The Americans don't understand when I say..

• "Cheers"

• "Naff"

• "Lift" - However, some of the people I live with have started saying lift instead of elevator! I have converted them!

• A lot of chemistry words- obviously the classic Aluminium/Aluminum war occurs frequently, but there are also a lot of other chemistry related words that people don't know the meaning of. Such as "pipette" rather than "pipet" or "carbonyl" rather than "carbonEEL" 

• "Plait"- "you want to do what to your hair???"

• "Hair bobble"- "does anyone have a spare what????"

• Car "boot"

• "Hob"- this one gives me a lot of blank looks before I have to consult my personal thesaurus and say words like "cooker" or "oven".

• "Kettle"- one of the most upsetting things I've experienced since being here is that the Americans (if they drink tea at all) will not use a kettle, but rather they will put a mug of water in the microwave for two mins before dropping a tea bag into the mug. It breaks my heart every time. 

• Music words- The americans are very boring in their choice of words for the length of music notes. They say "whole note" for semibreve and "eighth note" for a quaver. People had no idea what I was talking about when I said the word "crotchet."

• "zed" - it's just "zee", here, apparently. 

• "crisps" 

• "chips". Maybe that's why the Americans are so confused and disgusted by "fish and chips"

• "revise for an exam". People have no idea what this means, and only some have worked out that I'm trying to say "study."

• "Proper" 

• "Reckon"

• "Keen"

There's probably a lot more. I'll think of them eventually.