Since losing Mamoru as he heads back to his homeland, I have reflected on meeting this individual and all the things I remember about him. His strange moustache; the gauze hunting vest he would wear every day over the top of a range of ripped off football shirts; his ever-present penchant for beef.
What goes on in that man’s mind is a mystery, probably even to him. One day I decided to give the class a load of pictures that have different names in British English vs Australian English (e.g. plug socket vs power point, plaster vs Band Aid, and most famously flip flop vs thong). Everyone was struggling with this a bit. However, it wasn’t until I looked at Mamoru’s page that I realised how far off people were.
Next to a picture of some sausages (a.k.a ‘snags’), he’d written ‘Gerry’. I asked him why. He explained that that sausages were originally from Germany and ‘Gerry’ was a slang word for a German. You can’t fault the logic – apart from that it was what veterans of WWII referred to Nazis as. Thankfully there were no Germans in the class at the time… mind you, they probably wouldn't have minded.
I now refer to sausages as ‘Gerries’ and recommend it becomes part of the English vernacular.
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