f LEXICOLOGY
or, How to Speak English in England:
An irreverent introductory
lesson.
A Norwegian friend visits. Flights
from Bergen to Cambridge are relatively short and inexpensive. We’re having beers at a pub overlooking the
River Cam. Out there, on the river, the
punts are hopelessly self-guided. They
are more like floating cigar-shaped billiard balls, crashing into one another,
than the genteel watercraft of a bye-gone age.
It is easy to suspect that most of the punters have been drinking. Indeed, many raise a bottle in greeting as
they pass beneath our windowed roost. Most
of them are tourists. Nearly all attempt
to ward-off inevitable collisions with the waving of hands and a Babel of
words, spoken in nearly every imaginable tongue, roughly meaning watch out
and turn now, you senseless idiot.
Contemplating these failures of navigation and communication can
generate conversation that runs as deep as the River Cam. This afternoon, however, it is just good fun.
Back inside, my Norwegian friend is holding forth. Her English is perfectly accented. She loves to talk. And, she relishes engaging people. One of our party, an American, compares her
to the turret of a Bradley tank. She’s
become the center of our attentions, and, fires-off with striking accuracy at
each individual’s interests. We are an
international party: Norwegians and Americans; English and Scots; a Dane; a
Canadian; and an Australian. English is
our common language. And, what strikes
me about her English is that it is accented differently and perfectly for each
person to whom she speaks. When speaking
to the Englishmen, she speaks flawless British English with a beautifully
cultured accent. A Norwegian who masters
English can be expected to speak English with a British accent, as the
availability of British TV and radio is prevalent across Europe. Even so, she directs spot-on Midwestern
American English to the Americans. And,
when she speaks to the Dane, who learned his English in Ireland, it is his
Danish-accented Irish English that she is using. I can barely understand a word of its tick-broke;
the thick brogue of his airs (i.e., his Rs) roiling
like water over a rapid. And, her
English, the Scots remark, is perfectly Glaswegian. One of them is so astonished that he address
her as “lass”, before telling her that her sweet tongue is as “surprising as,
though much more delightful than a Glasgow kiss”. This is the Scot who plays rugby with the
take-no-prisoners spirit of a Klingon. Who
knew that he had rough poetry within him? Another of the Scots — the one who has been
rendering the Dane’s English into British English for me — explains that a
Glasgow kiss is a headbutt. Our
Norwegian friend, meanwhile, has gone on to demonstrate her command of the
Canadian and Aussie accents in their colloquial English.
We are so amazed that the conversation lingers not simply on her — turning
from her tales of new motherhood — but on her speaking abilities. “You Americans,” she says to the fellow
across the table from her, “you can finish reciting a paragraph in the time it
takes a Briton to recite a sentence.” I
suspect that she is exaggerating a tad, but there’s a kernel of truth to it. “You speak English like the French speak
French. Fast.” Consider that Americans “while” away their
time, whilst amongst Britons the world moves at a different pace. Even in our indecision, Americans “um” and
Britons “erm” — though both words are pronounced in exactly the same way, the British
require an extra letter. And, it is true
that American English sometimes swallows whole syllables with the intake of the
breath needed to speak; and, that it prefers contractions, like I’m or there’s,
as if words need to quicken their pace for time is fleeting, or, as if for
every moment describing the action an action was wasted. Odd then that Americans love to tell stories.
Here, my thoughts were diverted. One
of my grade-school grammar teachers preferred the word allision to contraction. Contractions are what women have before
childbirth, my mother would explain, attempting to clarify my teacher’s
choice of word. As my teacher was a
woman — indeed, as all of my grammar teachers had been women, my mother’s
clarification only lead me to wonder what grammar and childbirth had in common. The puzzle of contractions in the English
language remained an enigma for some time thereafter. “An allision is a collision between a moving
vessel and a stationary object.” Thomas
J. Shoenbaum wrote in his Admiralty and maritime law (4th edition —
St. Paul, MN : West Publishing Co.,
2004). That’s American English. Like the actions of punters lacking common
skills, language, sometimes even common sense, it is the product of so many
immigrants — and, apparently, child bearing women — screaming to be heard.
