[applepansy]

Originally Posted by anatess

Philippine schools have at least 3 credit hours of English classes every school year from Kindergarten all the way to High School graduation plus 2 semesters in college. We end up getting exposed to really freaky things like, "Peter piper picked a peck of pickled pepper." to practice proper pronounciation of the letter P. The P is pronounced flat in Bisaya (my dialect) - without air leaving your lips, whereas it is pronounced almost like P-hee in English.

We learn all these crazy figurative expressions - like "The die is cast." which doesn't make sense outside of a board game or casino... and yet, when I arrived in San Francisco, I had a hard time understanding what everyone is saying. All those years of English classes and nobody ever taught me that when an American says, "Yeah right." it doesn't necessarily mean he's agreeing with you and that when Americans use "pretty" as an adjective like in "pretty good" only the person saying it knows exactly what he means.

"The die is cast" does have meaning outside a board game or casino.