Divided Languages - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 6

American Midwest, where the principal would come on the public address system at the
end of each school day with a grim list of warnings and prohibitions, rounded off with a
cheery “And don't forget—we love ya!” It wouldn't happen at Eton. (The right-wing geo-
graphy master at the school used to gaze out of the classroom window at the first appear-
ance of a snowflake and sneer to the students “Global warming, huh?”) “Love” in Brit-
ish English is a word to be wheeled out only on special occasions, rather like “genitalia,”
“prosopopoeia,” or “you unspeakable little shit.” One can contrast this with the wisdom
of the American self-help guru Joe Vitale, who recommends increasing one's business by
looking over one's mailing list and “loving each name.”
All the same, there is much to be admired in the emotional frankness and directness of
Americans. At the very least, it saves a lot of tedious conversational spadework, a phrase
used by a character in P. G. Wodehouse when he realises that the person to whom he is
speaking does not understand the word “pig.” At best, it belongs with Americans' warmth
and honesty. It is this honesty which leads some Americans to regard the British as devi-
ous and hypocritical, even when they are being nothing of the kind. To be reserved is not
necessarily to be two-faced. Americans sometimes suspect that the British are being deceit-
ful when they are really just being quiet, or that they are craftily concealing their thoughts
when they haven't an idea in their heads.
In Britain, you do not generally buy into an idea. That Americans buy into ideas and
proposals all the time suggests just how much the life of the mind is modelled on the stock
market. A bathroom in Britain is not a facility, nor is a building a structure. The proud
phrase “World's tallest structure” sounds faintly comic to British ears. The British some-
times speak of children as “kids,” but they would rarely do so in a newspaper headline or
TV news report. This would be almost as inappropriate as the president publicly declaring
that China sucks, or a physician talking to you about your ass. The same applies to “guys”
or “cops,” terms which few British television journalists would use on camera, but which
they might employ when it was turned off. The British use the rather beautiful word “chil-
dren” far more often than Americans do, who tend to prefer the ugly, demeaning monosyl-
lable “kids.” It is surprising that a nation so scrupulous about political correctness should be
content to regard its offspring as small smelly goats. Perhaps portraits of the Virgin Mary
with the child Jesus should be renamed “Madonna and Kid.” Clinics could specialise in
kid psychology. Wordsworth's line “The Child is Father of the Man” could be rewritten as
“The Kid is Old Man of the Guy.”
I include “family” in the list of typical American words not because Europeans spring
miraculously from their own loins and are ignorant of any such institution, but because the
term is more central to American discourse than it is elsewhere. It is used much more often
in advertisements and political speeches than it is in Europe. A British politician would not
typically refer to “Britain's families,” whereas the phrase “America's families” crops up
regularly in the States. To mention people's families is among other things to remind them