"I bought this new coat and a pair of pants," I explained to my colleague, Sandra. Her eyes widened as she said, "Oh well - don't say that. They're trousers; pants means something else...," her voice lowered, "your undergarments." I laughed to myself. Of course, how could I forget? Having lived in both India and the UK, my mom would use a lot of British English terminology with us growing up. Trousers for pants, aubergine for eggplant, coriander for cilantro - these were a part of our vernacular at home. On Monday, when I asked Sandra how her weekend was, she said, "Oh, it was nice. My mum came over on Saturday and well Sunday was a lion..." Wait, lion? Well, little did I know that saying "lie-in" is the same thing as saying "sleep in."
Language has been just one medium through which I've realized different perspectives. My parents recently visited me, and we had many moments that touched on differences - in language, in culture, in customs and even in our own views. Having lived and traveled in Europe for a bit in the 1990s, my parents saw a very different Europe. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, diversity as a concept was neither here nor there, and, as a result, the demographic was very different.
