Stephen, I remember you using some of these phrases, and they were always used in the “British” sense.

Remember that Mintoff had a way of saying “u aħna għednilu lil Lord Carrington, mela m’għednilux!” when bleating to his sheep in meetings and even when they televised those sessions from Parliament way back.

That is a sad story. I’m sorry to hear that. Meh, maybe it’s just because I’m engaged to someone “from a different culture” and most of my closest friends were not born in the USA, but I just don’t see “culture” as that huge of a barrier. We’re all people when it comes down to it.

Here’s British humour at its best.

In a dig at Mr Bercow – believed to be 5ft 6in tall – Mr Cameron said that health minister Simon Burns’s driver had accidentally hit the Speaker’s car while reversing.

When Mr Bercow said he was ”not happy” about the incident, Mr Cameron quipped to journalists at a Westminster lunch yesterday, Mr Burns retorted: ”So which one are you?”.

In June, Mr Burns publicly apologised after calling the Speaker a ”stupid, sanctimonious dwarf” in the Commons.

He said he was sorry for any offence he had caused after the insult was branded ”derogatory and deeply offensive” by the Walking with Giants Foundation (WWGF).

Ha! So you noticed it too! Super One was over the moon with that one. They were genuinely convinced that Brittan’s one-sentence comment on Alfred Sant’s “very interesting” ideas (in what can only be described as a poker face) was the ultimate seal of approval.

Ditto for “anke Lord C(u)rringt(i)n kien jibza’ minn Mintoff”.

I think it’s “every other day” for alternate days. Right?

I remember some years ago Sir Leon Brittan a Tory ex-EU commissioner, visiting Malta and for some strange reason visiting Alfred Sant who told him about his partnership programme for Malta.

Brittan’s answer was ‘that’s very interesting’ which was reported without irony by Maltese newspapers at the time.

Using the handy guide you have provided, people can now translate the message clearly.

http://catholicphoenix.com/2012/02/13/the-loss-of-the-apostrophe-in-valentines-day-one-more-victory-for-the-forces-of-secularization/

Americans do understand this. Just ask Paul: when we watch Downton Abbey, I have an uncanny ability to predict what will happen next.

I can see right through those Limeys.

And while such coded language might be perfectly acceptable amongst members of the same culture, it seems to me a futile exercise in an increasingly globalized world in which one will frequently come in contact with people from other cultural backgrounds.

Is it good manners to confuse or mislead someone?

I think those “good manners” rather betray a lack of confidence in one’s own opinions.

[Daphne – The thing is that it’s a separate language, Zachary, and just as it is difficult for you as an American to talk in ‘coded meaning’, so it is very difficult for somebody brought up speaking British English to speak ‘American’. The safest way all round is for everyone to learn everyone else’s codes. For example, we know that in some societies it is considered rude to accept an offer of food or tea the first time it is made, and that you must make the offer repeatedly until it is accepted. So you just go with this, instead of saying ‘Oh well, he said no thank you, so he isn’t hungry/thirsty.’ I find the outspokenness of some Americans more discomfiting than the coded meanings of people from some other cultures, and I’m not alone in that. Interestingly, I overheard a conversation between two British women the other day (yes, all right, I stopped to eavesdrop). One of them had married a New Zealander many years ago and the marriage broke down. She told her friend that she had made the mistake of thinking that just because they spoke the same language then the culture was similar, but after a couple of years in New Zealand with her husband, she realised that she was a complete foreigner, a stranger, and she couldn’t understand her husband’s New Zealander friends and they couldn’t understand her. They saw her habits and her jokes and her outlook as alien, and vice versa. And what got her most, she said, was that her sense of humour didn’t translate. She packed her bags and went back home with relief.]