[amorphid]

I've hosted a 30+ of couch surfers over the past year. They crash on an air mattress in my studio apartment, so it's a tight space. Even though they are grateful for a free place to stay here in San Francisco, it's easy for me to say a very western things that my guests misinterpret.

For example, the word asshole. To me, asshole does not, and never really did, mean the hole in one's butt. Asshole means jerk. At least it did until I hosted someone from South Africa. He told me that in South Africa, my language would be considered very profane profane. To him, asshole ONLY meant (still means?) butthole. There was no overlap in how we understood the word.

So I recommend keeping your language as neutral as possible, relying on as little idiomatic wording as you can. Say jerk, not asshole. Say it's raining quite harc, not it' raining cats and dogs, etc.