Thursday 19 December 2013

Learning a new language

In just over a year we are going to visit the folks in Alabama and Texas .I have become conscious that I need to watch my spelling 'cause y'all spell things differently from us
The last letter in the English Alphabet is Zed to Brits and Zee to Americans -this is confusing
You have lines -these are punishment exercises we got at school for some misdemeanour to us. Imagine my surprise when I found they were what you waited in in a shop. We call these Queues and Brits are good at forming orderly queues. You have Gas we have petrol .I went into a petrol station in Alabama and asked to pay the petrol -the guy behind the counter looked at me as if I had Tamales growing out my ears .When I said Gas his face brightened with understanding. The station was BP (British Petroleum) I thought he would understand. I might as well have been up to the knees in Brandywine Creek .
You take tea cold -we take tea hot but at least we have in common that neither like warm tea .I now drink my tea as iced tea even in winter- my countrymen think I mad. "I like iced tea" I say  and they say to me "but you are not in Texas now." I reply but I need to keep my hand in at iced tea drinking should I move back there,
You have funny cookies  which we call biscuits .What y'all call biscuits we call scones. How on earth did ALUMINIUM (AL-U-MIN-IUM) become ALOOMINUM ? I doubt even if Ben Franklin could explain that . I walk on the pavement which you call side walk and I put things in the rear of my car which we call boot and you call trunk and the front of the car we call bonnet (as in Easter) you call it hood which to us is a gangster. The engine is in the gangster the luggage is in the trunk which itself can be luggage.
You have a Senate, which over here is the governing body of a university. You do have hot dogs and hamburgers . Now we too have these .We get ours in tins and jars and they are American because they have the "Stars and Stripes" on the jar or tin. We have Grits and Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and Fish and Chips.
When I get to USA my first buy will be a Dictionary by Merrriam Webster. I do not know who he was but I guess he must have disliked the Brits intensely to make so many differences . I am working hard at adjusting to color instead of colour and many other things. I shall persevere but the trouble is "you can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." or as John Paul Jones said when he was doing his memoirs
"I have not yet begun to write - remember he came from Scotland so there is hope for me yet.

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