One thing Americans never understand is the British love of toilet humour.

For example:
If anyone at TMV happens to visit London this summer, I strongly encourage you to visit the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. These are the painstakingly restored bunkers from which Churchill directed the war effort in WW II….which were sealed up almost immediately after VE day, and not touched for years, so perfectly preserved.

One great touch is the Prime Minister’s toilet (W.C. – i.e. water closet). Actually, this was a disguised small communications room for Churchill’s telephone line to Roosevelt. Only Churchill could go in there, where he would go to talk with Roosevelt for long stretches.

Of course, the Cabinet staff had no idea…and just assumed Churchill needed to spend much of his day on the toilet!

Even in the midst of the Blitz, with bombs falling and the Nazis running rampant across Europe, that British lion Churchill still found time for toilet humour!

“…also (from late last week) reminds us of how confusing language can be, even when you’re speaking the same language.”

Coincidentally, I was struck by this last week, when I was driving with an acquaintance who is trying to learn Cantonese via an audio tape program while driving.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given Britain’s long rule over Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, the tapes were made in Britain.

However, invariably the speaker tended to revert to British English terms in translating. Thus, there would be phrases like: “and the Cantonese equivalent of hawker is…”

This was driving the fella mad, as he had no idea what a hawker was (actually, a street merchant)…nor any of the countless colloquial terms that would make no sense in North America.

He said he felt like he needed to buy audio tapes teaching British English before he could then learn Cantonese.