Different-yet-the-same continued - Gear stick
While I was on my wonderful vacation in Great Britain I got the wild idea to pick up a little notebook. I used it to jot down things that I found of interest. You know - turns of phrase, colloquialisms, verbal oddities. Little tidits of the local dialect, glimpses into English life, a game of "you say" "we say", or perhaps "I'll show you mine if you show me yours", eh?
"Gear stick"
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"Gear stick" - manual shift or stick shift
This is another one that makes me feel a bit petty for having written it down. However, I've asked around and for the most part people in my area would not use the term "gear stick" for the actual... well, gear... stick. The term makes perfect sense, but I'm just not used to hearing it.
Another point I'll make on this one is about rented vehicles. In my business travels in the US it has seemed to me that one would have to go out of their way to get a manual shift car. By default the assumption here is that the customer will want an automatic shift vehicle and unless they call it out that's what they get.
In England the majority of cars on the road seem to be manual shift. The rental cars all defaulted to manual shift unless I wanted to pay more and rent one of the paltry few cars they had available with automatic shift. I probably shouldn't complain too much. They upgraded me from the Ford Focus that they had quoted me to a VW Gulf. Whatever. Gear stick.
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