Kiwinglish: true story

I went into a sporting goods/outdoors store in Auckland and told the young salesman I wanted a fanny pack. His mouth dropped open. He stared. There was a long silence. As it turns out, the kiwi term for what I wanted is "bum bag," and "fanny" is a very different part of a woman's anatomy. No wonder the young man was stunned. As someone put it to me politely, "your fanny is your front bum, and your bum is your back bum." A Canadian friend of mine moved to NZ years ago and began teaching aerobics. At first she was very confused. At some point in the routine she would say, "Okay, ladies, shake your fannies!" and the women in her class would go into these strange bump-and-grind motions. It took her a while to figure out why.