Separated by a Common Language

We have American houseguests at the moment, so not a lot of time to blog, but lots of time to sit around and listen to other Americans' impressions of BrE. So far, we've discussed pudding/dessert, Jell-o/jelly (both mentioned back here) and something else that we discussed for at least a few minutes and that I have now forgotten completely.

So, in the absence of time/presence of mind to write much more, here are some recommendations for resources on regional accents. The British Library has recently unveiled their Sounds Familiar? website. This is a wonderful resource, full of descriptions and recordings of various dialects in the UK.

Looking for something somewhat similar for the US, I found the Varieties of English website at University of Arizona. This covers other Englishes in addition to American--and doesn't cover the whole of America. (For instance, the English of white Arizonans isn't treated at all.) But if you click on 'Southern States' or 'Northeast US', you get some general description and sound samples. A classic (meaning that it already existed when I started teaching) American dialect 'edutainment' is the film American Tongues. If you can find a copy, it's definitely a good one.

If you have other dialect audio-visual resources to recommend, please do so!

Americans have a well-established distaste for taxation without representation. This is part of the reason why, this past Wednesday, I became a British citizen (while retaining my American citizenship as well). Since 2004, the naturali{s/z}ation process has involved a test on "Life in the UK" (which serves as an indirect way of making sure you have some knowledge of the English language as well) and a citizenship ceremony at the end of the process. This is based on the US system and strikes some native Britons as un-British. I was hoping to have some good SBaCL stories to tell about the experience, but there was little of linguistic interest at the ceremony. But I did affirm my allegiance to the Queen, her heirs and successors. My UK-born friends think this is hilarious, as they've never had to do so, and are confident that they would get a lot of questions wrong if tested on the details of the history and structure of their government. But they know the answers to the questions that really matter if you want to get along in British culture, like: What is Blue Peter? Who is David Essex? Who has right-of-way at a roundabout? and Who's paying for the next round?

Two days after becoming a citizen, I was on my way back to the US. What a fickle soul I am. Better Half and I have just had a lovely weekend in New York City, which was only marred for BH by the fact that the place is crawling with Englishpeople. "But I used to be special!" he cried. "People used to love my accent! Now everyone's got one!" BH's loss of specialness is directly attributable to the pathetic condition of the American dollar. After it dipped to nearly $2 to £1, British Airways added an extra flight a day to accommodate British Christmas shopping trips, and the UK newspapers are full of price comparisons of iPods and designer handbags/purses in London versus New York, with analyses of whether it's worth the trip, once you've paid airfare and import duty. Depending on what and how much you're buying, it very well may be worth it. On other comparisons of NYC and London, BH and I agreed that NYC wins on the politeness and helpfulness of its citizenry (one cannot open a map/guidebook in public without someone approaching you to offer their help), while London wins on the relative pleasantness of its underground (=AmE subway) trains and stations--though NYC definitely wins on the cost of public transport(ation).

While we don't turn our noses up at the bargains, our reason for being here is to visit family and friends for the holidays. While visiting with the first couple, The Interpreters, I had my first cross-cultural miscommunication of the trip. BH was telling tales from our previous busy day, during which we went to the theatre and the cinema. After asking for a repetition of "the theatre and the cinema", Interpreter S noted to Interpreter K "I would've said we went to the movies and a play. Theatre and cinema sounds so much better." We had seen the new Christopher Guest film For Your Consideration, which BH liked better than I did, though I told The Interpreters about my continued affection for Parker Posey. Upon hearing this, Interpreter S said "I went to school with Parker Posey." Since I'd been under the impression that Parker Posey had grown up in Mississippi, and that Interpreter S most certainly hadn't, I was (BrE informal) well confused and asked which school that was. "SUNY Purchase," IS responded. And there was my "a-ha" moment. When AmE speakers say "I went to school there," they often mean 'I went to (BrE) university/(AmE) college there'. (SUNY Purchase = State University of New York at Purchase.) In BrE, school denotes primary or secondary school, but not university.

It's not common for me to misunderstand Americans speaking AmE. Perhaps I became more British than I reali{s/z}ed last Wednesday!

Bbrug pointed out an article on British and American authors' renditions of the other dialect's speech on the Telegraph website. Not being a Telegraph reader, I was grateful for the link.

