It’s why these words are so comforting-they're a reminder of home, and of who we are. Understanding these linguistic subtleties is crucial: In a city like London, where everything and everyone is packed tight, your ability to "code switch" and respectfully call the guy serving your two-piece chicken and chips "Bossman" says a lot about you. The knack for verbal gymnastics has become even more dynamic thanks to the ingenuity of i mmigrant communities, who have adopted and enriched both the the stiff English food and English language. is a fertile breeding ground, drawing from the rich traditions of wordplay and applying them to chippies and curryhouses alike. That's because when it comes to idiosyncratic lingo, the U.K. More than anything, the comfort I feel walking into my local chicken or doner shop-deploying light-hearted shorthand with the people working the counter-is a sharp contrast to the alien feeling I get walking into a bodega. God forbid I look up a British website’s recipe in America, or an American recipe in the United Kingdom: the result is always a drain on my data, as I try to figure out why I don’t already know what a parsley leaf looks like. To this day, every time I visit the States, it’s still a struggle. In a No-Frills supermarket, I opened my Google browser on my phone and typed “What is the egg of a plant?” shortly followed by “scallion?” I’d heard the terms before, but I always thought they were other things-not the same as an aubergine and a spring onion. There, I was surrounded by vegetables and herbs that looked familiar but had strange names, triggering a blurry Mr. Krabs episode in my head. ![]() ![]() The first time I realized there was a language barrier between Brits and North Americans was when I went grocery shopping in Toronto.
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