Americans whose first language is not English: are there any American English slang or idioms that you find especially strange?

6 comments

1. Well, English is my first language but on this topic, I will say myself and some friends were pondering the oddness of some English idioms the other day. For example “Screwed the pooch”. I dont know. We do have some weird ones…

2. Sure. Phrasal verbs in general are weird and unique in English.

   Back Up (kind of an oxymoron), Back Down, Back In, Back Out, Back Into, Back Off, Back On, etc.

   These can have multiple meaning, depending on dialect and context. “Get on up and get down” is just James Brown’s way of saying “dance”, but it’s confusing for new English speakers.

   I don’t find these confusing since I mostly grew up here, but when I help folks with their English and have to explain and think about phrasal verb, I’m like “yeah, this is confusingly dumb”.

3. Being Baked for weed is something my GF did not get for a while.

4. I am an English speaker, but my grandmother moved to the US in 1963 and she had some trouble with directions because they’re regional. In some areas “up” and “down” refer to the direction of travel as it was in the 1800s — “up” the river or “down” the river, even though now no one travels that way. So, in modern reality a place could be East or West, but in the local patois it’s “up” or “down” because it’s up channel or down channel, the channels no longer being commercially navigable by passengers.

5. I moved right to Texas and that’s not vernacular that you hear much often in the media abroad.

   Mistook vittles for whittling and stuff like that. Didn’t matter in the end, still used the knife.

   Had some good souls give me books that clarified the culture and history in Texas that really helped me get my bearings here.

6. I still don’t understand what does “for what it’s worth” mean.