Coffee cake vs. coffee cake

photo courtesy of Hobbee's

Living with a linguist for over 9 years, I like to think I notice language use more than the average person, even if I don’t understand that usage entirely (that’s Lauren’s job to explain).

About two years ago after living in Edinburgh for a little over a year, I wrote this blog post about adjusting to new words that I was still trying to figure out how to pronounce and when to use. Since then, I’ve found that there are some words, and particularly phrases, that I use when speaking to a Scottish audience. But I think, for the most part, I still have a very American vocabulary.

I have always found it interesting how two different phrases can mean the same thing, and also how a word, or phrase, can mean very different things to different people. I think my first memory of this is the boot vs. trunk of a car - my dad still says boot, even though he's been back in the US for 25 years. I also feel more comfortable with boot, which was a word I used from childhood.

One phrase that has grown on me in my time in Edinburgh is ‘half ___’ when telling time. ‘The meeting is at half two’ means the meeting is at 2:30, and so forth. I find that I only use this phrase when speaking to certain people. I like the phrase enough to feel like I should use it more, but it doesn't roll off my tongue yet. Maybe one day, I’ll be a pure ‘half ___’ person.

The other day, I was talking to someone about something they bought. They said they got it because is was ‘on offer’ at Sainsbury’s. A day or two later, I was in Sainsbury’s and got the same thing. I told Lauren I bought it because it was ‘on sale’. I think the American ear (at least my American ear) thinks of the word ‘offer’ as meaning free. A store offers good customer service, which is not something you buy. I never use the phrase ‘on offer’, but I have admit, it doesn't sound wrong to my ear any more.

A phrase that I noticed very early on in my time in Edinburgh, was when I saw advertisements for movies or TV shows. In the US, you are likely to hear some movie is in theaters ‘on Friday’ or a TV show is on ‘at 10’. In the UK, you are likely to hear that the movie will be in theatres ‘from Friday’ and the TV show is on ‘from 10’. That ‘on/at’ verses ‘from’ is something I still notice every time I hear it, and it still sounds odd to me; far more odd than something starting at half two being on offer. I just don’t associate the word ‘from’ in terms of time, unless it also includes the word ‘until’ or ‘to’. If a TV show is on ‘from 10 to 11’, that sounds ok to me, but just saying ‘from 10’ always sounds (to me at least) that the end of the phrase was cut off.

Much like two different phrases having the same meaning, I’ve run across a phrase meaning one thing to the person I’m communicating with and another to me. This, of course, leads to misunderstandings.

In the final stages of buying our flat in early 2012, our financial adviser emailed us, asking if we would be able to meet mid-day some weekend. I responded by saying I could probably meet mid-day, but could he let me know what time. He responded by saying could we have the meeting at mid-day. As I was in the process of writing an email back to him asking him to clarify on the time, Lauren happened to call me. She said ‘you realise mid-day means noon, right?’ I didn’t.

Here I was, thinking mid-day could be any time from 10-2, some time during the middle of the day. Mid-day meaning 12:00 makes a lot of sense. We call the 12:00 that happens at night mid-night, so why not call the 12:00 at happens in the day mid-day. I still almost never use mid-day to mean noon but I wonder how many times I sounded like an idiot for not understanding when someone said it to me.

This last experience reminded me of how my mother always referred to mid-night as some time in the middle of the night. She would say she woke up at '3 in the mid-night', which always made me chuckle (and still does).

Finally, I come to the title of this blog post.

In my previous job, we regularly had a staff tea/coffee thing once a week. There would be baked goods, usually brought by anyone who wanted to bring stuff. A few times, I was told coffee cake was available. I’d look at the variety of baked items, not see any coffee cake and not really think much of it. This happened a few times and I started to wonder if I was missing something. One time, I even ate a piece of cake that I was told was coffee cake. It was good, but it wasn’t coffee cake. I didn’t want to say anything though because, like many things with that job, I felt like an outsider; a foreigner.

A couple of months before leaving that job, we started our airbnb. For one of our guests, I made strawberry coffee cake that the guests didn’t eat (they didn’t seem to eat anything we gave them, so it wasn’t that the cake was terrible, they were just not the type of guests that wanted to eat our food). I brought some into work and told my officemate that I had made strawberry coffee cake. She gave me a slightly odd look and asked why I would make a cake with strawberry and coffee. That’s when when she explained it to me; coffee cake in the UK is a cake, made with coffee, not eaten with coffee.

Not only did this explain away all the times I had coffee cake and didn’t know I was having it. It also makes a lot of sense. Chocolate cake is not a cake you eat with chocolate. Can you imagine eating a cake to go with carrots?

I told Lauren about my coffee cake experience a few days later. She had no idea either - at least it wasn't just me this time. That night, we went to Sainsbury’s and got some coffee cake, so she could experience it herself. 

This whole learning something new every day (some said 'every day is a school day' to me the other day, which I'd never heard before and might be a UK phrase) can be fun, even if it leads to misunderstandings sometimes. 

Now I know that I can go to the store at mid-day, or half twelve, and maybe there’ll be some coffee cake on offer which I can eat at home, while I watch Law and Order, which is one every weekday from six.

photo courtesy of Laura Loves Cakes