Separated by a Common Language

Why Britain and America Still Don’t Speak the Same English

When I first moved to London in 2004, I arrived at Heathrow with two suitcases and the belief that I spoke the local language. I slid into a “black cab” — the standard taxi waiting at the “queue” — and asked to be taken to Chelsea, a posh neighborhood where AP had set me up in a rather dingy hotel. As we edged onto the “motorway,” I noticed the meter spinning with great speed and asked the cabbie what the damage would be. “Oh, I should think about eighty quid, sir.”

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This, at the time, was more than $150. My protestation was met with the faintest turn of the driver’s head, behind a steering wheel on the right side of the car. He replied in the most measured of conceivable tones, syllables barely disturbing the air: “Well, I could sing for you, suh.” And we motored along.

I instantly understood that something deeper was going on than a rogue vowel or eccentric spelling. He was speaking English, yes — but in a different way that would repeat itself throughout my seven years of living in this green and pleasant land. Whatever the class and accent of the speaker, and there are many quite defined variants of these, there was a constant rhetorical irony that Americans simply do not produce in their natural habitat. Most people on Earth do not.

This, of course, sits atop the familiar differences. Americans write color and honor with the great efficiency that they think typifies their realm (it actually does not). The British preserve colour and honour as if U’s were part of the national heritage, on a par with Stonehenge. Americans have defense; the British keep defence. We use tire for both fatigue and the rubber on the wheel; they have tyres for their automobiles. We get into elevators; they into lifts. We have trucks; they have lorries. We rent apartments; they let flats. Our kids wear diapers; theirs wear nappies. And when we join a line, they queue, as though entering a civic ritual.

And while we are content with aluminum, they insist on aluminium, which sounds like it might be mined from the moon, and also is the variant generally used in the scientific community to be consistent with other elements.

There are, too, the idioms: Britishisms that seem governed not by logic but by whimsy. A scandal can be a right cock-up. A messy situation becomes a dog’s breakfast. Plans may go pear-shaped. And then the near-poetic cliches that no one still uses but all will recognize — the cabbage patch over the briny, or a rum kettle of fish — these are for caricatures of mustachioed colonels on Fawltey Towers. Above this, in the thin linguistic atmosphere, stands Cockney rhyming slang: trouble and strife for wife, apples and pears for stairs, and whatnot.

There are some weird hiccups as well, on par with idiotic Americanisms like “I could care less” (missing the “not”) and “a couple things” (missing the “of”). These, in the UK, include the formulation “agreed a deal” (missing the “on” or “to”) and “went to hospital” (missing the “the”). Also, with sports teams they mix up the plural and singular in a quite confusing way (“Arsenal have lost again”).

But the deeper intrigue lies not in the glossary but in the performance. Americans often think the British sound more intelligent, and this is hardly a mystery. The British accent in movies carries the weight of centuries of literate bureaucracy. Even the children appear to have been educated by dons. Americans are conditioned by Hollywood to believe that the British voice equals authority, sophistication, and at worst, a villain with impeccable diction.

This is an irresistible nonsense, of course, but the verdict is in and it’s just the way it is. The thing is, however, that this magical accent is actually possessed by only a minority of the Brits — this “Received Pronunciation” strain of the upper professional classes (which, true to Britain’s insistence on being odd, is referred to as the “middle class”). So the great shock upon arrival is discovering that Britain is not, in fact, a country populated exclusively by Hugh Grants.

Rather it’s an acoustic minefield. The mellifluous tones of Notting Hill evaporate quickly as one moves toward the Midlands, or Liverpool, or Glasgow (“Aye, it is a harrrdscrrable tyne”). The first time someone from Newcastle spoke to me, I nodded gravely, unable to decipher whether I was being threatened or invited to a family reunion. Arrivals expecting Downton Abbey English may be confused.

And these days, they will also encounter a different English in any Uber, whose drivers are all foreign, which is part of an immigration wave upsetting many of the “indigenous” and scrambling their politics (see the previous article this week).

Still, there remains, in certain strata, a rare devotion to articulate argumentation that has no real equivalent “across the pond.” The Oxford and Cambridge debating unions have elevated the spoken word to an artful sport. Such persons cherish a well-reasoned, crisply delivered and yet stingingly subtle argument the way Americans cherish a well-executed touchdown drive. It is no wonder that American intellectuals of a certain era — the late William F. Buckley, to take the most theatrical example — found it irresistible to adopt the British cadence, the British polysyllabic affect, even the British rhythm. Buckley’s entire verbal persona was essentially American British.

I encountered this phenomenon memorably in my colleague Barry, who was a senior personage in London. When he first learned I was posted to Israel as AP Bureau Chief, some years before my London arrival, he asked what I planned to do “after your little adventure.” Years later, when I ended up in a position to supervise most of his floor and redesign the very floorplan around his diminishing domain, I popped my head into his office on moving day and announced proudly, “Barry — neighbors at last!” He looked up with austere and deliberative movements and replied: “You’ll forgive me if I don’t bake a cake.”

You cannot buy that kind of quality. Americans simply do not speak this way. We don’t turn mundane interactions into epigrams. As Barry once told me, after one of our small disputations about the world: “We don’t disagree on everything; we’re just separated by a common language.” That was not original, but part of the charm is that they can make that imperfection seem OK.

Even their constant awkwardness seems OK. I used to famously attempt to stir it by asking direct questions. For example inquiring of job interviewees how much they expect to earn. The most charming of stuttery discomfiture would instantly commence.

This is why, while comedy thrives on both sides of the Atlantic, the British variant insinuates itself more deepy into your very soul. Sure, America has had some great comedians and also some fantastic shows that might have lasting resilience, like Curb Your Enthusiasm. But there is nothing that strikes an Atlanticist as viscerally as Monty Python, Yes Minister, Extras, and so on.

The original British The Office was one thing (a thing of brilliance worth watching and rewatching), while its American imitation was another: A show with more seasons (though the Brits call them “series” — so, several series of a series) and way more episodes that made much more money and will be forgotten.

The Thick of It is something you cannot stop watching in a train wreck sort of way, while its American immitation Veep is, well, quite easy to stop watching.

And don’t even get me started on the sublimity of UK music.

Of course, the Atlantic is not much of a barrier these; emails, flights, and streaming services have collapsed geography. And as said, Britishness has been diluted badly by immigration and globalization. That is actually part of the reason why Brexit happened — many of the locals are rebelling.

But a certain distance persists. It is the distance between “Steady on, my good man” and “Yo! What the fuck?!” Cliched to be sure, supercilious to a degree, outdated perhaps as well, but whatever the hell it is, the world is better for it.