This post first appeared January, 2012 on my blog, “Sherrema’s Shenanigans”

I am constantly encountering “deer-in-the-headlight” moments as an American living in New Zealand when it comes to language.  The other day my friend J who is a Kiwi asked if I’d fed her cat his “biccies” (with a “k” pronunciation).

I just stared at her, wide-eyed.

I then said (slowly over-pronouncing, mind you), “I fed George his cat food from the IAMS tub in the utility room.  Is that what you mean?”

She nodded and said, “Yes, his biccies.”

Just so we were clear, I walked <strong>over</strong> to said IAMS tub, opened it, and showed her the food inside (as if she didn’t know what she was feeding her own cat) and said, “The food in here is what I fed him.  Is this what you mean?”

Finally getting that I had <em>no clue</em> what the he** she meant by “biccies”, J finally clarified, “Yes, his cat food.”

Later, however, I quite inadvertently turned the tables on J when we were talking about the rhubarb she had just boiled up to serve for our brunch.  I told her quite happily how glad I was that she had shown me a new way to fix rhubarb.  She looked at me with a confused glance and said, “What?”

This time I looked at her and said, “I never knew how to fix rhubarb before unless it was in a pie.”

J just stared at me blankly.

“Fix…make…cook…bake?”

“Oh yes!”  Her eyes lit up.  I didn’t know what you meant by ‘fix.’”  That’s when I realized my use of the word “fix” as it pertained to food was apparently an Americanism.

This was confirmed a few hours later when I shared the “biccies / fix” exchange with another friend of mine who is also a Kiwi and she nodded and said that I’d used the “fix” expression with her before and it had momentarily confused her but she’d figured out what I meant.

Huh…who knew? 🙂

All the time, I hear words and expressions that are unfamiliar to me here in NZ but I usually try to keep my complete confusion to myself and just try to figure out what it could mean.  Usually, it’s explanatory like,

Sweet As! (“Cool!”  “Right on!”  Except for those who pronounce “as” with a drawn out “s” sound so it sounds like that other word)
chin wag (long conversation)
bum (*ahem* not a homeless person :));
wee (little or small)
wop-wops (“out in the boonies”…yeah, zero frame of reference on that one.  I had to read what the word meant in my Lonely Planet guide…)
lollies (candy)
cuppa (a cup of coffee or tea with a friend)
dearer (as in expensive – not how close you are to someone)
…and on and on.

But it was while teaching English language learners (ELLs) at an English language school in Dunedin that I learned one particular NZ word from one of my Korean students.  He asked me for “twink.”  I asked him to repeat himself and I still had no clue what he wanted.  I thought he was using a Korean word that he didn’t know the English for and I totally couldn’t help him.  Finally he got up, left the classroom, and came back a few minutes later with  – wait for it –  White Out.

Twink?  Well…the word didn’t sound Korean…and I have to admit, the phrase “twinking it out” suddenly made sense.  (Unless I just invented that phrase?  Not sure.)

It certainly is different down here. 🙂  Loving the language loaning!