Jan
29
You know who I hate? Faux Brits. I’m not talking about Madonna, or Gwyneth Paltrow. They are beyond the realm of reality. Being celebrities their whole existence revolves around being fake.
I’m talking about actual people. Normal joes (and janes) who wish they were British. For instance: you go to London for… shall we say… 14 months for your job. You come back to America and now use British idioms such as “bloody” and “telly”. You also spell labor: labour, favorite: favourite, and color: colour.
Say you go to London, you make a conscious effort to fit in. You develop up their accent, you purposely change your spellings in order not to stand out. That I can deal with. In fact, I like it. It’s good to absorb the culture around you.
The problem I have is when you come back to the United States. Where is that conscious effort to bring your accent back to American? And your spelling back to American English?
“Oh I’m just used to spelling it this way from my time in London. It’s become habit.”
Yes, but you only did that to fit in. Where did the part of your brain that wants to fit in go to? And it was only 14 months for fucks sake!
Oh, and you wear enormous hats. Seriously, it’s larger that most New York City apartments. Remember when everyone was trying it on at the Chirstmas party? They were making fun of you!
Oh yes, this is all hypothetical by the way.
Any British people out there? What’s your take on the situation?
January 29th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Back in 1984 I went to Europe for a month and in 1995, I went back to England for two weeks to visit friends. Both times, when I returned, I was told I had an English type accent, but I lost it after about two days of being home. Course, I wasn’t purposely trying to keepit and appear all worldly and stuff when I was just a guy from little town in rural PA.
I hate those type of people you mention as well.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Not a native english speaker here, but spoiled with several foreign terrestrial telly stations here in the Netherlands, amongst others the bloody fantastic BBC, gawd!
I love putting up an accent when I’m in Britain, (whilst drinking tea and eating biscuits)but it changes when I speak to say Americans (whilst eating fastfood and drinking Diet Coke - cause I do mind my figure). If Rene fucking Zellweger can pull it of, and mary (and divorce) a country singer, so can us ordinary mortals….
Aren’t you just jealous of the giant hat? Very Ascot, very Royal….. hmmmmmm
January 29th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Craig, I wonder what Rich’s take on all of this is. He should comment.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Oh dear. My friend Amanda and I for some odd unknown reason have a tendency to talk British when we are together. We’re both rabid Anglophiles (hello David Bowie!!) and even got to the point were we had to create a warning alarm when out in public and one of us heard a real British person. Yes “Code Union Jack!!” means “Stop faking before the real one hears you and asks you where your from and you don’t know what to say so you mumble something containing ‘Thames’ and ‘Shire’ and are exposed as a raving raving loony!!”
January 29th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Oh fuck. I know this syndrome well. I lived in a non English speaking country for about six months, and when I came home, I didn’t have an accent (aside from my godawful Midwestern one), I just couldn’t remember some words, like ironing board, or paperweight. So I didn’t look like an asshole, I just looked like an idiot.
The whole thing of people affecting an accent annoys me to no end. My cousin is living in Ireland, and she has this ‘Irish’ accent. Now she’s saying shit like ‘Grand!’ and ‘No worries!’ Fuck you, no worries. You sound like a total douchebag, and you’re not fooling anyone. We all know you’re from Tuscon. What a whore.
January 29th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Oh god….I have a friend who was born and raised Canadian..but he had English parents.
From HIGH SCHOOL he cultivated an accent.
This got worse when he went to work their for a bit and is even WORSE now that he has married one.
It goes the reverse too. I had a Scottish friend who worked and lived for years in NY and cultivated the strangest accent and is hanging on to it with sheer determination now that she is back in the UK.
I just can’t get rid of my accent and people mock me about this all the time.
January 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
sorry…needed to change my info up there with registering thingy
February 5th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I don’t know, we give you a language and look what you do with it: there are no such words as ‘gotten’, ‘acclimate’, nor ‘potentiality’. Then, when we send your citizens back, better informed and ready to reclaim our language, they get cruelly mocked because they have enormous hats!? They got that from us too!!
English people returning from the US talking like gangstas: now that’s bad news. It’s like, so degrading.