Ok it was a deliberately silly example for emphasis. Here’s a real example. I went to Australia once and in the airport somebody referred to my Mentos as “lolly”. To me, lollies are on a stick. Apparently not to aussies. It threw me off for half a second, but that’s it. Confused is an overstatement.
Yeah but the context clues are a hell of a lot easier there. You’re holding an object, and if someone called it a chupa-chupa or a sucker most people would be able to put that together pretty easily
Now imagine you’re going through stretches and someone walks in and is like “oh, playing football are you”. You could be preparing to go outside and play football… But you’re just stretching
I think most people would be confused by that unexpected second meaning of a familiar word
Ok it was a deliberately silly example for emphasis. Here’s a real example. I went to Australia once and in the airport somebody referred to my Mentos as “lolly”. To me, lollies are on a stick. Apparently not to aussies. It threw me off for half a second, but that’s it. Confused is an overstatement.
Imagine you are cooking a chicken. Your flatmate walks in, sees what you’re doing, and says, oh, are you making coffee?
You wouldn’t be just a little bit confused at first?
Yeah but the context clues are a hell of a lot easier there. You’re holding an object, and if someone called it a chupa-chupa or a sucker most people would be able to put that together pretty easily
Now imagine you’re going through stretches and someone walks in and is like “oh, playing football are you”. You could be preparing to go outside and play football… But you’re just stretching
I think most people would be confused by that unexpected second meaning of a familiar word