Stephen Mulraney scripsit:

> _I'm after going there_: I mean "I've just gone there". Interpreted as
> "I want to go there" (bizarrely phrased)

This is heavily marked as Hiberno-English.

> _press_: I mean "cupboard" (which to me means a "kitchen dresser").

And what do you mean by that?

To me a cupboard is essentially a tall thin wooden (or metal) box
attached to the wall, with shelves and a door, and used to store
non-perishable food, plates, glasses, and such.  It can be either
near the floor or near the ceiling, but rarely in between.
If it contains anything else, it is a "cabinet".

I know what a clothes press is, but I've never seen one.  The only other
"press" to me is a printing press, or journalism generally.

> _pot_: I mean a "saucepan" (a word I can't bring myself to use - it's
> like saying _spikespoon_ for _fork_). Sometimes understood. Thanks to
> context, I've never had it taken as a reference to marijuana. But I'm
> surprised it misunderstood at all.

I share your view about "pot", and am frequently confused when my wife
(a Southerner) refers to an obvious pot as a pan.  She calls all such
utensils pans, whereas for me "pan" has to be qualified as "frying pan"
or "cake pan" or such.

> In the other direction, I once missed out on a useful aid in a maths

"Math" in North America.

> And even English people don't seem to be able to agree on what "Warning:
> Adverse camber" means on a road sign :)

Well, I gather it means that the road is excessively slanted, but whether
up, down, left, or right, I have no idea.

> One further example, in pronunciation. The county-name _Berkshire_
> presents some difficulties for me: it's said it should be pronounced
> _Barkshire_, but that's no good to me, since I speak rhotic English, and
> the vowel mutation seems inextricably bound up with the flavour imparted
> by the non-rhotic 'r'.

I too am rhotic, and have no trouble saying [bar\kli] for the philosopher,
and [br\=kli], as the natives do, for the city in California.  This is a
sound change in the 17th-18th century that mostly got backed out, but
left a few traces behind in proper names and the RP pronunciation of
"clerk" and a few other words.

--
"But the next day there came no dawn,           John Cowan
and the Grey Company passed on into the         [log in to unmask]
darkness of the Storm of Mordor and were        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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