Well, I managed to get a decent night’s sleep and find my way back to the bakery to pick up a loaf of fresh bread for breakfast. I really couldn’t resist. I made my way past all those houses (they seemed so close together) to what seemed to be the shopping area near here. I didn’t think it was rush hour, but the traffic seemed really heavy – even at that time of the morning. I was also a little surprised to find an early morning queue in the bakery. You don’t see that sort of thing back in New Zealand – you’d only find a queue like that at fast food restaurants. Anyway, the bread was well worth waiting for, and it smelt delicious. So did the other bakery goodies. Looks like I’m going to have to watch my diet and exercise while I’m over here and avoid the notorious “Heathrow injection” (i.e., the extra 5 to 10 kg that New Zealanders and Australians travelling to the UK for work seem to pick up). I doubt a daily walk to the bakery would burn off some of those gorgeous-looking cakes and pies!
Anyway, I bought my ciabatta and a latte to go and walked back. The bread was still warm, and I couldn’t resist nibbling on a bit of the crust on the way back. I got back to the place I’m staying (arranged very nicely by the London travel nurse agency), which I shared with a couple of others who also have nursing jobs in London. Most of them are locals, but one is an Australian nurse working in the UK – I think she got her job through the same recruitment agency. I hadn’t eaten all of the loaves, and I thought sharing would be a good way to connect with my flatmates, so I put the loaf down in the kitchen. When I met one of the local nurses, I told her, “Help yourself to some of the bread on the bench – there are heaps.”
I got a blank stare in return, which left me scratching my head. Was I talking gibberish instead of English? Did my fellow nurse have ear bud in and the music up loud? I had to take an English proficiency test to get this London nursing contract (that’s standard for all foreign nurses working in the UK), and I assumed that this local nurse also spoke English, so I wondered why she was giving me such a funny look.
I led her into the kitchen and pointed to the bread. “Oh!” she said, realization breaking over her face like the sunrise. “You mean the kitchen counter. But… there’s only one loaf. Where’s the heap?”
“I mean, there’s lots of bread left, and all you can help yourselves if you like,” I replied.
“Yous? Anyway, thanks.”
At this point, the Australian nurse came into the kitchen. “You’ve got to speak the Queen’s – sorry, King’s – English now, mate. Poms don’t talk like us.”
How To Talk Like A Pom
And that was how I realized that although I am a native English speaker and passed that English proficiency test for nursing, New Zealand English is not like UK English. Although I knew I’d be all right when dealing with patients and doctors – medical terms are the same around the world, thank goodness – I’d have to be careful during the casual talk so I didn’t look like a right egg.
I found out that there are heaps (oops, lots) of differences between New Zealand English and real British English.
- That’s not a truck carrying goods; it’s a lorry. Be careful with a “lorry” as it could be a big heavy one or a ute. Not that I’ve seen any utes over here. They do have utes here – don’t they?
- I don’t put on a jersey when it gets cold (which I need to do now that the months have two digits and December gets closer); I put on a jumper. One of the other nurses, who aren’t originally from London, pronounces this jumper but don’t say it that way, or she’ll think I’m taking the piss… making fun of her.
- Don’t say yous. The Poms don’t use yous. They might think I’m talking about more than one female sheep (ewes).
- Don’t call the locals Poms. They have heaps of different words for people from different areas of the country, such as Brummies, Yorkies, Chissits, Scousers and Geordies, who come from Birmingham, Yorkshire, Leicester, Liverpool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I also came across the term “Monkey Hanger”, but I’m not sure if this was a leg-pull or (if it’s for real) if it’s offensive.
- Only say “heaps of” if there are actually things piled in heaps. Otherwise, I need to say “lots” or “many”.
- A heavily damaged building is a heavily damaged building rather than munted. Apparently, over here in London, some people use munted or something like it instead of drunk.
- If I get invited for tea, expect afternoon tea with a cuppa and a scone or some biscuits rather than a full meal, which is called dinner or supper. I’m grateful that biscuits are biscuits and scones are scones; in the US, biscuits are cookies, and scones are biscuits.
- Footwear is easy to trip up on. No more sneakers, gumboots and jandals – I need to call them trainers, wellies and flip-flops.
- Bangers are sausages.
- Chips just mean the sort you get with fried fish. The thin round ones in bags are crisps.
- The popular sport is called football, not soccer. Nobody refers to rugby as football or footy.
- Just call it the toilet, loo or lavatory (or lav) if you have to refer to it at all, rather than the dunny.
- I still do not know what the Poms call a chilly bin or a bach (I must stop calling them Poms).
I did all this research, so I thought I’d be sweet as – no worries! However, I still managed to get funny looks when I said I was going to nip down to the dairy for some milk. Apparently, they call it a corner store here, not a dairy.
The Plot Thickens… And So Do The Accents
The fact that the English they speak in London isn’t quite the same as the English we speak in New Zealand isn’t going to be the only thing to get used to. As I found out, when filling in time by watching a TV cooking show put out by the BBC, they don’t all have the same accent. I just about needed subtitles for some of the people talking on that show. I kind of expected to hear Scottish and Irish accents, but I forgot about all those other accents over here in the UK – even within London, you can hear the plummy BBC English as well as something else that sounds a bit like the Australian accent, except it isn’t. Wonder what it’s going to be like if I get patients who come from these different regions. That was something I didn’t have to deal with as a nurse in New Zealand – it’s only the people from Southland who have a distinct regional accent, and everybody else more or less sounds the same.
However, what threw me the most when watching that show was this Indian chef who looked as Indian as you can imagine. I thought he’d have a heavy accent, like one of the doctors I worked under during my nursing training. He had a heavy accent, all right, but it wasn’t the accent I was expecting: it was Scottish. The modern-day UK really is multicultural and diverse. There are heaps of different ethnicities over here – and I’ve gone and used “heaps of” again! Here’s hoping that the refresher course arranged by the London nursing recruitment agency will help me get out of this habit.
