1 post tagged “the brits”

The Brits

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.