“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”

These, the words of the immortal George Bernard Shaw, are as true today as they were on the day he birthed them. In this age of the internet, with online newspapers and a plethora of personal blogs, residents of both the United States and the United Kingdom have ample opportunity to witness this schism first-hand. This, and the decades of film and television from both countries flowing freely back and forth, has done nothing to mitigate the colloquial gap or deeply entrenched divergence in spelling which exists. Online purveyors of language learning materials offer both British and American English language packages from which their customers may choose - almost as proof that they are separate languages.

You don’t have to look very hard to find references in the popular culture of either nation to find this linguistic clash has inspired both well-meaning and somewhat cruel humor in written, audio, and video formats. British comedians can always count on abusing American speech for a cheap laugh. The same is true for American comics, I suppose. Although it always sounds less derisive and more warmhearted to me when Americans humorists are making fun of British English. I can’t say for sure whether the reverse is true.

As a child I was aware that English was spoken with different accents in different parts of the United States. I moved from west Texas to Ohio at the age of seven and was painfully goaded into quickly changing the way I spoke. I adopted the local, and so-called ‘normal’, accent with a speed that left skid marks on my palate. However, the first inkling I had that there was a difference between British and American English was when I received the grade for my first spelling test in the fourth grade.

The summer before, just about a week before my ninth birthday, I was introduced to my first English author, Charlotte Brontë. The book, of course, was Jane Eyre. This was soon followed by an introduction to Jane Austen in the form of Pride and Prejudice. My entire summer was subsequently filled with works by these two authors. It will not surprise most of those who read this to hear that this influenced my spelling to a significant degree. I had actually immersed myself in the world of early nineteenth century England, and came away with the habit of spelling things like color and humor as 'colour' and 'humour', etc.

I was confused and disappointed when I got back my spelling test. I had failed. And while my pride balked in reaction to this new sensation (i.e. failure), I was unable to deny that the page was blood red with all of the words marked incorrect. Later that day, the teacher, Mrs. Lucas (a sweet woman who was to teach me English and Social Studies for the next three years), took me aside and asked me about what I had been reading lately. While she admitted that she was pleased to see me reaching further afield than Charlotte’s Web and the latest Judy Blume book, she very kindly made it clear to me that while I lived in the United States, and was attending school in the United States, I was expected to adjust my spelling accordingly.

This, as indicated above, was my introduction to the ‘variability’ of the English language outside of America. Over the next several years I was exposed in written and aural form to English as it is spoken across the globe. Recent exploration on the internet informs me that an estimated 375 million people in the world speak English as a first language [1]. Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that there are now three non-native speakers of English (who speak it as a second or third language) for every native speaker [2]. Furthermore, there are about 55 sovereign countries and another 26 non-sovereign entities in which English is 'the' or 'an' official language [3]. (The United States is not on either of these lists as it stubbornly refuses to adopt an official language.) All that being said, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the English(es) spoken in Hong Kong, Liverpool, Kingston, and Chicago will all sound quite different from one another. The fact of the matter is, if you take into account all of the different dialects and pidgin versions of English that are spoken around the world, American and British English sound a lot more similar than you might otherwise have thought.

So, why all the fuss? Why all the friction? It’s been 233 years since we gave England the proverbial 'finger', and, while there have been the occasional disagreements or minor tiffs since then, we haven’t actually been at war with one another since 1812, right? In fact, the US and the UK have been allies for so long now it seems incomprehensible at this point to view them as adversaries. Can you actually imagine either nation declaring war on the other in this day and age?

I suppose you could look at it like an old family argument that keeps rearing its ugly head at reunions. The US was the first of the British colonies to leave home and she did it with a great deal of drama and trash-talking. Canada and Australia lived in their parents’ basement for a few years after college, but eventually they each found a place of their own (within a ten minute drive to Mom and Dad’s place). And India - well India was the youngest child and benefitted from all of its older siblings wearing the parents down to the point where they just accepted the fact that they would have to live with empty nest syndrome.

I guess that leaves the US in the role of an otherwise beloved child who frequently reminds its parent that children will and do break your heart. Pride in her intermittent accomplishments is thoroughly mixed with despair over her unladylike behavior and inability to play well with others. You can almost hear the speech, “Your brother and sister are doing so well. When are you going to settle down with someone special and really commit to your career like they have?” - Or something like that.

So perhaps the occasional caustic remark about American speech or behavior which oozes out of the lips of English comedians can be attributed to something other than an active and widespread dislike of Americans throughout British society. At least I hope so. With the popularity of the United States around the world at its lowest point in history following eight years of George W. Bush & Co., it would be sad to think that even family members don’t like us anymore. If that's the case, we can add that to the long list of things for which Dick Cheney should be made to pay. Not that he would ever pay such a debt, but it's important to make a note of it for bookkeeping purposes.


[1] Curtis, Andy. Color, Race, And English Language Teaching: Shades of Meaning. 2006, page 192.

[2] Crystal, David (2003), English as a Global Language (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 69, ISBN 9780521530323, http://books.google.com/books?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC, cited in Power, Carla (7 March 2005), "Not the Queen's English", Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/id/49022.

[3] http://tinyurl.com/37z65d

Photo by Richard Cawood

The Last Polite Woman in Town Gives Up

Or I certainly did consider giving up. After all, why should I continue to use the simple manners and courtesies that I learned as a child? So many others have apparently elected to forego the use of decent manners. Why should I be the last one to hop on the “rudeness, ignorance, and hostility” bandwagon?

I know, I know. I sound really bitter, and old, and cranky. But the truth is that I get truly and deeply tired of offering up timely and heartfelt apologies whenever I commit some minor offense against a stranger and then being treated as if I were a leaky bag of foul smelling garbage that had just been dumped on their front lawn.

