If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart
– Rachel Adams, English language coach, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University.
A British friend of mine said that he nearly had a heart attack on a flight in the United States (US) when the American pilot announced that the plane would be airborne “momentarily”.
I am not a linguist but as far as I know, in British English, the language the American speaks, “momentarily” means “for a moment,” and he thought the pilot was suggesting an imminent crash soon after takeoff.
In American English, however, “momentarily” means “in a moment,” and the pilot was merely appeasing the impatient passengers. That’s all.
The plane took off and stayed aloft, my friend’s heart stopped thudding, and he lived to tell the tale. But he understood better than ever before the old adage that Britain and the US are two countries divided by a common language.
Anecdotes abound about the misunderstandings that arise when foreigners including myself come to the US for the first time thinking that we know the language.
In one anecdote, a Barclays banker, in the course of a passionate courtship, told his American girlfriend, “I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.” All he meant was that he would call her by telephone. Still, she understood him to have offered a betrothal, and the relationship didn’t survive the misunderstanding.
Then there’s the five-star hotel I stayed at that failed to understand an English guest who called to say he had left his “trousers in the wardrobe.”
Translators had to be summoned before the hotel staff finally cottoned on: “Oh, you’ve left your pants in the closet. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
Sometimes you can get the right word but the wrong concept. India’s former foreign minister, M. C. Chagla, once ruefully recounted the time he wanted to order a modest bite from room service in a New York hotel and requested sandwiches.
“How many do you want?” Chagla was asked.
Imagining delicate little triangles of thinly sliced bread, he replied: “Oh, half a dozen should be enough.”
Six sandwiches duly arrived, each about a foot long (30 centimeters) and four inches high.
During my first week at Columbia University, I asked an American student where I could post a letter to my parents.
“There’s a bulletin board at the Student Center,” he replied, puzzled “but are you sure you want to post something so personal?”
It didn’t take long for me to realise that I needed to “mail” letters, not “post” them even though in the US you mail them at the post office.
At that moment, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the language but I was mistaken. Thanks to intensive coaching sessions on campus, I resolved to hang on to my ability, mainly by watching a lot of American TV shows, absorbing literature, and assimilating as best I could while never forgetting where I came from. What happened then is that I began to understand how the American English appeared from 3,000 miles away — not just the things the British admired, but the things they didn’t.
For example, in Britain, one concludes a restaurant meal by asking for the bill, and conceivably paying by cheque; in America, one asks for the check and pays with bills.
The language of politics is also not exempt from the politics of language. When a Member of Parliament in Britain “tables” a resolution, he puts it forward for debate and passage; when an American Congressman tables a resolution, he kills it off. A “moot” point is one the Englishman wants to argue; but if it’s moot, the American considers it null and void.
Such differences in usage reveal something of the nature of American society. It is no wonder, after all, that while the British “stand” for election, and Americans “run” for office.
I recall British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who later won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, once telling a New York audience that while a double negative could make a positive, there was no language in the world in which a double positive made a negative. Again, it didn’t fully sink in me until a heckler put paid to his thesis in forthright American: “Yeah, right.”
Yeah, right, indeed. With the universality of English largely a result of US economic dominance, it’s time for other English speakers to stop quibbling about whether the American usage is right or wrong. It simply is.
And as the Americans have taught the rest of us to say: that’s O.K. Though not even they can tell us what those two initials are meant to represent.
Despite everything, it’s interesting how I’ve grown accustomed to British colleagues who, when it comes to personal matters, don’t ask much, don’t tell much, and really don’t want to get into it. Throughout my six-month stint at the Goldman Sachs office in London, I lived next to a couple who corresponded with me almost exclusively by email. I had become an expert in the art of the anodyne weather discussion – a skill that suited me perfectly as an introvert who’s chronically sorry.
“Sorry,” I said to a Metro-North conductor the other day when I disrupted the swift completion of his progression through the train by asking what time we would get to my stop.
“No problem,” he said, looking surprised at my apology, and so I apologised again, for apologising.
It is enough to make your head spin. There I was at the Apple store after that, asking basic technical questions and trying not to take up too much of anyone’s mental space. I told the salesclerk that I had to change my address since I’d just moved back to the States.
He asked me a million questions: Why? Where was I going to live? How about my wife? How did I feel?
He considered the whole thing for a moment — me, the move, London, life.
“Awesome!” he said. And I think he really meant it.
Now that I’m home, I still somewhat grapple regularly with the differences between British English and American English, both as a writer for this newspaper, where I adhere to British English and as an economic analyst at the American investment bank. Please excuse this personal observation.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
