Essay Same-same, but different By Samantha Loong	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
同じだけど、違う 同じ英語でも、話す人のお国によって意味や指すものが異なることがあり、それは「お国なまりが好き」の筆者がもっとも好むテーマである。そんな彼女が昨年１０月、さまざまな英語圏の国から来た旅行者とツアーに行き、有頂天になってしまったようだ。

In October, I spent 30 days traveling around Indochina — Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia — with a group of 12 strangers. Along with our Cambodian tour guide, there were people from Australia, England, Scotland and Canada. Being the "accent-phile" that I am, I was　in my element. Anyone at any given time could have been talking about something as mundane as how they do their laundry, and I would be enraptured, listening to the way they talked.

With such a variety of accents and English, it was inevitable that there would be some cross-cultural hilarity during the course of our trip. It started with footwear. Australians tend to refer to open-toed rubber slippers as "thongs," which to the rest of the world conjures up images of G-string underwear. Many of us wore such rubber slippers (also known as "flip-flops" in England, or "jandals" in New Zealand) during our travels, so we eventually got used to hearing about "lost thongs" or someone getting a stone in their thong.

Then there was the chain of ice cream stores in Vietnam and Cambodia called Fanny's. A century ago, many women were named Fanny, but in modern times, it's more often used as slang to refer to the buttocks — but that's just in North America. For the rest of us, it's strongly associated with playground slang that refers to another part of the female anatomy located below the waist.

Our Cambodian guide, having spent many a tour with Australians, had also picked up the most Australian of sayings, including my favorite: "Leave the kids at the pool." It's to do with going to the toilet. I'm sure you'll figure out what it means if you use your imagination. To find a non-Australian using Australianisms that even most Australians don't use made us laugh and brought us all closer together.

One Indochinese term we all learned was the saying "Same-same, but different." It might just look like four words that contradict each other, but this one phrase perfectly described our experiences. Each of the countries we visited would use the same herbs in different ways, or have ways of bargaining that were similar, yet different. Even among our group, we all spoke English, but in many different ways.

After my tour, I carried on to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan on my own. The idea of "same-same, but different" continued. Each of these Asian countries had similar foods, languages and writing, but all had put their own unique twist on it.

Different kinds of English and different kinds of accents have always fascinated me. I've picked up all sorts in the past eight years of living overseas. I had to be more American when I lived in Japan and more British when I lived in London. And now that I've moved back to New Zealand, I'll have to rewire my brain once again to speak a same-same but different kind of English. Now, was it "yo-ghurt"? Or "yaw-gurt"?

Shukan ST: FEBRUARY 3, 2012

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