We all speak English but we don't all speak the same language

I au paired for a French/American family in my teens . On the shopping list one day was ‘cotton’ I was a bit stumped as no colour was mentioned so I plumped for reels of white & black to be on the safe side. It transpired that I should have bought cotton wool. In the US its called cotton and cotton is thread! Duh....

An Aussie that I worked with years ago came in to the office and asked if I had any Durex apparently that's what they call sellotape.

I once read an American novel that had supposedly been ‘translated’ into British English, but whoever did it evidently missed, ‘He patted her fanny ? as he went past.’
(Fanny being Yank-speak for bottom.).

Beware of the Aussie lingo ! I learned the hard way in 1982 when I was joining D and her friends for a BBQ one evening and that afternoon everyone was discussing what they were going to wear. I said I'd have a root in my suitcase to see if there was something suitable.
Suddenly there were peels of laughter and I didn't know what was going on when someone said " a root in your suitcase, that's novel ? " I hadn't fully unpacked.

D then explained that " root " was their word for sex ! I did see the funny side but was careful not to use the word again which meant that I did a lot of thinking before I spoke as so many of our words/sayings have different meanings there.

In the US, what we call bumbags are known as fanny bags, because that's what fanny means there - bum!

And aren't ink pads for rubber stamps known as tampons in the US? Or is that somewhere else?

Slightly off topic, but vampirequeen reminded me of a South African worker we had here for a while. He kept leaving things in the office switched on overnight, but was very careful indeed with water. We had to explain that we were more concerned with saving electricity, and that water, while we were careful with it, actually falls out of the sky a lot more often here than in South Africa!

In America many years ago I saw a pair of girl’s briefs emblazoned with the local baseball team logo and the words “number 1 fanny”
?

My brother lives in Australia and in a telephone conversation mentioned he was wearing thongs! Apparently he meant flip flops. I had to explain what thongs are in UK and I now need therapy to try to get rid of the mental image