Being fluent in a particular language is one thing – but picking up the colloquialisms is quite another. At least this was the experience of TikToker Ashley King who is an American living in the UK who has struggled to pick up some of our everyday phrases.
And after gaining an understanding of some of our most common Ashley – who shares her life on her account @ashleyseestheworld – thinks they are hilarious and brilliant in equal parts.
In a video posted to her her account she gives her fans a rundown of her top five British phrases saying: “Here are some British phrases that are super niche but I love them.”
Here we list them below.
What are you on about?
“I hear this a lot at work when I’m complaining about things.”
Bin it
“I never heard this until I moved here and I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.”
You smashed it
“That is like the best compliment you can ever receive from a British person. It’s the equivalent to ‘you knocked it out of the park.’”
Bum
“Any time a British person refers to your butt as a bum. The other day I was at the gym talking about a glute workout I was doing and one of the trainers is like ‘oh yeah that will really work your bum.’
Can’t be arsed
“Last but not least ‘can’t be arsed’. I had never heard this before and first time someone’s like ‘I can’t be arsed to do that’ I thought they were saying ‘I can’t be asked’ but no. Brilliant honestly.”
Ashley, whose video has now been liked more than 30,000 times, is not the first TikToker to share her experiences of being American and adapting to life in the UK.
A mum, known to TikTok as YorkshirePeach, announced to her 1.1 million followers that she was “in a predicament right now” – in a short video which garnered more than 13,000 likes.
With the caption reading “American in the UK: I cannot STAND this about England,” she said that her tiny bladder meant frequent trips to the loo.
She said: “I have to urinate terribly, I have the bladder of an ant” adding: “The toilet situation here is an issue for me, right.”
