Pushing the Envelope

Not as many interesting interesting misunderstandings from the Americans in my French class this week. We were translating a play from English into French. First they read through it in awful English accents while our English lecturer grinned and bore the mockery. When we got to translating the word "bloody" the American presenting said, "And I know from talking to English people that that's a very strong swear-word."
I contradicted him, "Not really. It is a swear word - unlike "damn" - but it's not a strong one."
The lecturer half backed me up, "Well my brother once got his mouth washed out with soap for saying 'bloody' but it's not the worst of words."
I can't wait to tell them about how Australians use the word "bugger"!

Then later in the class I noticed that the lecturer was disagreeing with all the students' ideas on how to translate "quite". Seeing the problem I gently explained to her why she wasn't getting through to them, "In American, 'quite' is always as an intensifier, even if in normal English we use it to tone down a claim."
People started muttering and the teacher chuckled at my choice of words. I just said, "Sorry, Standard English."
To which she cautioned, "We need to be a little careful here."
I don't think any Americans heard me ask, "What, I'm not supposed to call it patois americain?"

The only other thing of note was the use of a French word - chiant. I was a little proud of being able to incorporate some slang that I had learnt in passing, without having to look it up. But when it came time to discuss the translation in class, the teacher said, "You definitely couldn't use chiant there. It's far too vulgar."
I felt like exclaiming, "Then why does my girlfriend always say it to me?"