In a message dated 8/30/2009 6:22:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com writes:
> We have those. I've heard Americans refer to "garage sales". We
> (Brits) have those sometimes, but more often we take stuff to a local
> charity shop, or a school's "jumble sale", or stick stuff in the boot
> (luggage compartment) of a car, drive with others to an empty field,
> and have what called a "car boot sale"! :-)
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OK, a garage sale is typically where you sell your stuff from your own
garage. People just park on the street, walk to your house and buy your stuff.
Sometimes we'll have a "neighborhood" garage sale, where several people
will sell their junk from one person's garage.
A flea market must be like your "car boot sale", but the flea market's I've
been to, aren't in empty fields, they are more organized and regular.
"Jumble sale" that's a new one, I think we'd call that a "charity flea market".
That is, you donate your stuff and some charity sells it.
I was just thinking the other day, "Is there a British-American Dictionary"
? That would be a dictionary that has all these various words and phrases
and their translations into British English. Often I'll come upon an
article obviously written by a Brit and it will say something like "At the market,
her trolley bumped into a right blinker and he copped her one..."
(I just made that up), and it makes little sense at all to an American,
unless they had watched a lot of British tele.
W.J.