Sunday, July 21, 2013

Kenya Dictionary

Spent a few days in Kenya and started to note some of the linguistic differences. As always, most of my material comes from taxi drivers so the vocab skews toward the automotive.

In Kenya you get "knocked by a car" instead of "hit", especially when you "do not respect" the "zebra crossing" (pronounced Zeh-bra) when crossing the street. Even better you should use a pedestrian "fly over" instead of an overpass (both pretty straightforward words, I think). And as always, when you're leaving a parking lot, put on your "specs" and look for the giant sign that says "way out" which always reminds me of teenage stoners in the 90's saying "Far Out!".  It's time to go home to the place where you "stay", but don't live.

Not sure how much of this is British influence but I'm going to give credit to Kenya for the terms.

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