The English of the English: Part 3

A Part For A Whole

English English also has a tendency to use an example or part of something to stand for its whole.  For example, the word “pudding” to an American is just one type of dessert.  But in England, “pudding” means dessert itself.  Or to sit down for “tea” (at night) means to eat dinner, even though tea is just a small part of it. 

I can only think of one American parallel.  When I was growing up we called our gym shoes “tennis shoes” or “tennies.”  They were not just for tennis—in fact we hardly ever played tennis.  They were just our gym shoes.

Which makes me wonder, why the privileging?  Why was tennis the sport that would stand for all the rest?  Or pudding the dessert that would mean all sweet things?

Though I can’t argue with the choice of pudding.  It’s a premiere dessert.  You heard me, cake.

The Oft Used

Brilliant.  Maybe the most popular adjective here—so popular I’ve heard it shortened to “brill”.  It doesn’t really mean smart, it just means “good” or “great” or “that works” or “sure” or “yes”.  When I texted a phone number to my roommate, he texted me back “Brilliant Steve, cheers!”  For just a moment, I felt really smart for typing in numbers on a keypad.

Proper.  This is one of my favorites.  It’s a superlative modifier, basically equivalent to saying “great” or “awesome” or “the best.”  A “proper pub” is a pub that does everything right, a “proper soccer player” has no weakness in his game, a “proper movie” gets four out of four stars.  To Americans the word “proper” is pretty underwhelming—it mostly sounds like you’re just fulfilling minimal requirements.  If we say someone cooks “properly” or plays guitar “properly”, we’re hardly raving about their skills.  But the English love understatement, so it fits to make “proper” your superlative. 

And it works well if you think about it.  To me it means something is fulfilling its promise, finally reaching the potential that was already there.  It’s the Aristotelian telos, the working out of its true nature, its original purpose.  For example, I would say Public Enemy is a “proper” rap band. So you first think about rap music:  since the invention of the genre, it has always had a certain potential, and at some point someone would realize all of its promise, achieve all that it set out to do, transcend all other participants.  Which is what Public Enemy did.  They finally did rap “properly”, and are therefore a “proper” rap band.  The Rolling Stones in the early seventies were a proper rock band.  Louis C.K. is a proper comedian.  David Foster Wallace is a proper writer.  Malcolm X was a proper activist.  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are proper senators.  “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop is a proper villanelle.  Osprey makes proper backpacks.

Making Fun Of Someone

This falls into the Eskimos-have-50-words-for-snow category, which suggests that what’s important or ubiquitous in a culture will have multiple terms.

In English culture, ironic humor is ever-present.  Much of it can subtle, wry, and given away by something like an eyebrow lift.  But oh my goodness it’s there—even when they’re being sincere, it still seems like a droll humor undergirds it all.

But then they’ll break free (often at a pub) and tease each other to great effect and great enjoyment.  So they’d need a bunch of ways to say “make fun of”:

To take a piss

To take the piss out of

To have a go at

To wind up

To slag off

What That I Refuse To Say

Cheers.  Because I’m clearly an American when I speak, and I’d feel like a fraud saying the most obvious of British words.

Zed and haytch.  That’s how they say the letter “z” and “h”.  Just sounds silly.

Toilet.  That is the polite way to refer to the bathroom.  They never say “restroom” and they understand “bathroom.”  They do say “lavatory” and “loo”.  But they mostly say “toilet”.  If you’re at a nice dinner in a nice home with some nice people eating on nice plates with nice silverware, and then you have to relieve yourself, you say “can you point me to the toilet?”  The toilet.  You reference the thing that catches your urine and feces.  You call up that image.  I’ve asked British friends over and over again if they’re sure it’s O.K. to say it, and they insist it’s as polite as it gets.  But I still can’t do it.

And if you’re in the U.K. long enough, you’ll eventually hear someone say “wait a second, I have to go wash my hands in the toilet.”

The Most Common Greeting

A lot of Americans have trouble with this.  Instead of saying “hello,” “what’s up,” “can I help you,” or “how are you doing,” the English say “are you alright there?”

It’s weird.  We (Americans) only say “are you alright there?” after something bad has happened.  Your friend trips on the sidewalk, your coworker looks wan with the flu, your teammate gets hit by a pitch, so you come up to them and say “are you alright?”  Which is to say “I noticed something bad just happened to you, and I want to make sure you are O.K. in light of this misfortune.”

When an American walks into a restaurant they’re primed to hear the hostess say “can I help you” or “how are you folks doing tonight” or “would you like to be seated?”; but in England she’ll say “are you alright there?”

You’re tempted to say “yes, I’m alright here in this spot, as I would be in many other spots, as I would be sitting at one of the tables in your fine establishment, which is why I came in here.”  But they’re not asking if you’re alright, they’re just saying “hello” or “can I help you.”

But let’s think for a moment.  If language is culture and culture is language, what’s going on here?  In the book Watching the English by anthropologist Kate Fox, she talks about a gritty stoicism found in English culture.  The English can be pretty tough, weathering wars and monarchies and bad weather, inventing tough games like rugby and soccer, standing for hours through a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theater.  They’ll just gut it out if they need to.  And a certain pessimism is at work too—they expect the worst, talk about the worst, and then when the worst does happen they have misanthropic pleasure in being right, and then they get to tough something out once again.

So for me, “are you alright there?” is an English person saying “Look, I know you’re probably in some sort of pain or something isn’t going well since our lives are a hard slog at best or hellish at worst.  So I’ll start with the bleak assumption that something is wrong, and I’ll ask if you’re alright amidst our grim, Sisyphean, daily existences.”