Thursday, July 24, 2008
Newspaper headline of the week
This you-couldn't-make-it-up story about John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoeing accident, has nothing to do with Englishmen in New Orleans. But I think the headline is a work of inspired genius.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Y'all have a good day now, ya hear?
I enjoy having a British accent, and I make few concessions to fitting in and sounding like a local. I relish the almost daily conversations with strangers wondering where I'm from (most think I'm Australian. Sometimes I'll say 'Have a guess', and occasionally people will say 'Oh', assuming Havagess is a fjord in Norway or something).
I'll always remember the housekeeper who knocked on my hotel door in Uniontown, Pennsylvania to ask whether I wanted my room cleaned. When I replied, her jaw dropped. 'Wow! I love your accent!' she said. 'It makes you sound so good looking'.
But sometimes needs must, and talking like an American is a matter of basic survival. If people ask me my last name and I say 'Goddard', they look blank and ask me to spell it. But if I say 'GAH-drd', they get it straight away.
When I was walking across the country in midsummer, I sometimes had to knock on people's doors and ask them to refill my water bottle for me. Cue the blank stare again. So I learned to say 'WAH-dr bodl', and after a while I stopped feeling silly adopting a fake American accent.
And there's a word I use, again with a degree of selfconsciousness. It's a shibboleth, a daily reminder that I'm in the deep south and not the east coast or the midwest or the west coast. As it approaches, a little alarm bell goes off in my brain and I have to prepare myself to say it.
Sometimes I lose my nerve and say 'You' even though I'm talking to, or about, more than one person. Sometimes I'll fudge it and say 'You all'. But occasionally I'll come up with a reasonable approximation to the correct pronunciation, 'Yahl'.
It's made me realise that there's a gap in British English that doesn't exist in large parts of the world.
Most European languages have plural forms of 'you'. The French say vous, the Germans Sie or Ihr, the Spanish vosotros or ustedes. Even the Irish have the convenient and ubiquitous 'youse'. But in Britain, where 'thou' and 'ye' have long since died out, we have to come up with some kind of clumsy circumlocution if we want to make it clear that we're talking in the plural.
Anyway, an unexpected 'Y'all' in a conversation can still send a metaphorical shiver of pleasure down my spine.
In the restaurant this evening the waitress said: 'I'll be back in a moment with y'all's drinks'. Afterwards, we staggered off, defeated by a mountain of spaghetti and meatballs, leaving a generous tip because we were embarrassed at the destruction wrought by two-year-old Rowan. But she'd seen it all before, and told us: 'Y'all come back.' Once again, she made me realise that the South is a foreign country within a foreign country.
By the way, Rowan is about to become my step-grandson. I could never have dreamed that a wonderful family of strangers half a world away in Little Rock, Arkansas would one day become relatives by marriage. Here they are: Scott, Dana, Rowan, and four-week-old Arden.
I'll always remember the housekeeper who knocked on my hotel door in Uniontown, Pennsylvania to ask whether I wanted my room cleaned. When I replied, her jaw dropped. 'Wow! I love your accent!' she said. 'It makes you sound so good looking'.
But sometimes needs must, and talking like an American is a matter of basic survival. If people ask me my last name and I say 'Goddard', they look blank and ask me to spell it. But if I say 'GAH-drd', they get it straight away.
When I was walking across the country in midsummer, I sometimes had to knock on people's doors and ask them to refill my water bottle for me. Cue the blank stare again. So I learned to say 'WAH-dr bodl', and after a while I stopped feeling silly adopting a fake American accent.
And there's a word I use, again with a degree of selfconsciousness. It's a shibboleth, a daily reminder that I'm in the deep south and not the east coast or the midwest or the west coast. As it approaches, a little alarm bell goes off in my brain and I have to prepare myself to say it.
Sometimes I lose my nerve and say 'You' even though I'm talking to, or about, more than one person. Sometimes I'll fudge it and say 'You all'. But occasionally I'll come up with a reasonable approximation to the correct pronunciation, 'Yahl'.
It's made me realise that there's a gap in British English that doesn't exist in large parts of the world.
