You speak the language but do you speak the money?

What intrigues me is how we can all speak the same language, use exactly the same words, and still mean entirely different things by them. Words carry context, culture, and a whole set of quiet assumptions, and nowhere have I noticed that more than since moving to Canada.

One mistake I still make happens whenever I run into someone I already know. I will say, “It was lovely to meet you.” Of course, I do not mean meet, I mean see. Somewhere along the way, those two words became interchangeable in my mind, but they really are not. You meet someone once, and after that it is always nice to “see” them. 

The same thing happens when we travel. I will casually tell people we are going to be living at a particular hotel for a few nights, until my wife gently points out that we are staying there. We live at home. We stay in hotels. Where I grew up, nobody would have blinked if I had used the words interchangeably, but in reality, they carry different meanings.

The first time someone told me something would cost “a loonie,” I genuinely wondered why they were calling me loony. It took only a moment for them to explain that Canada’s one-dollar coin is named after the loon pictured on it. We laughed and moved on.

These are low-stakes conversations. Now, imagine how differently they could play out when the conversation is about money.

The word that opened up the room

A few weeks ago I was facilitating a workshop in Calgary on newcomers and money. One of the case studies involved an immigrant who sent money home every month to support family overseas. My goal was to spark a conversation about budgeting, because I think we often overlook the fact that many newcomers are not simply paying Canadian bills; they are simultaneously supporting parents, siblings, or children in another country, and those regular transfers deserve a place in every budgeting conversation.

I referred to those payments as remittances, and something unexpected happened. Several people in the room assumed I meant payroll remittances to the Canada Revenue Agency. For a moment we were clearly talking about two different things, and rather than derailing the session, that little collision made it better. What started as a fairly basic conversation about budgeting suddenly opened up into a much richer one about how the same financial word can mean completely different things depending on where you learned it.

Outside Canada, for millions of people, a remittance simply means money sent home to support loved ones. In Canada, particularly in a business or tax setting, the same word usually refers to statutory payments owed to the government. Neither interpretation was wrong, they simply belonged to different financial worlds. That moment stayed with me, because it made me realize how much context we quietly attach to financial words without ever noticing we are doing it.

A few weeks later, I was on the phone with my accountant discussing my company’s year-end. As we wrapped up, I said, “I’m ready to close.” There was a pause. He thought I meant I was closing the business. When I clarified that I was not, his next assumption was far more exciting: he thought my family and I were closing on a new home. Again, I said no. What I actually meant was that I was ready to close the financial year so he could finalize the statements and file my corporate return. Three perfectly reasonable interpretations, three completely different conversations, one word.

When a familiar word means something new

Once I started paying attention, I began spotting these little gaps everywhere. The interesting thing is that it is rarely about financial literacy. Plenty of newcomers arrive knowing more about money than the systems they left behind ever asked of them. It is just that a word they have used confidently their whole lives means something else here, and nobody thinks to mention it.

Take “credit.” In much of the world, having your account “in credit” simply means there is money sitting in it. In Canada, credit points almost immediately in the opposite direction—toward borrowing, credit scores, lines of credit, and debt. So, when a Canadian bank offers a newcomer a “credit facility,” it is not offering them access to their own funds. It is offering a loan that accrues interest. The word has not changed, but the entire assumption underneath it has.

Then there is “hydro.” In most of the world, hydro is short for hydroelectric power, or something to do with water; in Canada, it means your electricity bill. When a rental listing says utilities are included “except hydro,” a newcomer can easily assume they are on the hook for the water, when in fact they are being told to set up and pay for their own electricity account. Same word, entirely different bill.

Even the humble tax return can trip people up. It is perfectly reasonable for a newcomer to hear “return” and picture money coming back from the government. In reality, the return is the paperwork you file. The money, if you are owed any, is the refund. Two different words, two different things, and only one of them ever lands in your bank account. Until someone explains the distinction, it genuinely is not obvious.

What about the word “hold”? In most of the world, it means gripping something or waiting on a phone line. Deposit a foreign cheque at a Canadian bank, though, and you will hear it used a third way, when the teller explains there is a five-day hold on the funds. To someone unfamiliar with the term, it can sound as though their money is being frozen, questioned, or quietly taken, when all that is really happening is that the cheque needs a few days to clear.

Fluent in a language, still learning the money

What I have come to notice is that every financial system has built its own vocabulary—not necessarily different words, but different meanings bolted onto familiar words. The gap is rarely knowledge. It is context, and context is a sneaky thing to pack in a suitcase.

None of this is unique to Canada, of course. Every country has its own financial shorthand shaped by its history and its habits, and I have no doubt Canadians abroad would fumble their way through someone else’s money words just as cheerfully as I and countless others have fumbled through these. What makes it easy to miss is that the words feel so obvious once you are on the inside of them. The kindest thing any of us can do, whether we are helping a newcomer or just chatting with one, is to notice when a perfectly ordinary word might be landing in a completely different place than we intended.