Orchid Notice:
{ Y. A. K. }
Please contact the author off list!
. . Perhaps it is time we had an online dictionary with cross references to words describing an activity or thing that we know in one Country's English, yet not in another's.
This could be interesting to go beyond the various English language
versions. Maybe a page where we could post jewelry and gemstone
related terms as “spoken” by our world-wide family? I would like to
know about other words for our precious metals and stones, lapidary,
rings, necklaces and bracelets, etc. I think I’ll begin a file called
“In other words” for what comes through in the posts.
Oya’s navigation bar shows the English equivalents just beneath the
titles in her Turkish language. I have visited German and
Scandinavian sites where I enjoyed trying to decipher some of the
words by looking at the illustrations.
Many of our Orchid members speak two or more languages and do an
admirable job of expressing themselves in English which is not their
native language. I thank them for contributing as I could not were we
posting in another language.
We Americans are able to communicate fairly painlessly with folks
from other English-speaking countries, but the differences in
expressions can make for a bit of confusion and humor. I learned
about “fossicking” from visiting Australian fossickers (rockhounds) in
the 70’s. Over the past 4 or 5 years, I have learned some automobile
terms such as bonnet (hood), boot (trunk), and windscreen
(windshield), from our Australian posters to an online list for
4-wheel drive enthusiasts. We learned that they call trails or roads
“tracks” and some of those who joined us here in the U.S. for some
4-wheeling events shared a bit of even more colorful vocabulary. 
Will you share about jumper and nicking?
Pam Chott Song of the Phoenix