We have a lot of strange sayings in this country that don’t quite translate overseas.
Have you ever thought about how some of the words and phrases you say regularly might not mean anything to someone from another country? The UK has a wide range of cultures and dialects which all have their own unique sayings, and not all of them are things that are easily understood by outsiders.
Phrases such as “break a leg” to mean good luck, “hit the sack” for when you’re going to bed, and “by the skin of your teeth” to mean barely getting by all sound incredibly strange when you actually think about the words you’re saying – but to us Brits, they’re everyday phrases that make perfect sense.
One American man who spent several years living in the UK has shared firsthand how our bizarre phrases can trip up tourists, as he claimed he spent his entire time on our shores saying one particular phrase completely incorrectly.
In a video on TikTok, Marc Sebastian said that while living in London during his early 20s, he picked up a lot of “British slang”, and one of his favourite phrases was something we say when someone is telling a lie or overly embellishing a story.
However, Marc believed all his English friends were saying: “Don’t go telling porcupines.”
He explained: “I heard it enough that it started to build this narrative in my head. I was like, ‘Do Brits think that porcupines are blabbermouths?’ They think that they’re these spiky rat snitches. The more that I heard it – and I didn’t check in any further about the saying – I could then see it. I was like, you know what porcupines do look like they’d be telling the town’s gossip.”
Unfortunately for Marc, he didn’t pick up on what the real saying was supposed to be until he had the chance to drop the incorrect version of the phrase for himself – leaving his friends baffled.
It turned out that Marc had been hearing his mates say “don’t go telling porky pies” and had been mishearing it for years.
He continued: “They were like, ‘Are you trying to say don’t go telling porky pies?’, and I was like, ‘What?’. They said that a ‘pork pie’ is like a lie, so the saying is supposed to be ‘don’t go telling lies’. Don’t go telling porky pies was the saying.
“I was upset! I was more upset as someone who loves animals I now had to unlearn this narrative inside of my head of porcupines being these evil snitches.
“Then I got even more mad at myself because I didn’t even do the research to see that porcupines aren’t even indigenous to the UK, they don’t even live there. So British people wouldn’t even know the persona of a porcupine.”
Commenters on Marc’s video were left in stitches, although many helpful Brits pointed out that “pork pies” is Cockney rhyming slang for “lies”, which is where the saying comes from.
One person said: “UK slang is next level and I’m so glad I grew up on it and can understand these weird little nuances.”
Another added: ” This whole video took me out. As a Brit, we should now have the porcupine saying as well because I love the story you constructed so much.”
While a third posted: “This was painful to watch as a Brit.”
