What happened to the 'u'?
George Bernard Shaw once said that the USA and the UK were divided by a common language. Aside from the different cultural references that apply to each country, reflecting certain aspects of society that are often quite unique to them, it has something to do with the letter ‘u’. Why this should be, I don’t know but in fact the word colour for instance acquired the letter ‘u’ in the Victorian period. Prior to that it didn’t have a ‘u’ in it and was spelt color! Then we get other oddities like aluminum which in the UK is spelt aluminium, and consequently has a different pronunciation—although of course the base core is alumina. Then we have news, pronounced as just that, whereas I hear it from America as noos, and I’m sorry to have to admit but pronounced that way it just sounds funny to me. I have a friend in Brazil who’s English is perfect—from a writing viewpoint since I have never heard his voice—and it seems that the American form of spelling is used in Brazil. Although lately I notice that he has been adding the letter ‘u’ where we in the UK would include it.
My sister lives in Chicago and has done so for quite some time, so she has acquired a mild American accent and taken onboard the different spellings and words. When she visits me, she suggests we go to the movies, whereas I would say we’ll go to the cinema. Colloquially I could say we’ll go to the flicks, but then that brings us into a whole different area of language. I remember that on my first trip to the USA I asked for some chips at a bar, and received crisps, which wasn’t what I was expecting. For chips in the UK have no real equivalent abroad. People describe them as extra thick French Fries but really, they’re so much thicker that they’re just chips! Crisps come in lots of flavours and styles in the UK and one manufacturer even tried selling fish ‘n chips flavour! It didn’t work. I can’t really describe what they tasted like, but it wasn’t fish ‘n chips—nor did the Smoked Salmon version taste any better!
I’ve never really understood why English should take on a different accent when it develops abroad. If you go back in time and examine the origins of certain words, it’s the case that English acquires words but never throws any of the previous ones away. So it’s possible to say the same thing using a whole variety of words and arriving at many unique sentences. This comes from taking in lots of different cultures over the centuries and a certain laziness with pronunciation. When the Normans first arrived they spoke French, whereas the existing population spoke English (well we call it old English). So a series of additional words came into the language. In particular words for different types of meat. Beef for boeuf—so meat from any cow became beef, and so on. This ability to absorb so many words and have such subtle meanings makes English a wonderfully rich language, and I would have thought a very difficult language to learn—although a lot of people seem to cope with it as a second language.
Then we come back to the spelling which often abandons rules altogether! The town of Keighly in Yorkshire is actually pronounced Keithly and the aristocratic surname Featherstonehaugh is pronounced Fanshaw! Few people can get to understand the silent letters in Leicester—pronounced Lester. And in my area there are two towns, one called Cosham—pronounced Cosham—and the other called Bosham—pronounce Bozam. No one knows why there is such a difference but the train announcements accept the local pronunciation. When we get into regional accents, it’s a whole new ball game (is that an Americanism?). I once saw a Scottish film advertised with English sub-titles! They must have made a mistake I thought but the action was based in Glasgow. Have you ever heard a strong Glasgow accent? I could just about understand what they were saying.
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Then there is the slang I think this is the most evolving of things as I have been known to travel many countries and each return visit I must learn new slang terms not unlike understanding the terms of 3 sons slang each a decade apart but I have found that thus far Dude is a pretty universal term for American men now days. Yo has fallen out of favor and well I forgot to try and keep up with it all.
The art of conversation my friend is being lost to ear buds and cell phones and text messages were gr8 means something. Give me a pub anytime a beer and I'll make a few new friends if just for that night. Some of us really do understand a chip from a Brit is not a French Fry or a Pringle (a stackable crisp).
As for the U it is used often out here like How are U? :-)
My mother was born in London, within the sound of Bow Bells which makes her a Cockney—although she deliberately cleaned up her accent to form a neutral speech. My father came from the North-East of England, and so was a Geordie. My friend's wife comes from Birmingham which has a rather twisted drawl of an accent. For some reason accents from the north of England are stronger than those in the south. And no one I know says jolly good show or sticky wicket!!!
We have Pringles here in the UK, but the best crisps are the thick crinkle kind.
I get overheated if I eat hot spices so I go for what is really a toned down English version of a true curry. But with authentic methods coming back into fashion now, there are attempts at making the genuine dish and recognising that some are not so—they're just English dishes with an Indian flavour. I used to live in Mauritius so I did get close to true Indian dishes.
The English curry, of course, has No Indian counterpart, and neither does curry powder. The only Indian 'curry' I make is made of gramflour and yogurt, with dumplings! The word, I think, comes from 'kadhi', which simply means the process of cooking something for a very long time, until it becomes concentrated.
Would love to hear about your Mauritius life.
Anything with a gravy that has been cooked for a while can be called a curry. I have no idea what these different 'curries' would be. Just like you said, I'm sure they are distant cousins to differently named originals and no more.
'Balti' means a bucket, and some dishes ( lentils/dal come to mind) would be served in a small decorative brass bucket, the dish then being called balti dal. Similarly, kadhai dal, or dal served on the table in a small decorative wok, sometimes with a tiny fire still burning beneath it. I'm sure these balti houses serve everything from dal to chicken tikka in little buckets. Or maybe it has taken another avatar completely.
It is fascinating, though, the way food takes on the identity of the country its in. Indo-chinese food is very popular in India, with chowmein and chopsuey being sold even on the street. They are nothing like the original, but yum nevertheless. Ditto, 'burgers'. Since vegetarian food is more popular than non-vegetarian in India even now (though thats changing fast), a burger is usually a potato-vegetable tikki served in a bun, somtimes with mint chutney instead of mustard!
They used to sell chilli cakes by the roadside in Mauritius and these were made of dal mixed with chopped chillies. They used to be deep fried and me and my Mum used to like them very much, though strangely I can't eat chillies now. We also used to have a guy come visit the houses selling different candies and nut products. They sold salted peanuts but they weren't like the ones you get in the shops now. The brown skin had a purple coating and it was that that tasted salty. I never did find out what it was—any ideas?
I do remember that we had to sieve the flour and after we had done that, there were lots of dead black weevils left in the sieve. If you bought a roll in the market place, they didn't bother to sieve the floor, but I expect it added to the nutritional value! It never bothered me but the NAAFI used to get worried!
As far as I can tell you're talking about peanuts roasted with the thin skin intact; that way, the skin turns salty while the peanut doesn't take up salt, though it gets roasted too.
NAAFI?
NAAFI stands for Naval, Army and Air Force Institutes—essentially a canteen for servicemen. I think it started in the Second World War to co-ordinate feeding the services en masse. In Mauritius all the British personnel there were allowed to shop at the NAAFI, which was supposed to sell subsided goods and also considered safe(?). But I never had a problem eating the local food, although I did wonder what was in some of the stuff. There was a guy who came to the school and sold lunch-time snacks made with lots of oil, coconut and was very yellow in colour.