a rose, they say, would smell as sweet...

so i might be jumping the gun with my topic for the week, since i don't think everyone blogged last week, but i actually have a topic and a little bit of time and a decent connection all at once, so gun-jumping, here i go!
this week's topic was actually sparked by a comment in jane's blog about dialects, which caused me to become aware that when the guy at mcdonalds said "guy yep yuh", he was actually asking if he could help me (presumably by taking my order). so that led to a bunch of other thoughts about the english language - its uses, its evolution, dialects, etc.
i get to use many versions of english at work; i interact and communicate with young children, both educated and uneducated adults, and people whose first language is not english, and i find myself speaking differently around different people. for instance, my boss is somewhat of a grammarian. we say "shall" and "perhaps" and the like. we once had a debate over how one should express that another was behaving like a curmudgeon - then both went home and did some research. it turns out that when one behaves like a curmudgeon, one is displaying curmudgeonry. who would have guessed? my job also requires that i process in all our new staff members - from teeny-boppers beginning their first job to management staff with postgraduate degrees. i find myself referring to things as "cool" or "sucking" with many of the new hires. then of course, there are the few to whom i have the fun of explaining that when we ask for them to specify a race (for equal employment opportunity tracking purposes) one need not cross out the word "caucasian" and write in "white". you can bet i didn't mention curmudgeonry to the few, the proud, the needing to have paid attention in elementary school.
i do admit that i can be a bit of a language snob, but i digress. the point of the topic is to discuss how our language is so varied - accents, dialects, fun localized phrases, the whole gamut.
we can mention that in texas, when asked what kind of coke one would like, it is perfectly acceptable to reply "mountain dew", or that in ireland "good crack" means "lots of fun".
i know someone who was very offended when approached by a (presumably) homeless person in london and asked "fag?" (the unfortunately dirty person wanted a cigarette) and someone who was mortified when she learned that in the united states, if one asks to borrow a rubber, one will not be handed an eraser.
i highly doubt that i'm the only person to have experienced or been told about misunderstandings of this sort, so please share yours (for those who speak foreign languages, feel free to make comparisons among the way we phrase things, idioms, etc. as well).