Yeah, they do have some weird sayings like everything's tickety-boo, Bob's your uncle, etc. I watch a lot of British programs, and every so often I learn a new word or saying. One program is about a dealer who salvages items for resale. Whenever he finds a particular item that hits all the bells and whistles, he says "It's an absolute belter!" A British friend one time told me her future son-in-law had given the family a hamper for Chistmas, and I wondered to myself, now why would someone give their future in-laws a dirty clothes hamper? I later learned that their hampers are gift boxes usually full of different types of food.
Just learned a bit of trivia while reading a book about the colony of New Amsterdam. The author mentioned some of the Dutch influences that took hold here. One of them is the word cookie. In Dutch it's spelled koekje. It's pronounced kook-yeh. When the British took over New Amsterdam, and renamed it New York after the Duke of York, thank God people kept the Dutch term that evolved into cookie, or we'd all be calling our cookies, biscuits like the Brits.
My father was born in Holland, and my mother, although born in Canada, had some Dutch ancestors who settled in New Amsterdam. My father was about 8 when he came here. He was a good cook, much better than my mother. His name for oven mitts were "handshoes," and we always made fun of him, thinking it was something he made it up. One night I was watching that same program about the salvage dealer, and he and his truck driver were in Holland to buy antiques to take back to Wales. His driver was reeling off some Dutch terms, and what they mean. Then he said: handschoenen, and that it means gloves/mittens. So after all these years, I realized that my father was actually speaking the Dutch word for those oven mittens. I wish he'd told us that back then.
When you speak several languages fluently (as I do), you are constantly encountering such felicitous expressions and interesting cognates.
Regards,
Also...."I'm on the bus, Jack. Ding ding"