Most European languages have plural forms of 'you'. The French say vous, the Germans Sie or Ihr, the Spanish vosotros or ustedes. Even the Irish have the convenient and ubiquitous 'youse'. But in Britain, where 'thou' and 'ye' have long since died out, we have to come up with some kind of clumsy circumlocution if we want to make it clear that we're talking in the plural.
Anyway, an unexpected 'Y'all' in a conversation can still send a metaphorical shiver of pleasure down my spine.
In the restaurant this evening the waitress said: 'I'll be back in a moment with y'all's drinks'. Afterwards, we staggered off, defeated by a mountain of spaghetti and meatballs, leaving a generous tip because we were embarrassed at the destruction wrought by two-year-old Rowan. But she'd seen it all before, and told us: 'Y'all come back.' Once again, she made me realise that the South is a foreign country within a foreign country.
By the way, Rowan is about to become my step-grandson. I could never have dreamed that a wonderful family of strangers half a world away in Little Rock, Arkansas would one day become relatives by marriage. Here they are: Scott, Dana, Rowan, and four-week-old Arden.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Home again
Hooray! I'm an Englishman in New Orleans again. People have been badgering me to keep up my blog, but 'An Englishman in London' doesn't have the same stranger-in-a-strange-land ring to it.
As we entered the country yesterday afternoon, there was an eerie sense of déjà vu. In July 2007, as I reported earlier, Pam and I arrived in Philadelphia and had a two-hour encounter with a rude immigration official who threatened to send me back to England.
This time we landed in Philly again, and again I was sent off to the same room for secondary screening, two words that strike despond into the heart of any visitor to the States.
But the experience could not have been more different. The official scanned my file silently for a couple of minutes, a smile on his face. Then he said: 'Wow, that's an amazing story. ' He briskly stamped my passport, said 'Welcome to the United States, and good luck with your marriage'.
Did I mention we're getting married on September 20? We want a small, simple beach wedding, and we've decided on Puerto Rico because I'm not allowed to leave the country until about December. There will be six adults and two children in attendance.
It's good to be back in Spain Street, but the best thing about it is the garden. When I left in November, I planted two little banana trees about four feet high, salvaged from the neighbours' garden before it was demolished.
Today, after eight months of blanketing rain and heat, the taller one stands at around fourteen feet. The garden we created out of nothing is a jungle, in the nicest sense of the word: it looks like it's been there for decades.
Tomorrow we're off to Little Rock, Arkansas, to meet Pam's new granddaughter Arden. Then we're going to Eureka Springs, also in Arkansas, for the annual reunion of my new family. I went last year, and it was a baptism of fire which I wouldn't have missed for anything. After that, we have to settle down and do some work to pay for all our travels.
As we entered the country yesterday afternoon, there was an eerie sense of déjà vu. In July 2007, as I reported earlier, Pam and I arrived in Philadelphia and had a two-hour encounter with a rude immigration official who threatened to send me back to England.
This time we landed in Philly again, and again I was sent off to the same room for secondary screening, two words that strike despond into the heart of any visitor to the States.
But the experience could not have been more different. The official scanned my file silently for a couple of minutes, a smile on his face. Then he said: 'Wow, that's an amazing story. ' He briskly stamped my passport, said 'Welcome to the United States, and good luck with your marriage'.
Did I mention we're getting married on September 20? We want a small, simple beach wedding, and we've decided on Puerto Rico because I'm not allowed to leave the country until about December. There will be six adults and two children in attendance.
It's good to be back in Spain Street, but the best thing about it is the garden. When I left in November, I planted two little banana trees about four feet high, salvaged from the neighbours' garden before it was demolished.
Today, after eight months of blanketing rain and heat, the taller one stands at around fourteen feet. The garden we created out of nothing is a jungle, in the nicest sense of the word: it looks like it's been there for decades.
Tomorrow we're off to Little Rock, Arkansas, to meet Pam's new granddaughter Arden. Then we're going to Eureka Springs, also in Arkansas, for the annual reunion of my new family. I went last year, and it was a baptism of fire which I wouldn't have missed for anything. After that, we have to settle down and do some work to pay for all our travels.
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