British English has the patience to be heard as to be understood amidst
the cacophony of languages that is neighbouring Europe. The Norwegian turns to the most proper of the
Englishmen in our company. “British
English,” she says, polishing every consonant, then pausing for emphasis, . . .
“British English pronounces ever syllable, distinctly and clearly.” It’s a right fine posh accent she’s usin’,
indeed. And, there’s the rub. I’ve heard more English accents alone among
the native English than I’ve heard across the whole of North America. She is, it seems to me, nonetheless right to
say that there is a cadence in the oratory of an Englishman’s English
that is wholly different from, or, at least slower than the cadence of American
and Canadian English.
Certainly, it might be said, some British English sounds, like that of
the letter /a/, are drawn out as no one would draw them in the Americas. . . . Except, perhaps, in the heart of
Boston, or, as a Southern Belle — who must wait for her hoop skirt to catch up
— must speak them. My high-school music
teacher, a mannerly woman from Dothan, Alabama, was a human metronome. She would count out the beat of the music:
“Quwah-tah. Quwah-tah. Quwah-tah.” [The face of George Washington is on the
Quwah-tah, the USA's twenty-five cent coin.] For a northerner, Dothan was as back-woods as
you could ever hope to be. Yet, my music
teacher’s Quwah-tah is a direct relation to the upper-crust English mother,
calling out to her children playing rough-and-tumble beneath the summer sun:
“Children, wah-tah? Wah-tah anyone?”
These two words, quarter and water, are wonderful examples
of the syllabic rhythms of the British, or shall I say the English accent. They make subtly apparent what may be the
most profound difference between North American English and English English. It’s all about Location, Location,
Location as any (real) estate agent will tell you. It’s about where one places stress within a
word. Stressing a letter, as my
captivating Norwegian friend claims, can change more than the music of a
language. If we were speaking Turkish,
stressing or elongating the /a/ sound would change the word sat (/sawt/)
into saat (/saw-aht/), and, the meaning from sell to hour. . . . Elongation would put time on our hands. But, English is not Turkish. Meaning does not change, not necessarily. Active listening is required, nonetheless, to
ensure understanding. — You can axe
me, anything! Here’s a simple example from increasingly-used American
English that the casual British listener might presume to be evidence of a
truly violent US culture. Of course, you
may ask me anything.
While Britons quwah-tah their wah-tah, North Americans
usually quart-er their watt-er.
There’s something oddly appropriate about quarts to water. It’s almost electric! So, how much does the placement of stress suggest the character of a people? Consider the following examples, current in
British English. They stress the letters
“er” in such a way as to give them a long /a/ sound.
At the 2011 Brit Awards, a London rapper by the name of Tinie Tempah —
as in, that’s one small temper and one large talent for mankind — was
nominated for British Male Solo Artist of the year. The name telegraphs the up-bound beat of
Tempah’s rap on subjects as rosy as a love of tea. Who’s a tempest in a little tea-pot, eh? In this United Kingdom, there is none of the
big bad-tempered rap of those United States as anyone having voted for Plan B
will attest. Plan B, of course, was
another British rapper also nominated for British Male Solo Artist of the year. At the age of 27 — as of anyone over the age
of twenty-five, he’s considered a geezer.
That’s a rap gee-zah, as in, The pyramids at Giza were built
by some old Egyptian. I suppose that
we might think of Plan B as a gee-zah rap-pah, but that could easily be
taken to refer to the day old news-pay-pah in which a take-away meal of
fish-and-chips is sometimes wrapped. He
may be old-ah, but there’s nothing fishy about Plan B.
Myself, I prefer the more dangerous and racy examples that litter the
language from A and Z, from adult to zebra. These examples are more about the placement
of stress within a word than upon a particular letter or letter combination.
The common definition of geezer is adult. For speakers of English-accented English, the
word, adult, remains close to its Latin roots.
