John McKenzie wrote:
>
>and one of the students was having dinner with them. In his best
>English, he said to my grandmother 'may I be excused please, I must go
>to the ****house'. A few gasps (though to be honest, my grandmother
>taught me a bunch of swearwords I didn't know) and then all glared at
>dad. Before they left for the holiday, he would have said toilet, dad
>'corrected' his English at every sly op****tunity.
My own mother would've winced had he said toilet (it's an
Americanism). OTOH the old man would've denied ever calling it the
****house (which he always did) in her presence.
The problem being it's a literal translation of 'dunnekin' (dung
house), from which the word 'dunny' is derived (a relatively recent
addition to our own language AFAIK). All very lower class (in the old
girl's estimation)... lavatory was the only acceptable term. :)
--
John H
|
