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Lost in Translation Thirty One

January 16, 2009
09:51 AM

Bill Bryson, polymath author and a onetime American in London, is a master of the comic anecdote.
In his book, Mother Tongue, a scholarly but lively telling of the story of the English Language, he tells one of his best without telling it at all, and leaves it to ourselves to fill in the blanks.

He is talking about the differences between American and English;

“…….whereas a reference to a woman’s fanny – which to an American is an innocent synonym for the buttocks – would at a British dinner party provoke an embarrassed silence . (You may recognise the voice of experience in this.)”

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