A few driving term in the U.K. gave me trouble for awhile. I didn't understand the term 'overtaking". The use the term to mean "passing", while in American english to overtake is to "catch up to", so when my Practice Wife would tell me to, "Go ahead and overtake that slow vehicle", I would slow down and fall in behind the slowpoke.

Also, the terms "near side", and "far side", as applied to the car or roadway confused me. Still not absolutely sure, but I think it means in relationship to the side upon which the steering wheel lives.

Thanks RufusT! I had heard of the engrish.com site but never visited it. The site is good for a laugh in a cringe-inducing sort of way! The scary thing is, the internal documentation I saw where I worked was just as bad: positively undecipherable in some cases...

lawchick, if someone said "perturbate" to me at work, he'd be assigned to an hour's worth of closing dead files.

Many years ago in Northern Argentina some of us Spanish teachers were visiting an English class and the teacher was holding forth about "rubbers", "your rubbers", "their rubbers". (Most of the English tchrs. there were trained in Gt. Britain.) Strange, we thought. In the USA the class would be in an uproar. The students were perfectly calm. We were hysterical. Know what she was talking about?

When I was a kid in public school we called erasers 'rubbers'. Also, 'rubbers' are galoshes -- rubber boots you wear in rainy weather (ie not snowboots).

And, of course, here in North America rubbers can be used to prevent unwanted pregnancy (or disease)--

Not exactly on topic, but:

A while back a very important Japanese professor person came to a meeting in the US, and I was charged with assuring that his visit went well.

I was there as he was previewing his slides (this was a while back) and in one of them his post-daoc had misspelled "polyester" as "poRyester".

The prof berated him exclaiming, "Not 'poryester', PORYESTER"!

I had the offending slide fixed.

In a previous job, I was a member of a group that traveled often to Europe to install computer systems and software. We were known as the Global Implementation Team, or GIT. Now, we GITS caused lots of snickers with our British colleagues.

I wore rubbers over my shoes until I was in college, I think. They are not galoshes (which are rubber boots with mechanical closures), but "overshoes" that fit over one's shoes fairly tightly but with no hardware. See picture:

http://www.wideshoes.com/catalogimages/15W-18.jpg

Back to the previously mentioned Argentinian English tchr. Yes, she was talking abut the eraser on a pencil.