Klaudia Patryn is a student at Stockton University and an ISA Featured Blogger. She studied abroad with ISA in Stirling, Scotland.
As you may know, in the United Kingdom the most commonly spoken language is English. Throughout the whole UK there are different words and meanings for specific words that I would use back home. Their slang is much different than what I am used to in the United States, but I have grown to be quite fond of the Scottish words.
In the States, you can see different words for the same object. For example, I am from New Jersey and would call soda “soda”. However, someone from the midwest might call soda “pop”. Even in the state of New Jersey you can tell what region you are from just by the way you speak. North Jersey would call those big sandwiches “Taylor Ham” or “subs”, while South Jersey would say “pork roll” or “hoagies”.
Some of my favorite Scottish words include keen, quid, sound, aye, and cheers. Keen means you are eager to do something. For example, if someone would ask me “would you like to go for a pint?”, in Scotland I would reply with “yes, I am keen,” where as back home I would say “yeah I’m down.” Quid is slang for money, so instead of using 5 bucks, I used 5 quid. Sound would be the same as “cool”, aye means “yes” and cheers means “thank you”. Some other important words to know are trousers and boots. Trousers are what we in the U.S. call pants, and pants in Scotland are what we know as underwear. When it comes to boots, you would think that they refer hiking boots or work boots, but they are actually what we call cleats. Speaking of cleats, Scotland does not have fields, they have pitches. The list of words could go on on and here were just a few of my favorites.
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I remember a situation with my Britain mate when we were talking about clothes. That’s when I found out their ‘underwear’ was our ‘pants’. That’s funny.