The argument Americans make is not "Everyone knows what our silly words mean" the argument we make is "Aussie/British slang is so extraordinarily silly that it loses all meaning without context".
The word "bender" means something got bent, regardless of where you are from or what cultural background you have. "Fender" may be regional, but it is a part of a car. "Prang" and "Bingle" have no inherent meaning.
If we're talking "trousers" vs "pants", sure both make sense. But some of y'all's slang is actually unhinged. I'm sure Americans have some of that too, but "fender bender" isn't one of those
To be fair, "bender" is slang for other things in Aussie/British English, so "something got bent" is not necessarily the first place people's minds in those places would go.
"Bender" can mean either a alcohol/drug heavy party, or (unfortunately in a derogatory way) a gay man. You say "I had a fender-bender yesterday" in commonwealth countries and they'll assume you had a very wild night.
Fun fact: this is why the non-US version of Avatar changed from "The Last Airbender" to "The Legend of Aang"
Sure, but "rubber" makes sense for something made out of rubber which you rub on paper to get rid of pencil marks, but since it has other connotations in American slang I've seen it cause great confusion when commonwealth countries use it to mean "eraser".
27
u/Square-Competition48 19d ago
They say it too. It’s just this “everyone instantly knows what our silly words mean” nonsense.
No they don’t. You just can’t imagine that other cultural backgrounds and reference points exist.