David Waterman is a literary critic working at La Rochelle University, France. In 2015, he was at the Karachi Literature Festival to launch his book. As the American mingled with Pakistanis after the book launch, he learnt a new phrase: cold drink. Cold drink is a term he had never heard previously. For most people in Pakistan it is an “English” phrase used when you talk about fizzy or soft drinks. The local term is botal, a variation on the pronounciation of bottle. Cold drink is not the only “English” phrase that sounds strange to native speakers of English. Another widely used term is Son of the soil. You won’t find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary .
Australia
United-states
New-zealand
India
United-kingdom
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
Canada
France
Pakistan
Karachi
Sindh