Passing By

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Steve calling from Fort Worth.

Hi, Steve.

Hey there, what’s up?

Well, I’ve heard on your show various times you talking about mixed marriages, so to speak, or mixed couples where language issues cause a bit of a problem.

And I have a question regarding the term pass by and what it really means.

And I have to put it into context here.

Because to me, I grew up in Australia. So to me, to pass by something means to physically drive straight past it.

Whereas I was in a relationship with a lady in Canada, and to her, pass by meant to physically go to a place.

Oh, so she would pass by the store and pick up a few things.

Yes, that’s right, exactly.

And how this all came out was because she wanted to buy a particular little coffee table, and it was supposedly at this furniture store.

And I really wasn’t keen on the whole idea.

And so we went back and forth for a while.

And eventually I said, OK, OK, I’ll call in tomorrow night on the way home from work.

And what I meant when I said I’ll call in meant was I will physically go there.

She thought that I was saying I will telephone them to see if they have it.

And she said, no, I don’t want you to call in. I want you to pass by.

And I said, well, what’s the point of passing by? I’ll call in.

Because I thought she was saying drive past the store and don’t go there.

Anyway, this went on for about 15 minutes.

And eventually we found out we were saying the same thing.

And then to add insult to injury, she said to me, speak-a-dee-English, as if I couldn’t even speak my own language.

Anyway, have you ever heard of this issue before?

You know, it’s an interesting category of all the different ways that we say to go to a place.

Yeah.

And there’s more than just the two, right?

Sure.

There’s a ton of these.

Drop-by is another one.

I was going to say, yeah.

We have.

So you said call in, and you can either call in or call in at or call in on.

You can call at.

You can call by a place.

You can drop by a place.

You can drop by at a place.

You can drop in, pass by, stop by, stop by or stop in.

Come past is another one.

I think, is that in the American South that they said come past?

Come past, I don’t know.

To visit, that’s definitely the American South.

I’ve had somebody say to me, fall over. Why don’t you fall over on Tuesday?

And I thought, well, why would I want to fall over?

Yeah, fall over to my house.

Call on, come round, come over.

That’s kind of what you say when you’re speaking to somebody and you want them to arrive, right?

Yeah.

To go by.

There’s one.

I grew up with this in the Midwest.

You go by the store.

And it literally means that you go to the store, you park, you get out, you buy some stuff, get back in your car and come home.

It doesn’t mean that you drive by and wave.

Yeah.

And that’s what she thought you were saying.

I’m just thinking about some of those that you’ve just mentioned.

I’m thinking I would have been confused by a lot of those.

Yeah.

And they’re very context sensitive, but it sounds like you guys hit the perfect storm of context blindness, I guess, because these phrasal verbs are kind of opaque to outsiders.

They’re very idiomatic and they require a long history of understanding in order to completely get them.

Did this relationship last?

Well, no, it didn’t, surprisingly enough.

Maybe communication was the problem.

But actually, one of the things I realized is where I grew up, we talk in metaphors a lot.

And I think that’s confusing to other people.

And I hadn’t realized how much confusion I was causing.

Like someone said, were you busy today? I was flat out like a lizard drinking.

Nice.

And to me it makes perfect sense, but to other people it can be really confusing.

So I always was thinking, oh, this person doesn’t understand me.

But I didn’t stop to think I’m probably talking in a very difficult to understand way.

Oh, no, no, no. It’s very good.

I think of Australian English like the part of The Wizard of Oz where the movie goes from black and white to color.

So this is when Dorothy comes out of the house and sees Munchkinland for the first time.

You’re like, wow!

The land of Oz.

Literally.

Exactly.

Thanks so much for calling and sharing these stories.

I love your show.

English she is a mess.

What you guys do.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for calling.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you very much.

Take care, man.

Okay, ciao.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, well, Steve described it as sort of, what, a mixed relationship, a mixed marriage?

Yeah, a mixed linguistic marriage.

Yes, yes.

We’d like to hear more stories about that.

You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.