An adult, is the sum of its Latin parts: ad and ult — as
if an addition of ultimates, meaning someone of advanced age. Now, for added emphasis, speak the word as if
it were two words, giving equal emphasis to both: ad [breathe] ult. With its added emphasis, ult should sound like
the German word “alt”, meaning “old”. An
adult is someone not just old but someone very old. For speakers of American-accented English,
the word, adult, offers the possibility of less erudite, but perhaps more
nuanced meaning. An American divides the
word not at “ad” but at “a” rendering the spoken word as /a/ + /dult/. Now, just for fun, swallow the /u/ sound. Say it with me: a dolt. I’m not saying that most Americans are
dullards compared with the British. But,
that meaning might be taken without careful, contextual listening.
I am reminded, here, of a former employee who told me that I should
write such things in the presence of the irony-face emoticon — ;-) — to signal my perverse sense
of humour. I love the fact that “dolt”
enters modern English as a noun having formed from a past participle. The word dolt is akin the British English
“learnt” or, as it is spelled in American English, “learned”. ”Dolt”, one presumes of American English,
might be spelled, “dolled”, as in, Perchance, when I am old and grey,
and batty as a three dollar bill, I may doll myself up and stroll down the
street: “Lolly too dum day!” What’s
that? You’re too young to remember the
Burl Ives song of that title, “Lolly too dum day!” Dolt, originally spelled “dulte”, meant made
dull. One would not doll-up but,
rather, dull-down. I digress.
By the way, or, by way of continued digression, a “nine pound note” is
the British idiomatic equivalent of the “three dollar bill” of American idiom. At today’s exchange rate, £9 is roughly
equivalent to $14 US or $14 Canadian, or even $14 Australian. Quite a bit more than $3, eh. It’s nice to be valued. But, almost everything is more expensive in
the UK, or, "more dear" as they say here.
At the far end of the English alphabet, zebras may be more colourful than
they might at first appear. I’ll spare
you the etymology of zebras. Let’s get
straight to the hunt. The British have
“Zeb Rahs” … as in Zebulon sounds like a lion defending a kill. How odd, to hear a horse-like creature roar! The American, meanwhile, has “Ze Bras” … say
it as if a fictional Frenchman, say Inspector Clouseau, perusing a Victoria’s
Secret catalogue, ou là là. I
imagine a horse photographed wearing a bra for a two-page spread in the Sunday
Times’ fashion section. Until, I
remind myself that “bra” is French for “arm”.
So, I redraw the image. Eh voilà,
a Centaur. That’s much better than
playing on the American stereotype, to suggest that a zebra is a horse bearing arms. An AK-47,
perhaps. Wild zebra use their stripes to
conceal themselves, while zebra in zoos have been shaken down for the public’s
protection. As if to confound the matter
all the more, I’m unable to remove my mother’s colourful description of her bra
as her “gun holsters” from my brain. So,
a zebra is a horse hiding a weapon in its bra! This much — I apologize,
especially to my feminist readers — has been nurture, not nature. On second thought, perhaps we should stick to
the bra alone. Make love, not war.
Back in the pub, my Norwegian friend announces to no one in particular
that she has to “use the head”. No
sooner than she’s spoken these words, she excuses herself for their use. The phrasing she’s chosen is out of character
with stories about motherhood and banter about what it means to find herself an
adult buying kiddie lit filled with pictures of talking zebras doing housework. She has been a salty dog, in recent years,
who has spent almost as much time at sea in the company of rough men as she has
spent on land. She corrects herself,
asking, “Will you excuse me? I have to
use the loo.” Perhaps because she is speaking to all of us, for the first time
we hear her speak English using a Norwegian accent.
Each of us has been in the United Kingdom long enough to know what she
means by the word loo (that's
"restroom" in polite American parlance). Those of us who speak French as
well as English even take the word back to its archaic French, lieux
d’aisance, literally, places of ease, long since replaced in Paris by the
British English invader: WC —Winston Churchill’s quaint water-closet. But, her accent rounds the word lovingly with
her lips. And, to some of us, it sounds
as though she’s incongruously invited them to join the mile-high club of lovers
using the lavatories for sex on a long-distance flight, albeit here at sea
level. It is the Scots who are taken
aback. In some parts of Scotland, the
word loo survives as a shortened version of the English word “love”.
