Divided Languages - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 11

and sailors in Athens can sound as though they are bawling murderous insults at each other
when they are actually just inquiring tenderly after each other's children. In the days when
their telephone technology was poor, the Chinese used to bellow so loudly down the re-
ceiver that they could probably have heard each other without the aid of it. There are also
national differences when it comes to noise in general. If some European countries are
quieter places than the States, it is partly because the use of sirens and flashing lights by
emergency vehicles, except when absolutely necessary, is considered anti-social. It is true
that “absolutely necessary” may include dashing back to base, all sirens blaring, when the
news comes over the radio that your lunch is getting cold. Generally speaking, however,
the air of most European cities is not permanently rent by the shriekings and wailings of the
emergency services. On the other hand, British towns are besieged at night by the sound of
brawling drunks far more than their law-abiding U.S. counterparts. Many of these places in
America are ghost towns after dusk, lacking as they do all notion of a night life. They pay
for their tranquillity in the coin of a deep-seated dullness.
Americans can indeed be loud. Most American men have a “Yoo-hoo!” buried some-
where inside them. But the loudness is a matter of timbre as well as volume. There is
a particular kind of American voice, common to both men and women, which is pecu-
liarly piercing and resonant, so that whole conversations conducted in normal tones are
audible from a couple of hundred yards away without the slightest strain on the speak-
er's part. People with voices like this might be usefully employed as human foghorns, sta-
tioned around the coast to warn shipping of treacherous rocks. They are also, however,
especially suited to TV news networks. Whereas European television journalists address
their audiences in normal conversational tones, American reporters are clearly selected for
the bat-like shrillness or stentorian loudness of their delivery. Even when they are stand-
ing in the middle of a tranquil Indiana corn field, they sound as though they are trying to
make themselves heard through a tornado. The truth is that they are actually trying to make
themselves heard in noisy American living rooms, and that if they fail to grab the view-
er's attention, so will the advertisements. In this sense, there is a connection between pitch
and the profit motive. One may contrast these tones with the soothing, earnest, measured,
concerned, deep-throated voice of U.S. public broadcasting. There is a liberal-Democratic
American voice as well as a right-wing Republican one.
Language and the Irish
When it comes to verbal matters, there are particular pitfalls lying in wait for Americans
who visit Ireland. Many of them may be unaware that though Northern Ireland is officially
part of Britain, it is not part of Great Britain. It is, however, part of the United Kingdom,
just to compound the confusion. Many Irish republicans find the term “Northern Ireland”
objectionable, since it seems to legitimate the political status quo. They might speak of “the