My hang-gliding instructor, Steve, told us a classic colloquialism, common from northern England, which he was responsible for. His family had a tin under the telephone which they used for general odds-and-ends, so if anything was lost, they'd say, "Look in the tin."

Anyway, they had a foreign friend staying with them. At some point, Steve needed to find something. His folks told him to look in the tin, but he said, "It isn't in the tin."

This confused his friend. Being a northerner, what my instructor had _actually_ said was, "'T in't in t' tin." So his friend asked, "What is this 'tin-tin-tin'?" Steve was completely confused, bcos as far as he knew, he'd not said anything about a cartoon character with a dog called Snowy. They had to rewind the conversation back a few steps until they finally found what he'd actually said!

Re the aluminium point, I apologise - I didn't realise you actually spelled it differently over there. Ah well.

Another word which amuses Germans is when an English person takes a shot at something, and says, "Missed!" In German, "Mist" means manure. Somewhat along the lines of the German word for travel or a trip, "Fahrt", which is guaranteed to cause amusement at schools.

Grab.