by Betsy Shaw posted in Pregnancy

When I first heard my English husband tell his mother that I was "up the duff" I almost fell off my chair. Turns out it's how the English, and Aussies, refer to a woman who is expecting. (They have also been known to refer to pregnancy as being  "in the pudding club.")
Here in the U.S. we have plenty of odd ways to refer to pregnancy, too. Some unimaginative--preggers, and cute -- bun in the oven, and others a bit more brash -- knocked up, for instance.
Pregnancy, and how societies view it, gets even more interesting when we start looking at how it's expressed in different languages. In the U.S., women mostly "get" pregnant, while in British English one "falls" pregnant. Both could be considered to be passive verbs, oddly enough, but "to get" at least conjures up some sort of initiative on behalf of the "getter." But to "fall "pregnant makes pregnancy sound as if it's, well, an unfortunate mishap. French women, I only recently learned, also "fall" pregnant ("tomber encient.") But the French also use the word "retrouver," which translates as "to find again," or "to remember."

Curiosity piqued, the BabyCenter International team clued me in to the multitude of ways one gets pregnant, around the globe.

China
???? is the direct translation of "I'm pregnant" and is commonly used today. The more traditional sayi...