British or... American English ?

Speaking English

In my childhood days our English was the BBC’s… although sometimes we got cockney and Yorkshire pudding… or was it English… even when we lived in Iran where my father worked mostly with American colleagues... and American English was largely spoken even among non-natives -a 'lingo' I too soon picked to my mother's despair... she would correct me as would some of my British friends and ask me to 'speak English'... while my American friends laughed and said 'Jesse, you're sooo American !'... That was also why my British boss in an English language school in England often reminded me to 'Speak English'...

I had two little American kids for French lessons a long time ago in Paris... and they thought I was 'So British'... The funny thing is may Italian friends can also pinpoint where I come from in Italy by my Italian accent... except I'm not Italian...

In my Franco-British family when in France English was taught as Oxford English… which only the French seem to know… and our family was divided between ‘The French’, ‘The English’, ‘The Swedes’… only our Zimbabwean family –a blend of English, Scottish and Swedish origins- seemed to retain their names… either that or they never made it to ‘The Zimbabweans’… heaven knows… and later one of my sisters having emigrated to Switzerland, it seemed only natural that she and her family there became ‘The Swiss’…

Coming back to France as an adult, I became and English teacher and trainer… to find out that by then, Oxford English had made way for American English… which most students struggled with and mostly failed to understand or memorise… especially since most English and American teachers were not teachers…

In the United Kingdom we don’t like Americans… and anything that even only remotely claims to be American… still push had come to shove and all American English it was… and in a couple of years everyone was talking or talking about Globish… the deal was changing again… and strangely enough British English –or English English- was back on the track…

The French love exotica and any change is welcome… but winds of change are also trade winds… and nothing lasts…

Still all through those decades I discovered more and more American English –I had lived a few years with Americans in my childhood… plus imports of American cinema –Oops ! movies- and songs had topped up… so American English had never been a stranger to me…

I found out that American English is a strange helter skelter higgledy piggledy hodge podge of many ingredients all blended in the strangest and most erratic manner… American English varies from class to class, from state to state, from community to community, from faith to faith, and even from individual to individual and speaker to speaker… and casts an ocean of misunderstanding between the UK and the US as some words are the same but don’t mean the same… and a lot of phrasal verbs meaning the same on both side of the Atlantic use different prepositions or post positions… causing more confusion than communication to the point even Judge Judy sometimes has trouble understanding them… and it’s not for lack of trying !

One of my Irish friends having lived in the US for over 35 years still has to ‘translate’ British jokes to her American relatives !

And if we were on the whole to compare American English and British English apple to apple… we would probably find more differences than similarities !

Jesse CRAIGNOU

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