“The United States and the United Kingdom - Two nations divided by a common language”, or so “they” would have us believe (whoever “they” are…). There is, however, a certain amount of truth in the existence of different words and expressions on either side of “the pond” that mean the same thing, but it’s not as if they are all that confusing when it comes down to it, and most people understand what is being meant be either or indeed both, so it’s hardly likely to cause any huge ructions in the great “special relationship” really, when it all boils down to it.
Granted there are some quite hefty ones, like how much we mean by a billion, which floor should be called the “first floor”, and that rather ridiculous pronunciation of “yoghurt”, but not much that is generally “life-threatening” and, although we absorb a great deal that is ridiculous from each other’s cultures, like “fast food”, “prom nights” and “trick-or-treating” as long as we keep our emergency services on 999 and children don’t start to use the preferred American spellings for everything, I’m sure that we can rest easy in our beds, secure in the knowledge that the boundaries of the dregs of the Empire are secure.
It can all get rather strange, however. Back in the seventies, when film classifications and the notions of sex and violence on TV were being discussed, it was always the Americans who seemed to have a greater tolerance of acceptable levels of violence, and the Brit who were more tolerant of the old sex thing. Oh yes, they can say what they like about us being repressed in this country, but behind the twitching curtains of the shires, all sorts of shenanigans were afoot, some of it barely legal.
Strangely, however, in a cultural sense, it seems that the Americans, at least when it comes to dramatizing such things in their TV shows are much more laissez-faire when it comes to things like affairs. As long as you are chasing your own needs and desires, they do seem to be reasonably tolerant of such extra-marital activities as long as (and here’s the thing) you don’t get caught. You get the impression that people are leaping on top of each other in the workplaces and motels during lunch breaks, coffee breaks and perhaps even toilet breaks, at the drop of a pant, and everyone seems to think that it’s all perfectly acceptable so long as nobody ever finds out about it.
However, if they do, then it appears as if its “lawyers at dawn” and pistols (quite literally in some cases) drawn.
Well, at least that’s how it seems to be on TV.
All very strange for a nation that finds the word “Toilet” so difficult to handle and prefers the euphemistically much cleaner “Bathroom” or “Restroom”, neither of which basically tell you what you’re supposed to be doing in there (if you can ignore all of the illicit trysting that’s afoot anyway).
Still, there’s always Tesco…
Some of the differences are more subtle; “Construction Work” instead of “Building Work”, a “Line” instead of a “Queue”, and “Jelly” instead of “Jam”. I’m more bamboozled by “Faucet” as the preference to “tap”, even if I did spend many a “hilarious” minute back in the 1970s contemplating the notion of there being an anglicised version of “Farrah Tap-Majors”.
Still, we all have our own lines that we need to draw in the sand. I would prefer not to have to tolerate the ghastly “thru” and I’m starting to get rather irritated by the insistence of dropping the “and” out of the numbering system. The year really needs to be “Two Thousand AND Twelve” and not “Two Thousand Twelve”, in what is my admittedly humble opinion.
Still, if that’s as bad as it ever gets, there really isn’t that much to worry about…
Is there…?
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