Today, for instance, as I was deep in conversation while walking out of the grocery store, I lightly bumped into a woman as I passed her by. I quickly turned around and offered her an earnest apology as courteously as I could. Did she receive my apology genially? Did she smile and tell me there was no harm done? Did she even nod and go about her business? No. She literally rolled her eyes and curled her lip at me.

People, I don’t mind telling you that this kind of behavior really chaps my ass. In my opinion, if you can’t graciously accept a sincere and promptly offered apology, then you don’t deserve one. While fuming over this incident I briefly considered giving up on courtesy and manners altogether. That thought process went something like this:

That's it! I will no longer hold the door for the elderly woman walking just behind me. No more will I make an effort to allow others to merge into traffic ahead of me. From now on, I will leave my cell phone on and take calls in the cinema. The viewing pleasure of the rest of the audience who paid through the nose to see the movie is not at all important to me. When I approach a group of people waiting patiently for service of some kind, I will not ask politely where the end of the line is and fall quietly in place. Nope. No more. I will do and say exactly what I feel like whenever and wherever it pleases me to do so. From this point forward it’s “I, me, and mine” – the rest of the world be damned!

Yeah, well, okay. Once I cooled down it was clear to me that this isn’t the answer. But just saying it out loud made me feel a whole lot better. However, regardless of how good it felt to imagine myself being rude and self-centered, I know that the next time I am in public I will probably forget my bitterness and fall back on the habit of being nice just for the simple reason that ‘it’s nice to be nice’. Because, in reality, life is a lot easier when we all try to treat each other gently and with kindness. And I really do miss it when that’s not the way I’m treated by the world. I know that being rude to others will make me no happier than being treated rudely has. So, as trite as it sounds, I will ‘do unto others as I would have them do unto me’. At least then I won’t be part of the problem.

Photo by Calamity Hane

Why I Do Not Wear Fur

My Tweeps, the people who follow me on Twitter (@lunarmovements), have already been subjected to this story about my “fur hat”. Which, if you think about it, is a testament to the strength of my desire to share the story. Being limited to 140 characters at a time makes storytelling rather laborious.

When I was 18 years old and still living at home with Mom, there was an electrical fire in the apartment next to ours. I remember that we were passively watching TV in the living room after dinner and were ripped out of our boob-tubing stupor by both the klaxon-like blaring of smoke alarms and the frantic sound of our neighbor simultaneously pounding on our back door while screaming for us to get out of the building. While this was undoubtedly not conducive to proper digestion, it was a great deal more exciting than whatever was on TV at the time.

My mother and I both decided to grab the cats and flee the scene. She was at a loss as to what to do with the cats once we were outside, however. We did have a cat carrier, as I recall, but I think it was in storage somewhere in the basement. Anyway, I suggested that we take the cats to my car. My thought was that we could all sit out the event in relative safety there. And, if things got really bad, we would be able to drive further up the block out of harm’s way. These decisions were made within seconds and we each ran around the apartment trying to nab one of our two cats as quickly as possible.

I went after Pigitha – or “Piggy” as she was known for short. Her name implied that she was fat. This was not the case at all. She was a very enthusiastic eater and always had been – thus the name. Piggy was a very, very large cat. She was long and tall and weighed about 24 pounds. If it were not for her very traditional silver and black tabby markings, she might have been mistaken for some exotic wild animal due to her size alone. But there was nothing wild or feral about her. She was just huge, and, as it happened, not very fast. I caught her right away and headed outside with her towards the car.

I believe a word here is merited about this car. This was not the family car. This was MY car. And, while it was truly beloved for its ability to transport me wherever and whenever my whim would dictate, it is necessary to accurately depict how unglamorous a vehicle this was. It was a 1979 Ford Pinto (yes, a Pinto) which was originally yellow and had been painted a dark blue. I knew that it was originally yellow because of the paint that was constantly peeling off the fenders. It had a leaky transmission that required me to put in a quart of lovely red transmission fluid every five or six days. I don’t remember how many miles it had on it, but they were numerous. My only defense of the car was that it was fairly reliable and it was already paid for – two of the most important qualities a teenage girl from a working class family looks for in her first vehicle.

And so, I turn back to the story. By the time I got Piggy outside and into the car the firefighters had arrived. The sights, sounds, and smells of the experience were all more than Piggy could handle. She was squirming frantically and it was all I could do to hold onto her without getting clawed to death. But somehow I managed to get her into the car. I quickly sat down and shut the door, all the while expecting her to crawl into the back seat and cower quietly out of sight.

But this was not how she behaved. As soon as the door slammed shut she scrambled up onto the back of my seat and crawled up ON TOP OF MY HEAD. Almost instantly she curled around my scalp like a turban and clung fiercely to my hair. If you will recall I mentioned earlier that she weighed 24 pounds. So you can imagine this was an uncomfortable sensation.

My mother slipped into the seat next to me as I was quite fruitlessly struggling to remove the beast from my scalp. Between laughing at the spectacle before her eyes and explaining that she never did catch our other cat she also tried to remove Piggy from the top of my head. She too failed.

While all of this was going on a good number of firefighters were making their way back and forth from the fire truck to the apartment building. I sat quietly and with as much dignity as an 18 year old can muster while they each did a double-take at the sight of my “fur hat” and pointed at me and laughed with each other about it. This went on for about forty minutes and then Piggy suddenly decided she wanted to curl up on top of my feet.

My physical relief was immense. But my embarrassment would not abate until all of the firefighters were gone. Even if I weren’t an animal lover, I think this experience cured me of wanting to wear fur. I can with all honesty say that I have never had so much attention from so many men at one time since that day. And I sincerely hope never to receive that kind of attention again. To me, wearing fur equals profound humiliation.

Photo by Squeezebox Huf