Speaking English

From the email files, before I was blogging. June 2006

Recently, I received an email from a friend asking me about our language acquisition and whether or not the kids were picking up a Dutch accent.

It’s a funny thing here, actually.

Though they are readily picking up the Dutch language, the accent which has a stronger influence on everyone's speech is the British we are surrounded by.
I am fascinated by the whole development of our language and wonder about the evolution of the American accent, since it is so far removed from the English which is spoken in the UK. (I have some working theories, but nothing soundly researched or tested.) That being said however, we have found many moments where the phrase “Divided by a common language” is a dead-on explanation.

It seems that the English that everyone speaks and teaches here on the continent, is the British English, so we have had to make some adjustments in order to best be understood.
This includes both in vocabulary and in spellings.

Imagine 12-year old Ian's surprise the first day of school when a classmate asked him "Have you got a rubber?" And of course the innocuous request for an "eraser" was a total shock to my son, for whom "rubber" means something else entirely!

So now we refer to our "trousers" rather than our "pants" which in Britain means underwear.

And we are careful to watch while in the "car park" for automobiles which are zipping by. We do not wish to be run over by a "tyre" so we hop onto the "kerb" for safety.

To go to the beach we need a “swimming costume” and when the weather cools down we will wear our "jumpers". (This whole idea of jumpers tickles my husband something fierce and he gets a good giggle every time he hears it.)

I have a running conversation with my proper British friends to double check meanings when we discover yet another alternate meaning to words we thought we understood. For instance recently we discovered that a 'fanny' is not at all what we supposed it was. So we no longer refer to our bottom with that moniker and save ourselves embarrassment or offense to those who understand that word in the British way. This includes losing the term "fanny pack" and we have picked up the alternate "bum bag" from our cousins across the pond instead.

It can get rather confusing at times and the misunderstanding can run both ways; as in I get a little jumpy when I hear a Brit inquire "can I bum a fag?" The request for a cigarette just doesn't sound right.

We added toddler confusion to the vocabulary equation when I asked Andrew to pick up his toys one evening and place them in the bin. For me, the meaning of bin was quite clearly the plastic box-like container where we store his toys. For him, the meaning of bin was quite clearly the trash can and he looked at me with wide inquiring eyes when I requested that he pick up his Buzz Lightyear and 'put him in the bin'. I didn't understand his confusion until later in the night when I saw that he had obediently taken Buzz to the trash can in the kitchen. Ah, me. I remember now to call the plastic container the toy box and we all now take our "rubbish" to the "bin".

All for all, I suppose the upshot is that we have picked up a lovely new vocabulary here and when we do 'freak out' or find it 'tricky' at least we give our British friends something to write home about.

We'll just continue to keep it cool man. We're keeping it cool.