Give me a moment here. I need to
savour the thoughts swelling with the intonation of loov and, perchance,
the war-weary Frenchman who is speaking it.
He had been sent to Scotland, in 1545 during the War of the Rough
Wooing, to help the Scots resist the advances of an English king’s drive to
unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland through arranged marriage. Pity the poor French lad. As he spoke the word to a Scottish lass, he
couldn’t help but think of his own king, ensconced in the Louvre, then a
royal palace, and, of other places far away in his beloved France.
The old Scots loo survives in the new world’s children’s song,
“Skip to My Lou”. It uses slang to tell
the tale of a young lad who has lost his partner to another man. He encourages her to return and to skip to
his lou . . . to skip to his love, the beat of his heart, or, else to free him
to find himself another love. Why is it
always the men who get hurt? I should be clear, perhaps, for English
readers - skip : that's archaic British English —
still used in the States, meaning a sort of hopping walk. It is not what American's would call a
"dumpster", though I am sure that a dumpster of love, a skip for
love's refuse has charm all its own.
It is a good thing that my Norwegian friend is not a man. She might have confounded us with the word
“urinal”. A urinal, for the sake of
clarification, is a kind of passive bidet (/bee-day/) that hangs
vertically on a loo wall and that serves a slightly dissimilar purpose. My father, a plumber, thought that I’d gone
soft the first time he heard me use the word bidet. To him, the observation that you’re not
likely to find a bee day in the country just didn’t seem to make much sense. Bees are more likely to have country days
than days in the city. My bidet was
his bid-ette. My English friends,
hearing talk of bid-ettes, might conjure the image of a bouncy blonde calling
out, Place your bets now. Place your
bets, beside a casino’s craps table.
Oh, my father did love the craps!
That diversion into the world of the bidet was for my amusement. I’ve used the time to humour myself, hearing
each of you say the word “urinal” as though there’s nothing funny about it. To illustrate the humour, I want to take you to a men’s room in the
international airport at Kingston, Jamaica.
Now, there are dee smahl Jam-ay-kahns, and there are dee tahl
Jam-ay-kahns. This loo was made to serve
both of them: dee smahl and dee tahl. The
loo had two urinals. One urinal at its
base hung less than 1 metre or about 2.5 feet off the floor, while the next
urinal at its base hung more than 1.5 metres or about 5 feet off the floor. A man of average height would have to make
this cruel choice: to pee, he could either kneel or jump. A spliff might have helped one to see the
music in the joint. But, if you took the
grout-lines of the tile on the wall as music’s staff lines, it was easy to see
the two urinals as musical notes. If
we’d then asked two men — one American, the other English — to sing the notes,
to sound the word “urinal”, we would have heard two very different notes. The American would have sung to the
Englishman: ♫ you’re in all ♫. And,
the Englishman of our little, two-man opera might have taken offence. So, in response, the Englishman might have
criticized the American singing, ♫ your eye in all ♫.
I pause here to get it out of my system.
I am reminded of the schoolboy humour with which an American teases out
the pronunciation of “Uranus”, the name of the seventh planet from the Sun. But, Uranus has other, and, quite different
business in the loo. The American would
naturally croon, your-an-us, as offering an Appalachian homage to
partnership: you and us. In this
instance, however, the schoolboy prefers the British pronunciation, your-anus. In the mouth of the schoolboy, it’s as
sophomoric as a “Your Mama’s so big” joke.
But, no British astronomer will hesitate to confirm that Uranus is
the seventh planet from our sun.
[I pity the poor ESL — English as a Second Language — learners
who may have been pointed to this essay as a means of testing their English. Many are now wondering if they haven’t
stumbled into a Tardis of science-fiction rather than an essay on speaking
English. This is not about speaking
English as much as it is about having fun with the language.]
