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Defining the 'English' language 02 February 2003 ~ 14:40 Since Mark moved to England, he hasn't lost his American accent (not much to be instantly discernable anyway). But what he has done is pick up a lot of British expressions that aren't used in America. Things like 'what a load of cobblers,' 'Bob's your uncle,' 'it went a bit pear-shaped,' 'that's so naff,' etc. I remember him telling me when he went home after only being here a few months, he said to his mate John, 'I wasn't half tired,' and John was like 'You what?'Now that sort of acclimatisation is to be expected; when in Rome etc. But what I didn't count on was that being married to an American, speaking to his mum every day and so on, would cause me to pick up and start using American expressions, idioms, or ways of saying things. The perfect example of this would be the American 'Do you have this in a medium or large?' Brits would say 'Have you got this ...?' Also, an American, when replying, will reverse the wording compared to the British way of replying. For example, two Americans can be discussing boyfriends. One girl says 'Did you know I have a boyfriend now?' Reply: 'You do?' Now the same conversation between two Brits: 'Did you know I've got a boyfriend now?' Reply: 'Have you?' Some American slang words are actually better than the ones we use. I've always thought calling farting 'having wind' was such a terrible euphemism. Like a gentle breeze or something. 'Having gas' is so much more appropriate�stinky, toxic gas. I use that all the time now. I interchange things too. Bum or butt, for instance. And I love the American slang verb to suck, meaning to be horrible/terrible. However, it is gaining popularity among young people here now. In fact, I had to laugh when I saw an old car with a snow-covered back window parked outside a square in South Kensington the other day. Some joker had written 'I suck' in the snow on it. Hilarious! Sometimes no other word is appropriate. Inflection is crucial to the way Americans and Brits speak. Mark and I were in the cafe the other morning. Mark ordered a croissant, then turned to me and said, 'Damn, I keep meaning to use the proper pronounciation based on the French, but it always comes out as "C'sant."' My reply was that Americans stress the first syllable of words most of the time, whereas we Brits stress the last syllable, which is why I can say 'croi-SANT' with much less effort than Mark can. It is funny to think how disparate the stress of words are between the two countries. But personally, I don't think we're moving in opposite directions with our respective forms of English, as was once theorised by the doom-and-gloom types. If anything, we have moved closer to understanding each other. I think the language that unites Americans and Brits will be just fine, despite differences of slang, inflection or word stress.
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