British Time and the English Side
Ah, there’s nothing like the Olympics to stir up a bit of national pride is there? The last few days have seen Great Britain winning medals all over the place, including a record fourth gold from my old classmate Ben Ainslie in the sailing today. GB are now third in the medal table! OK, enough gloating…
There is something about living away from your home country that brings out a kind of fondness for ‘home’ that maybe didn’t exist when you actually lived there! Whenever I hear some mention of Britain or England, my ears prick up and want to hear what people are saying.
One phrase that gives me a little warm feeling is Horário Britânico, (British Time) which is used to mean ‘on time’. If someone says “I’ll pick you up at 9am, Horário Britânico.”, it means “I intend to actually arrive at 9am, so you had better be ready.” – without that stipulation, 9am often means something more like 9:30!
Now see if you can spot the oddity here:
Readers from Britain, Australia and Japan (amongst plenty of others) may be wondering what is unusual about this image.
In Brazil we drive on the right. Except that on rare situations it makes more sense to switch over to help traffic flow properly and prevent lanes of traffic having to cross over. And in this situation, what do they call it?
Trecho em Mão Inglesa – if you see this sign then drive the English way!
So the Brazilians associate the British with being on time and the English with driving on the left! Next post I will tell you what the English say about the Brazilians!
Ha! This is awesome, I had never heard of driving “mao Inglesa” in Brazil, this is so cool.
Thanks for sharing.
Looking forward to hearing what you guys say about Brazilians ;)
Abracos Tom
Ray
Heh heh, thanks Ray. I’ll try to go easy on you guys ;)
HA! Yeah, this is pretty cool! I’m surprised that they have the “trechos em mãos inglesas” in Brazil! I’ve never seen anything like that here, but it sure is interesting!
Congrats on the golds,
Alex
If I had a car I would just drive up and down this stretch for an hour or two whenever I felt homesick ;)
If I had a car I would just drive up and down this stretch for an hour or two whenever I felt homesick
Ok, humn, trying – really trying – to contain myself here: perhaps this isn’t the best way to display display appreciation towards the homeland.
I became a lot more patriotic when I lived in England for a bit. I think it was just a reaction to all the English people complaining about Australians. I found myself saying ‘mate’ and ‘g’day’ when I never had before.
I didn’t really have the same thing when I was in South America, mainly because people over there don’t really have a bad thing to say about Australians.
It’s true – in most South American countries the only reaction people have to the word Australian is to crack into a smile and say “Kangaroo!” while doing T-Rex hands… ;)
Ray, there’s one street in Sao Paulo that I can think of that uses “mao inglesa”:
https://maps.google.com.br/?ll=-23.53308,-46.629496&spn=0.0042,0.004823&t=m&z=18
To make it even more confusing, it switches back to normal halfway through.
It’s funny that “pontualidade britanica” is such a common expression in Brazil but Brits don’t think of themselves as being very punctual – they reserve that for the Swiss and their love of clocks and watches, right? :)
I completely agree with your “fondness for home”. I find myself listening to a lot more Brazilian music than when I lived in Brazil. (I wouldn’t mind a few books either but they are harder to come by.) When you are at “home”, you end up taking things from granted. Rice and beans were available in Brazil every day so I would avoid it and eat other things instead. Now in the UK, I wouldn’t mind having it a bit more often than the once-a-month affair we manage to cook at home.
That’s true! I remember taking trains in Switzerland and they had a large analogue clock in each carriage. The train would pull from the station (on time) as the second hand passed 12 and would arrive (on time again) as the second hand passed 12. Trains not only running on time, but on time to the second?! I was so impressed that I almost missed my stop! :)
Wow! I didn’t know there were places where we drive na mão inglesa in Brazil!
I’ve only seen a few, but it always makes me smile!