I first heard the word, urinal, with its British accent in Birmingham,
after landing on a trans-Atlantic flight.
I hadn’t been able to sleep on the red-eye coming over. I was groggy and had been searching the
baggage hall for my luggage. Not finding
my bag, the possibility had just dawned on me that it may have flown to
Birmingham, Alabama rather than with me to England. And, now, the bag-check receipt was
confirming it, when a perturbed voice beside me suggested, got to use
your eye in all, son? As I looked up, I thought, Well, that’s cheeky of
you, now, isn’t it. Kick a man when he’s
down. The speaker was a man walking
away; his young son, dancing a jig beside him as they made their escape. It was rude, I thought, to criticize
and then just turn your back on further discussion.
Since our Norwegian friend went to the loo, our table has fallen silent,
like the open-mouthed balloon released by a party several tables over and that
now lay scuppered between our glasses. None
of us would ever be the life of any party — ;-). Outside, there’s a commotion. Two lads are running what we’ll later learn
to be the “First Annual Cam Underwater Bicycle Race”. The River Cam, as it turns out, is not that
terribly deep. I’m afraid that one or
both of the riders may be speared by the punters’ poles. I need to contain the thought for fear that I
might leap out of the window to save them proactively from their certain fate,
or, to save me from mine: boredom. But,
just then one of the Englishmen continues our language lesson.
He’s been asked about his up-coming travels. First, he’s off to visit his wife’s family in
Poland, before flying off to a lecture at Michigan State University in the USA. Po-Land, he says, as if he were
referring to the Land of the Po. His
pronunciation is actually rather faithful to the Polish, polanie
(/po-lan-yah/), the word meaning “field” from which Poland is likely derived. Incidentally, Po is the Polish word for
“about” or “of the”. So Po-Land might as
well be an odd graft of Polish and English, appropriately taken to mean “of the
land”. The North Americans are more used
to hearing Pole-Land — a land of pole-makers, no doubt.
Pole is another Polish word meaning “land”, albeit a slightly different,
more generalized type of land than is meant by polanie.
It’s the Englishman’s pronunciation of Michigan that pulls the wheels
off of the acoustic go-cart. To North
American ears, it is the equivalent of poking a stick into a turning bicycle
wheel. Mitch Egan, I hear the
Englishman say. Where is Mitch Egan
State University? This is the /ch/ of
the English “church” rather than the softer /sh/ of the French fur traders who
worshiped in the wilds of Michigan and borrowed the name from the native Ojibwe
people. It’s similar to the name of the
French tyre (tire) company, Michelin. Here
in England, a country that prefers the French word “flambeau” to the older
Middle English “torch”, the proximity of England to France is for naught. The English, who incidentally have reserved
the word “torch” to mean “flashlight”, know the Michelin Man as Mr. Mitch E.
Lan. Given this glottal stop
mid-word, Michelin has the sound of a flat tyre, going thumpity thump in
British English.
The penchant of British English for men’s names doesn’t end with Mitch
Egan and Mitch E. Lan. Mr. Nick On is a
Nikon camera man for example. At
those prices, I once overheard a middle-aged woman in an electronics store
remark, I dare say he will nick on, right out of me pocketbook! Nick, in common British parlance, means
to steal, you see. It’s been my
experience that, in the world of cameras, however, you get what you pay for. A North American photographer might say, It
was a nigh con. I just couldn’t buy that
camera. I’d have to buy a whole new set
of lenses as my Canon lenses just will not fit this camera. Fortunately, “nigh con” is now rather
archaic American English, meaning “to be nearly taken in”. Meanwhile, in its corporate offices in Japan,
Nikon — pronounced /knee con/ — actually means a feeling of extreme gratitude,
even for the smallest things in life, like Thank God, we didn’t build a car
and market it as a Nova in Puerto Rico, where “no va” means “it does not
go”.
I’m beginning to wonder if our Norwegian friend will ever return from
the loo. It’s possible that she’s gone
outside, to teach the punters a thing or two.
Let a real salty dog tell you, she might say, a thing or two.
