Divided Languages - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 2

It was only then that I realised that my fellow passengers seemed to be greeting the flight
attendant's apocalyptic announcement with remarkable sang froid . They were still sipping
their coffees, fiddling with their headsets, and allowing their children to sport sick bags on
their noses, for all the world as though they were not about to perish. When the attendant
repeated his announcement, I realised that he had said they were turning off the entertain-
ment, not the engines. His American accent had deceived me. For some of the more media-
dependent passengers on the plane, this news was no doubt almost as devastating as being
told that they had only four minutes to live. But at least we were going to make JFK Airport
in one piece, with or without the accompaniment of Johnny Depp.
The same misunderstandings can happen the other way round. An American friend of
mine was driving rather too vigorously in the west of Ireland, and was pulled over by a
Gard (police officer). “What would happen if you were to run into Mr. Fog?” the Gard in-
quired gruffly in his thick Connaught accent. Stung by this patronising query, my friend
replied with heavy sarcasm, “Well, I guess I'd put Mr. Foot on Mr. Brake.” Whereupon the
officer stared at him rather strangely and growled, “I said mist or fog .” My friend, as it hap-
pens, is an anthropologist. For one enthralling moment he thought he had stumbled upon a
tribe in the west of Ireland which personified aspects of the weather, speaking of Mrs. Hail-
storm, Master Sunshine, and so on. Other misunderstandings are possible, too. Some years
ago, an American student I taught was surprised to see British road signs reading “Way
Out.” I told him that they were left over from the 1960s, when there were also road signs
reading “Cool,” “Groovy,” “Peace and Love,” and the like.
I once rang an American colleague and reached his voice mail, which announced: “Hi,
this is Mike and Marie. We do not reply to silly questions.” Perhaps they had been besieged
by callers asking them how many triangular pink objects they had in the house, or how
much it cost to rent a lawn mower in Kuala Lumpur. Later I realised he had said “survey
questions.” Americans who are asked by immigration officers to state the purpose of their
visit on arriving in the United Kingdom should be advised that some American pronunci-
ations of “tourism” can sound quite like “terrorism.” In fact, the public speeches of George
W. Bush seemed to many of the British to be constantly warning against the evils of tour-
ism. Since Bush was scarcely the most cosmopolitan president to grace the White House,
this might have reflected his true opinion. Perhaps he was running the words “tourism” and
“terrorism” together for reasons of economy. There can also be problems when travelling
from Europe to America, since prospective visitors to the United States are now required to
complete a form declaring whether they have ever been involved in committing genocide.
It would be interesting to note the official response to “Can't remember” or “Not for quite
a while.”
The British and the Americans, George Bernard Shaw famously observed, are divided
by the same language. As one who belonged to neither nation, he could be dispassionate
about the matter. In fact, the differences can be exaggerated. It is true, as the old song