The English of the English: Part 1

One of the reasons I came to the U.K. is because they speak my first language.  Sort of.

My year in Ecuador and my year in Tanzania had two gigantic hurdles:  Spanish and Swahili.  Maneuvering in those new languages took up maybe 50% of my energy, and it was by far the core struggle of those times abroad.  So when I was applying for the Fulbright, I decided to do something radical:  go to a country that was the first world and spoke my language.  Cut out that major obstacle and see where I end up.

And in the U.K. that’s mostly true, because American English is mostly the same as English English.  But not entirely.  It’s different enough trip you up, and often leads to awkward conversations with the already awkward English people.  G. B. Shaw was right: “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”

First, there’s the accent.  Apparently they’ve got different regional accents, but I can’t hear them.  It might be because I’m TERRIBLE with accents.  Here are the four things I’m the worst at in the world:  billiards, basketball, drawing, and doing accents.  My friends tell me my father has a German/Serbian accent, but I’ve never heard it.  I’ve tried to imitate the British accent, but it just ends up sounding like a stew of Scottish, Irish, and English accents (and Mexican for some reason). 

Sometimes I’ll hear a Brit pronounce a word that makes me think of some famous English person, as in: “oh, he just said ‘luf’ for ‘love’, the way Paul McCartney would.” 

And any time I heard a little kid with a British accent, I just think they’re a great child actor.