Live and learn

I discovered something new the other day. Such nuggets of fresh knowledge seem to have been rare of late, but perhaps I just haven't been panning enough.

I was talking about differing social customs relating to food and eating out with one of my business English classes, and a couple of my students eagerly told me that the concept of "going Dutch" on the bill was fast becoming more popular in China - but that they had a different expression for it.

My students were amazed that I hadn't heard it before.

They were even more amazed to learn that it was not, as they had always assumed, a British or American expression (No, we say "Going Dutch".).

I confess I was more than a little surprised I hadn't heard it before myself. But most of my Chinese friends speak good English (and are perhaps self-aware enough to refrain from using such odd Chinese expressions in their English conversation). Moreover, when I eat out with Chinese friends, I - or one of my other foreign friends - will usually foot the bill, in deference to the fact that we are, in general, rather better off than them, and we don't want them to feel inhibited about joining us in slightly fancier restaurants than they would usually frequent.

Anyway, what the Chinese these days say, apparently, for 'splitting the bill' is...... 'AA'.

What???

While I try to be open to the possibility that there may be obscure - or recent - pieces of English usage (particularly from the US) that I am not familiar with, it immediately seemed unlikely to me that: a) anyone in the English-speaking world would coin a new expression for something like this, something that we already have perfectly adequate phrases to describe; or b) that if they did, they would use an acronym for it; or that c) if they did use an acronym, they wouldn risk unnecessary confusion by stealing the name of the Alcoholics Anonymous organization. No, my suspicion was that this was one of those weird acronyms spawned from the world of txt msg and BBS, and that it was probably entirely Chinese in origin.

One of my students did some online research during the break, and it seems I was right. Some years ago, a Chinese dude searching for a convenient expression to use for this quaint new Western custom of splitting the bill at dinner (in China, traditionally, one person treats everybody else) - probably using one of those execrably bad electronic dictionaries that they all rely on so much these days - tried to look up the English for 'equal shares' and happened upon....... algebraic average.

Amazing, but true.