In South-Africa we call a traffic light a robot (really, any SAfrican will tell you that) Tourists usually have no idea what to look for if we say "turn right at the second robot ..." Do you have strange names for common objects in your country aswell?
I'd tell you but you'll clueless about name of the things we call in our country. You say Potatoe (Really? not Potato?) = We say Aalloo
In Russian, we call it a Kartoshka. First time I heard an Aussie say, "to take the piss out of someone", I couldn't understand it. They explained it to me after. We all had a fun time.
When I went on holiday to New Zealand (from Australia) we got a good laugh out of these- Trundler- we call it a shopping trolley Pottle of jam- we call it jar of jam or maybe pot of jam (and I think US calls jam, jelly?) Judder Bar- we call it a speed hump. I also think it's funny that if we talk about thongs (though the US meaning is also common here now) an American may not realise we are talking about foot wear (flip flops). We had a friend coming to visit from the US and we told her she should bring thongs to wear on the beach. She thought we meant the very brief underwear kind of thong, and was rather taken aback that we would suggest she bring these. LOL
In England Speed Bump = Sleeping Policeman A couple of local Liverpool ones Scran = Food Bins = Spectacles Scally = Local Young Hooligans Meff = roughly means tramp cottie = retard
crocodile (buwaya) = police parents (magulang) = take advantage filipino's out there.. add more & enjoy.
Cant think of any in america. Unless you want to use slang words but those are not common in the whole country. But, calling traffic lights robots would get confusing, I would personally think whoever told me to "make a left at the robot..." was crazy in the mind.
We say potatis in Swedish. And where I live we have a lot of weird words that Swedes don't even understand! Siddubarra is my favorite!
Why don't you tell to the tourist guide what are the meaning of the common words you were using in your country? In that way they will not be confused. Anyway we have here in our country called "kanto"- means the next block.^_^