Isn’t it great how we all speak English? Who needs Esperanto when the global interweb is surging forward with a solid grounding of the Queen of England’s Mother Tongue? Well, despite the worldwide spread of English, it seems a few of us still struggle to be understood in a supposedly language-friendly country.
On a recent SkyWest Airlines flight, Australian Sophie Reynolds dared to utter the Downunder phrase “Fair Dinkum” in response to the sad news that the plane was all out of pretzels. As fans of Crocodile Dundee may know, it’s a colloquial expression meaning “Seriously?” or “For real?”, but unfortunately Reynolds was reprimanded by the crew for swearing. Her passport was requested, and upon landing in Pittsburgh three uniformed police officers were waiting for her. The authorities finally got the right end of the stick, and Reynolds was eventually allowed to go. There’s still no word if she finally got some pretzels.
Thanks to avriette on Flickr for the picture of a tastier kind of pretzel.