The author starts with the following premise (BrE: premiss):

America has become more interested in the outside world since September 2001. If their first, bewildered question was "Why do they hate us so much?" it has, in time, been followed up by questions about what life in the outside world is actually like.

This premis{e/s} itself may be the most faulty part of the article. There have always been people in the US who are interested in what the outside world is like. But, having been an expat both before and after September 11th, I've felt that the proportion of 'what's it like to live there?' to 'why do they hate us?' conversations has changed in the opposite direction of that suggested by the author. Just in March, I was trapped in a conversation at an American party, where a man who'd never needed a passport kept drilling me on the hatred subject, refusing to believe that I didn't suffer as an American abroad. On the two occasions in which I've had dental work in the US since the terrorist attacks, I've been stuck with Dr Dentist's hands in my mouth while he lectures me on why he'll never return to France because of its government's stance on the war. When travel(l)ing with Better Half in the US, I'm always amazed when people ask where he's from and then say "That sounds nice. I have no interest in going there. There's enough of America to see." Why, exactly, did they feel the need to say that?

Anyhow, back to language. The author goes on:

There's an easy test to apply about how substantial this new interest is, or whether the outside world is actually being listened to. Can American writers reliably report the styles of speech of one of their nearest linguistic cousins?

By the end of the article, it's clear that this is not a very good test at all. As the author notes, creating realistic dialogue is one of the most difficult aspects of writing fiction, and few writers master it even in their own dialect. And while Europeans can't help but be exposed to a lot of American culture (through media, retail, politics and tourists), there are few British novelists who ably write American voices without crossing the border into parody.

The author's segue into the main discussion of dialogue in novels starts on a filmic tangent:

From Cary Grant to Dick van Dyke to Woody Allen's inadvertently hilarious Match Point ("I was raised in Belgravia"), English audiences have been retching in the stalls at American film's idea of English speech.

Dick van Dyke's portrayal of a Cockney chimneysweep in Mary Poppins remains a byword for American misapprehension of British speech, but seems a bit unfair here in relation to American writers' reportage of the British 'voice', since an Australian wrote the Mary Poppins books. While it is easier to come up with examples of British (and Australian and South African) actors taking on American accents than vice versa, this probably has at least as much to do with the "economic migration" of British film actors toward Hollywood as to do with the quality of American acting. Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones was warmly embraced here, and Gwyneth Paltrow's English accents, while not perfect, are rarely marked as a distraction.

The article goes on to discuss the stereotyping of (particularly upper class) British speech as 'pompous' and overly wordy, and this is undebatable. One never hears Brits in American films or novels saying "I reckon...". The pomposity is linked to Americans' tendency to cast Englishmen (complete with ridiculously pompous speech styles) as villains. As Leo Benedictus in the Guardian notes, "Sophistication in all its forms is a sure sign of evil, and American audiences find nothing more sophisticated (or untrustworthy) than a snooty Brit." (I can't help but relate Americans' association of sophisticated, wordy language as a sign of untrustworthiness to the otherwise unfathomable electoral success of George W Bush. Well, that and Republican money an a crooked Supreme Court, of course.)

People here often say to me "you don't sound American" or "oh, I thought you were Canadian." One could believe that this is because British people have wonderful ears for accents and recognize a couple of features that are shared between my part of New York and Ontario. But that's pretty unlikely. The only time any American has accused me of sounding Canadian was when I moved to Massachusetts and was relentlessly mocked for saying eh? at the end of each utterance. (This was useful in South Africa, where I easily adapted to saying hey at the end of each utterance.) No, I think there are three reasons why I don't 'sound American' to some Brits, listed here in order of perceived importance:

• I don't sound like a hick* or a mafiosa. That is, the British get their ideas of what Americans sound like from stereotyped performances, just as Americans do for the English.


• Everyone lives in mortal fear of travel(l)ing Canadians, who go bonkers when accused of being American.


• I make certain accommodations for British ears, namely avoiding intervocalic flaps. (Click here to hear a flap in the middle of the word letter and here to hear it with a regular /t/ sound.)

*AmE has lots of unflattering epithets for rural folk, including: hick, hayseed, hillbilly, redneck, rube, country bumpkin, yokel. The last couple aren't marked in my Concise Oxford as 'US', so presumably they are known in Britain too. (Better Half is not here to serve as my editor today!) But while hick is now considered to be an Americanism, it's another of those words that started out in England and was forgotten here. See The Word Detective on the subject.