-
The Same Language?
——
by
David Barton
It was said by Sir George
Berbard Shaw that
“
England
and America are two countries separated by
the same
language.
”
My
first personal experience of this was when I
worked as a camp counsellor
for
two
months
in
2000
in
a
Summer
Camp
run
by
the
Boy
Scouts1
of
America,
as
part
of
an
international leader exchange scheme.
Before I went, all the participants in the scheme
were given a
short list of words that
are in common use in the UK which Americans would
either be confused by
or would even
offend them. I memorized the words and thought
“
I
’
ll
cope
”
.
When I finally arrived in
the States three months later, I realized that
perhaps a lifetime of watching
American
television was not adequate preparation for
appreciating and coping with the differences
between American and British speech.
In the first hour of arriving at the
camp
I was exposed to
High
School American English, Black American English
and the American English spoken by Joe
Public2, all very different to each
other. Needless to say, I did cope in the end. The
Americans I met
were very welcoming and
helpful, and I found they were patient with me
when I made a social
faux
pas
when I used an
inappropriate word or phrase.
Upon
my
return
I
began
to
wonder
whether
anyone
had
documented
the
differences
between
American and British English. I found
several books on the subject but often these were
written in a
dry
and
academic
way.
I
felt
that
I
could
do
better
and
use
my
sense
of
humor
and
personal
experience to help people from both
sides of Atlantic to communicate more effectively
when they
met.
Firstly, American English and British
English are converging thanks to increased
transatlantic travel
and the media. The
movement of slang words is mostly eastwards,
though a few words from the UK
have
been
adopted
by
the
Ivy
League3
fraternities.
This
convergent
trend
is
a
recent
one
dating
from
the
emergence
of
Hollywood
as
the
predominant
film
making
centre
in
the
world
and
also
from the Second World
War when large numbers of American GIs4 were
stationed in the UK. This
trend
was
consolidated
by
the
advent
of
television.
Before
then,
it
was
thought
that
American
English and British
English would diverge as the two languages
evolved. In 1789, Noah Webster, in
whose
name
American
dictionaries
are
still
published
to
this
day,
stated
that
“
Numerous
local
causes, such as a new country, new
associations of people, new combinations of ideas
in the arts
and
some
intercourse
with
tribes
wholly
unknown
in
Europe
will
introduce
new
words
into
the
American
tongue.
”
He
was
right,
but
his
next
statement
has
since
been
proved
to
be
incorrect.
“
These causes will produce
in the course of time a language in North America
as different from
the future language
of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish
are from the German or
from one
another.
”
Webster had underrated the amount of
social intercourse between England and her former
colony.
Even before Webster had started
to compile his dictionary, words and expressions
from the America
had already
infiltrated the British language, for example
“
canoe
”
and
“
hatchet
”
. Very few people
in
Britain realize how many of the words they use are
of American origin. Often this importation of
American words has encountered a
linguistic snobbery by the British, which was a
manifestation of
the
cultural
snobbery
that
bedevilled
Anglo-American
relationships
for
a
long
time.
This
is
not,