that don't have translations since no one else has them. We also love having multiple meanings for words. Example word "kuusi" can mean either fern tree or the number six.

Also we can create new words or meanings by adding words together or adding endings to the word. For example like an artist called Humon has pointed out in the "Scandinavia and the world" -comic, we have our own word for "should I run around aimlessly?" which is "juoksentelisinkohan". Technically speaking the word is a form of the basic word for running and then added few endings to it but still, it's a own word. :) I tried to find the exact comic strip, but couldn't find it anymore from her site. If you want to check Humon's work, which I find hilarious, word of caution if you are easily offended or have very sensitive humour. Scandinavians in general have very twisted sense of humour. :P

When talking about other languages then with Estonian, we have few words that mean other thing in here than what it means for them. Estonian is from same language group but separated from long time ago so the words have evolved to mean other things for them than what they mean for us.

Permalink Reply by Chantelle Bennett (Billyo) on October 14, 2015 at 10:58pm

In Australia we have Gday which is hello, we have the ability to use several words and make it sound like one word like heyhowyagoin which translates to hello how are you doing today, what I've also noticed is there are some words that can mean a ton of things it just depends on how it is said and most offensive language that's meant to offend us can be seen as a compliment but that depends on how well you know the person your speaking to or how chilled they are

Permalink Reply by Grace (Pheasphant) on October 15, 2015 at 3:30am

In Australia, an idiot is referred to as a "duffa", "drongo" or a "dag" (or at least where I'm from and "dag" has more uses). We also have nicknames for everyone where I'm from i.e. Darren is "Dazza" or "Daz", Julie or Julian is "Jules", Max is "Macca", Caroline is "Caro", the last name Smith becomes either "Smithy" or "Smitho" etc. (it depends but last names usually end with a "y" i.e. Jonesy (Jones), Andy (Anderson), Browny (Brown) etc.). We also call McDonald's "Macca's". We call flip flops "thongs" but that's confusing to me so I just stick to flip flops. "Arvo" is afternoon, "David Gower" is shower, "Snag" is sausage, "Smoko" is a break (usually one with smoking involved", "... A Dog's Breakfast" is messy, "Ducks and Geese" are police, "You Beauty" is excellent and "No worries" is not a problem.  I don't remember any more but we call british people "poms" but it's usually used as an insult. Sorry British people. 

Permalink Reply by Grace (Pheasphant) on October 15, 2015 at 3:38am

We (and other countries) also call documentaries "docos".

Permalink Reply by Peadarín (Pya-der-een) on March 12, 2018 at 12:48pm

In Ireland we sometimes say random words in Irish like "oh that's a nice buachail over there" which means "I fancy that boy"

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