Friday, August 3, 2012

Naughts and Zeds: Peek-a-What?!?

Naughts and Zeds is an ongoing series of posts on the differences between language, culture, and everyday items in America and in Britain. For a list of previous posts, go here.

The other day I was at the local library in the children's section and saw a book we have at home. Except the title is different! I wondered what was going on here. I looked through the whole book, and sure enough, the only difference was wherever the title word appeared.

In America it's called Peek-a-boo! In the UK it's called Peepo!

I tried searching the internet for the term "peepo" with no satisfactory results. The internet dictionaries failed me. Google Search failed me. All the search engines failed to provide any sort of context or explanation. So I did what any contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire would do, I phoned a friend.

Actually, I emailed a friend, the most excellent Sean McCarney from Just A Catholic Dad podcast. In Episode 85, he replied that he did indeed play the game of hiding his eyes with his hands and occasionally looking out and he does call it Peepo. I take that as confirmation, and I hope internet search engines start pointing to this blog post!

Peepo! is available from here at Amazon.co.uk.

Clicking won't work, sorry!

Peek-a-boo! is available from Amazon.com at the link below.



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