Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Some of these terms (“weird,” for example) have migrated to some extent into British
English, as American speech tends to do. Another obvious example is the word “like,” re-
peated every four seconds or so by young Americans, and now increasingly by other Eng-
lish speakers as well. It is rumoured that you can now find tombstones in the States read-
ing: “To Our Beloved Son, Brother and Like Husband.” There are also proposals to mod-
ernise certain time-worn slogans to “In Like God We Trust” and “My Country Like 'Tis
of Thee.” There will no doubt soon be headlines in
The Washington Post
reading: “I Was
Like 'Oh My God!' Says President of Harvard.” The pathologically compulsive use of the
word “like” has much to do with a postmodern aversion to dogmatism. “It's nine o'clock”
sounds unpleasantly autocratic, whereas “It's like nine o'clock” sounds suitably tentative
and non-doctrinaire. “Totally” is another potentially contagious Americanism, as in “Is my
husband dead, doctor?” “Totally.”
Even though some of the words I have listed have infiltrated the speech of other English-
speaking nations, most of them are still a lot more common in the USA than in the UK,
and some of them are scarcely to be heard outside the States at all. If the word “awesome”
were banned from American speech, airplanes would fall from the skies, cars would lurch
wildly off freeways, elevators would shudder to a halt between floors, and goldfish would
commit suicide by leaping despairingly from their bowls. Yet other speakers of English use
it very little, if at all. The British do not commonly say “meet with,” “reach out to,” “stay
focused,” or “your respected college” (which sounds slightly unctuous to non-American
ears). They do not zero in, craft a proposal, desire golden hamsters to be empowered, have
a hard time understanding something, ask to be given a break, or tackle a situation aggress-
ively, unless by the latter they mean taking a machine gun to it. Using the word “aggress-
ive” to mean admirably robust, a speech habit which does not reflect particularly well on
American culture, sounds almost as odd to the British as complimenting someone on being
as ugly as sin. The American use of the word “scary” instead of “frightening” or “alarm-
ing” sounds childish to British ears, as though one were to talk about one's bottie rather
than one's buttocks. To call someone “driven” is a compliment in the States but a criticism
in Britain.
“Empower” is a peculiarly American word, and despite being much overused has its vir-
tues. Without really intending to, it challenges the familiar liberal misconception that power
is a bad thing. On the contrary, power is an excellent thing, as long as it is exercised by
the right people for the right reasons. Only those who have enough of the stuff already can
afford to be so disparaging about it. Power is not always oppressive, as some leftists seem
to imagine, any more than authority is always to be resisted. There are beneficial forms of
power as well as malign ones. There is the authority of those who are seasoned in the fight
for justice, as well as the authority that ejects you from a restaurant for not wearing a tie.
Most speakers of British English do not say “a bunch of air,” speak of money as the
bottom line, or seek closure. “At this time” is not used to mean right now. Things are as-
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