Last night I watched a very old episode of “Grounded for life“.  And it made me think of another colourfull difference between our beautifull Afrikaans and English.  The girl, I’ve already forgotten her name (okay I went and looked – her name is Lily), had a disagreement with her boyfriend.  And then she asked: “Are you breaking up with me?”  You know, we won’t use that phrase in Afrikaans.  Translated directly into Afrikaans :”Breek jy op….”  No, we would rather use this phrase “Breek op” in relation to poor cell phone reception.  You know…, when you try to talk to somebody and the phone make funny krrrr…grrr… noises, or you can only hear every third word the other person is saying: “Yes, I……………..breakfast…………lastnight………….later”.

Then how does our teenager “break up” at the end of a relationship.  You are not going to believe it!!!  Directly translated from Afrikaans to English, we would say they “made out”!!!!  Totally the opposite of what you think it means.  In Afrikaans that girl would have said: “Maak jy uit met my?” 

I’m surely glad they did not try to use our version of English in the making of that programme!!!