Words, Words, Words

As my friend Genevieve commented on my last post, there are many cultural differences between Australia and North America. But I also discovered instances where the culture is the same... but the vocabulary is different.

Most of these came up in everyday conversation with my cousins. Putting things in the back of the car, they were surprised to hear that I refer to the 'trunk' as the 'boot'. They had never heard 'bonnet' for the 'hood' either.

Lemon bar, photo by Artizone, CC by 2.0

We spent a lot of time just sitting at home catching up on each other's news.
"I found a great recipe for lemon bars the other day," my aunt tells me.
"Um, that's great," I reply. "What's a lemon bar?"
Everyone looks at me.
"It's... like..."
The urge to use Google overpowers the search for words, and someone shows me a photo of a lemon bar on their mobile phone.
"We call that a slice," I explained. "Australians have caramel slice in every cafe, ever."

Caramel slice, photo by rore, CC by 2.0

My cousin Francis couldn't get his head around it. ("A slice of what?" "No, it's called a slice." "But a slice of what? Pizza?" "No, it's just called a slice.")

The funniest incident, though was when I mentioned that I had eaten the grape PBJ on bananas that morning in my rental room as I had run out of bread. I would have added sultanas, too, if I had any.
"What are sultanas?" one cousin asked.
I looked around the room. No one had heard of sultanas -- not my Hong Kong family. Not my East or West USA coast relatives. Not my Canadian-Chinese cousin or my Anglophile uncle.
"Are they... something Turkish?"
When I explained that they were dried grapes, my cousin spotted a bucket of raisins on the counter and handed it to me.

Tomayto, tomahto, raisin, sultana

I ate one and confirmed, yup, they taste just like the sultanas in Sultana Bran cereal.
"Sulta- wait, you mean Raisin Bran?" everyone asked.
It appears so!

Sure enough, I saw loads of Raisin Bran in Costco in Sacramento

Why in Australia we have sultanas in snack boxes and sultanas in cereal but then raisin toast in cafes and in loaves, though, I have no idea.

All these inconsistencies is enough to give one a headache, isn't it? Better take some paracetamol... wait, they don't have that here. Or so I thought.

North Americans are particularly fond of using genericised trademarks, like Kleenex (tissue) and Hoover (vacuum). Not that we don't do that, just not as much.

But we do say "Pop a Panadol". Similarly, North Americans say "Take a Tylenol". They're just brand names, of course. So when I wanted to grab a painkiller I checked the labels... no paracetamol. Just ibuprofen and acetaminophen.

It turns out acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol, is also known as... paracetamol. Why we even use different names for the active ingredient, I have no idea. Anyone able to enlighten me on this?

Edited: A friend answered this for me! "Paracetamol and acetaminophen are both derivatives of one of the old chemical names for the substance (n-para-acetylaminophenol). It's just that no one could agree on which letters to keep." Thank you Norman!