Yankee Doodles Part 1
The English are obsessed with Americans. There, I said it.
If you’re English and reading this, seriously, we are. When’s the last time you said: “Oh my god, that’s so Belgian” or “you sounded totally black just then”.
The truth is you wouldn’t because because you’re not concerned with Belgian stuff* and the black comment would just be wrong.
But I lose count of the amount of times I hear the word “American” used in a negative context by Brits without a second thought.
Ease up on the yanks, OK. They gave us Velcro. And those heat-sensitive t-shirts. You know, the ones that change colour depending on how warm you are. Genius.
If you are American, please do not read on.
Are they gone?
Good.
Fact is, we’ll get our revenge. I work with a lot of Americans and we Brits are leading a small insurgency to revive our long-dormant era of world cultural domination. Have you noticed how, after long enough, an American living in the UK will drop the hard “a” of “grass” and “mask” to the softer vowels of southern England? It’s a great moment when it happens in our office.
Brit: “Hello Heather from America. Would you like to come to the pub?”
Heather from America: “Gee whizz, mofo, I’d love to but I caaahn’t.”
It sounds wierd, but it’s cool, you know. We should celebrate the moment of oncoming Britishness. We should have a fanfare of the Monty Python theme and two colleagues could creep up behind them with a bin full of milky weak tea and pour it over them NFL-style. And after the initial scalding, we could try to talk about how it feels to be turning English, but no one will really say anything because, “well, we don’t want to make a fuss, do we?”
They sometimes get it wrong, too, because all American “a” sounds are hard. In southern British English, the a in “pan” is different from the a in “class”. But next time you hear an American say “a man in the park threatened to staaahb me if I didn’t haaahnd over my paaahnts” you can be sure that the transformation is underway.
*Or maybe you are concerned with Belgian stuff because they all make such good chocolate. Maybe you think that all Belgians look alike, you racist.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Velcro ? We did Velcro? I thought that was Swiss.
Or something.
I know a guy who lives in Wimbledon. He uses six or seven accents over the course of a day. He uses one accent with his lovely better half, who’s from Manchester, then another with his best mate Huey, who’s from further north. And when he’s talking with one co-worker, he uses a nearly Welsh accent that no one but the co-worker can understand. It sounds like he’s got a pipe clenched between his teeth while singing certain paragraphs from Tolkien. His natural accent is a wacky Irish thing, which he uses to great effect, and he’s got a ‘pub accent’ that he uses, most naturally, at his local pub and nowhere else. And to top it off, he works for the BBC so he’s got the RP thing right down. He switches into and out of these accents so swiftly, fluidly, easily that he doesn’t even know he does it. Schizophrenia In Voice. I promise.
And he’s not the only one who does it. Another friend of mine from the far north London area does approximately the same thing. When I call him on his celphone I can tell which client he’s at by the accent he uses when he answers the phone. I asked him about it once and he thought I was insane.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
You’re right. Velcro was Swiss. George and Victoria de Velceaux, pioneers of the fastener. She died because she never new the dangers we know today. Carried a sample in the pocket of her tunic.
Accents, yes. I know people like that.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
“We should have a fanfare of the Monty Python theme…”
Which, ironically is from a Sousa piece: “The Libery Bell March”
Sorry, I didn’t follow directions very well; I kept reading anyway.