My friends used to laugh at me during my "way too much traveling" days. I'd come back from a trip to the Excited States with a very slight American accent.
I'd tell tham that I actually speak fluent American and they'd roll their eyes and say something like "Chester, you're a wanker, there is no such thing as fluent American".
"Just because they speak with an accent", they'd say, "doesn't make it a different language."
"It's still English", they'd contend.
How bloody wrong they are.
Forget the accent. Americans speak a different language. Yes, we... what is it they call us... ah, yes... "Aliens"... we aliens can understand the words, so we can make sense of about 80% of what they say, but the devil's in the detail of that last 20%, and people ignore it at their peril.
"What's different?" I hear my reader ask.
It's idiom. It's sentence structure. It's thought process. It's a need to fill the silence.
No, I can't give you a specific example right now... it's 12.45am and more than a few of my brain cells have gone nigh nigh.
But I'll tell you a short story...
A few years ago, I was at a business meeting in LA. We were negotiating to go into jv with a US company. Picture the meeting... Americans on one side of the table, Aussies on the other, and much agreement, shaking of hands and slapping of backs. We were all agreed. The deal was done, or so my colleagues thought.
I speak fluent American. I knew what had been agreed, but when I spoke with the boss from down under, he had a totally different take on the outcome of the meeting.
We managed to stitch the deal back together again so all was well, but what brought this to the front of my brain tonight was an embarrasing miscommunication I had with one of my present American partners. And it's been an extremely costly miscommunication.
Same language? Bah!
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the Australians and the Americans are two peoples separated by a common language.
13 comments:
Hopelessly separated. But truly, I've heard nothing but good things about Australia. Except The Boot. Is that really necessary?
And How Very Flattering to be listed in "Blogs I Read." I mean, I knew I read them, but that I, meaning you, read them, and that I, meaning you, would list them, wow, I'm clearly speechless.
Michelle,
On your first comment, yes, hopelessly.
As for "boot"... it's just a word like all the others... some better, some worse, some not making much sense at all from either side. Travel a lot and one's vocab expands a little.
Boot / Trunk
Footpath / Sidewalk
Bonnet / Hood (on your car)
Glovebox / Glove Compartment
Torch / Flashlight
... it's actually a very long list.
And when you're pissed, you're angry. When we're pissed, we're just drunk.
You also fill spaces with unneccessary words... like "Aliens are people from outside of the Unites States".
Of?
The correct version would be "Aliens are people from outside the Unites States"... though I suppose for us, Aliens would be people from another planet (which is what a trip to Orlando can feel like for us sometimes).
It's not so much the words you use in your spoken English... it's the way you use them. Your sentence structures are slightly different, and Americans tend to use more words, especially when they're trying to sugar coat something bad.
Oh... and your spin doctors are amazing. They way Americans name products or events is nothing short of brilliant. To us, an "Advanced Garment Cleansing System" is just a bloody washing machine.
On your second post... I have ADD and no life, remember?
And how is it that you ended up with a president who can't pronounce "nuclear".
Don't you feel like dragging him aside, beating him repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat and shouting "IT'S NOT NOO-KOO-LAH YOU DICKHEAD, THE WORD IS NEW-CLEE-ARE"?
(backing slowly away...) I .... hadn't thought of it....quite like...that...(bolts to the door)(squeaky hinge still singing)(crickets chirp shrilly)(Chester is still hyperventilating, but no one is there to not know how to help him)
The Boot ... ergo, to give someone the sack. The flick. The DCM.
Yes, the "boot" also means to fire someone.
*sigh*
Yes, there are different colloquialisms but also my experience has shown that many Americans change the order of their words when saying something. I say nothing when this happens. I sit quietly ... marvelling at the verbal butchery going on.
But then, whilst I'm silent, they'll repeat what they've just said to me in another way. And if I continue to stare at them blankly, thinking "not only are those words all jumbled up, but why the fuck did they just repeat it, to boot*- then they'll give it to me a 3rd time.
I should start a blog called "Conversations in American" and see how many flame wars I can engage in over such a topic b/c the spoken word in the Excited States is seriously is an insane making device when put in the hands of some people.
(*) 'to boot' in this instance means 'also'.
:) Rant finito.
Thank you, Chester, for allowing me this platform from which to temporarily vent.
I am THRILLED you have linked sushi racing. It is surely the best most excellent TWA on the planet. (Time Wasting Activity)
You wait. You'll succumb to linking to onionheadmonster too before long.
I completely forgot about giving someone the boot.
[Chester sighs, more convinced than ever that his once formidable straw brain is slowly failing, synapse by synapse.]
Thanks for the contribution, Anonymous.
That need Americans have, to fill the silence, really does bring a normally sane person just a bit closer to the edge. It just doesn't give the speech processing centres long enough to properly translate what they've just said before it's assaulted with more.
And yes, they mercilessly jumble words and so frequently make up new and obtuse ways to describe things that it's a wonder we can talk with them at all.
However, the fault isn't all on one side.
Try telling an American that he's 'telling a porky*' or describing him as a "septic" and see how far you get.
*Explaination For Non Australian Readers
Porky... a lie.
Septic... a Yank.
They're contractions of rhyming slang but...
...ah fuck it. It would take far too long to explain.
the important thing to remember is that Claire has by far the most irritating accent of any character on "Lost". Now I won't judge the rest of yall (another fine Yankee word. feel free to use it) based on the way she speaks but man, I can't stand when she calls for Charlie.
chAAAlie! chAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAlie!
(as in the /æ/ sound).
Okay I'm done.
Claire? Who's Claire?
TJ... only to you my friend... only to you.
Good post.
English is a flexible language. If you get your point across, it's communication. When Australia has a 500 year history of blending different countries into a common language, we can have this conversation all over again...In Spanish or Mandarin.
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