Across the Pond Read Free Page A

genocide. It would be interesting to note the official response to “Can’t remember” or “Not for quite a while.”
    The British and the Americans, George Bernard Shaw famously observed, are divided by the same language. As one who belonged to neither nation, he could be dispassionate about the matter. In fact, the differences can be exaggerated. It is true, as the old song has it, that Americans say “tomato” and the British say “tomahto,” but nobody in Britain says “potahto.” However, many Americans incorrectly pronounce the name “Edinburgh” to rhyme with “Marlboro.” This is particularly confusing, since the British pronounce the word “Marlborough” in a way that rhymes with the correct pronunciation of “Edinburgh.” British and American types of English sound alike but are also different, which is true of the two cultures as a whole. Their ways are both strange and similar to each other, a condition that Freud knew as the uncanny. It is uncanny to see something which looks familiar in outlandish guise, or to see what is foreign as though it were routine.
    Every now and then, an American will reveal by a casual word or gesture that he or she is more alien than you imagined. This is rather like those science fiction movies in which the extraterrestrials appear in convincing human guise, but betray by some well-nigh imperceptible blunder—a word slightly mispronounced, a coffee cup held at a bizarre angle, a tiny drop of green blood—that they are not what they seem. At this point, a sinisterly dissonant chord will be heard on the soundtrack. In the same way, Americans can appear convincingly human to the British, only to reveal in a casual aside that they do not know how to boil an egg, brew a pot of tea, or understand the meaning of the word “fortnight.” Their true otherness then flashes out in all its mind-numbing horror.
    Everyone knows that when a British schoolteacher asks his boys to get out their rubbers, he is inviting them to have their erasers ready to hand, not about to give them a lesson in contraception. British people who live in flats do not set up home in burst tires. The word “bum” in Britain means buttocks, not vagrant. Americans might be interested to hear that when a British friend tells them he is going to bum a fag, he means that he is about to cadge a cigarette. An Englishman who gets through twenty fags a day is not necessarily a promiscuous homosexual. To say “I’ll call you Wednesday” in British English does not mean that I shall telephone you on Wednesday, but that I shall refer to you by the name Wednesday, even if your actual name happens to be Roger or Roberta. In British English, braces keep your trousers up as well as keeping your teeth straight.
    Keywords
    Not all Americans know that the following words and phrases are fairly distinctive to their own brand of English: weird, awesome, reach out to, feel comfortable with, have a hard time, big time, way too much, miracle, dream, buy into, gross, closure, impact (as a transitive verb), heal, like, flunk, scary, facility, structure, blown away, I appreciate it, zero in, kind of, issue (for problem), focused, respected, determine, freaking, roil, America, momentarily, at this time, barf, kids, meet with, share with, number one, craft (as a verb), family, hacked off, bottom line, out there, bunch, totally, hero, excited, garner, aggressive (used positively), off of, empower.
    Some of these terms (“weird,” for example) have migrated to some extent into British English, as American speech tends to do. Another obvious example is the word “like,” repeated every four seconds or so by young Americans, and now increasingly by other English speakers as well. It is rumoured that you can now find tombstones in the States reading: “To Our Beloved Son, Brother and Like Husband.” There are also proposals to modernise certain time-worn slogans to “In Like God We Trust” and “My Country Like ’Tis of