The Linguistic Turn

As someone who is perpetually interested in language and how it works, living in London has been a delight.  I would like to share a couple of word or usages that I find particularly delightful.  I'm not going to bother describing to you distinctions that everyone basically knows about, like trousers v. pants, lift v. elevator, or biscuits v. cookies (although I did have a difficult time describing what biscuits and gravy is). 

First, on a general, pronunciation point, I find most people easy to understand unless they are from somewhere on the British Isles other than England.  It was pretty easy to get used to and I quickly moved into a stage of recognizing individual voices.  However, there does seem to be much greater variety in the accents here, even within England, and I suppose one could, with experience, much more accurately pinpoint the geographical origin of a speaker than one could in America..  It was a weird and almost self-conscious experience to hear an American speak from a position of authority here, as when Cardinal Levada visited the seminary.  Apparently, there is a resistance to using educational (particularly cathechetical) materials from America, whether written (because the spelling is incorrect) or audio-visual ("it sounds like he's chewing bubble gum while he speaks").  People would be much more receptive to material from anywhere on the British Isles, or even from Australia.  I am told, however, that the younger generations are much more receptive to American things because of all the American pop-culture they consume.  The main time I become aware of my accent is during common prayer, when we are all saying things in unison, but my pronunciation is different.  Words I always notice are 'God,' 'Lord,' and 'hearts.'  Previously, I would typically pronounce the word 'amen' 'ey-men,' but now I am a full-fledged 'ah-men' speaker, which is how everyone says it here.  So enough with pronunciations, and on to words.  These words or phrases are all used rather commonly here.  I think I heard them all within the first couple of days:

British word: dodgy  American equivalent: sketchy or shady  Usage in a sentence: Soho used to be a quite dodgy area of town; it still is in some ways.

British word: nick  American equivalent: steal, typically used of small or intangible things  Usage in a sentence: I'll nick my mum's year-long pass, so we can get into Buckingham palace without paying.

British word: quid  American equivalent: buck or bucks, but said in reference to British Pound Sterling rather than the US Dollar  Usage in a sentence: It's only ten quid for a student Oyster card.

Phrase in question: You're very welcome.  British conversation:  'This is my home.  Come in.  You're very welcome'  'Thank you'  American conversation: 'This is my home.  Come in.'  'Thank you'  'You're very welcome.'  (In America, 'you're welcome' is used mainly in response to a 'thank you' and occasionally as an invitation.  In Britain, it is used where Americans might simply say 'welcome' and much more frequently as an invitation.)

Question: How did you find it?  British answer: It was great.  I really enjoyed it.  American answer: I looked it up on Google maps beforehand.

British word: rubbish  American equivalent: literally, garbage, but is often used to mean nonsense or awful  Usage in a sentence: I'm rubbish at playing football.

British phrase: first floor  American equivalent: second floor  Usage in a sentence: Don't give him a room on the first floor.  He can't walk up and down stairs.

British word: right  American equivalent: left  Usage in a sentence: Traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road.