Powell Amglish

Two Nations Divided by a Common Language
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4835-5100-5
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 417 Seiten

Spanish-Americans have Spanglish; Indian Hindi speakers have Hinglish; Singaporean slang is known as Singlish and inaccurate use of English in China is known as Chinglish. But the biggest variation of English is the one spoken by over 300 million Americans: AMGLISH. With hundreds of different words, spellings and pronunciations, the capacity for Americans and Brits to misunderstand each other is immense.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Powell, Mike

Leseproben

1 The Nucular Option During the reign of George II (that’s George W. Bush), the English speaking world outside of the United States of America believed it was reasonably safe from the threat of nuclear holocaust. Some traced their new feeling of security back to the ending of the Cold War after the Reagan/Thatcher era. Yes, of course, there was still the manifest threat of terrorism, but dirty bombs aside, at the start of the 21st Century, there were very few people who felt the need to construct nuclear survival shelters in their basements. Some of the more spiritually-minded attributed this new feeling of security to the Hubble Space Telescope. They reasoned that because Hubble had revealed a universe far older, deeper and more wonderfully mysterious than anyone had ever previously imagined, then the creator simply wouldn’t allow we miserable earthlings to blow our habitat to bits without – at the very least – a Host of Angels being sent to Earth like a galactic police squad to restore order. There was an even larger body of opinion that credited the Chinese for our feeling of safety from nuclear Armageddon. After the fall of the Soviet empire, many thought that the main emerging nuclear threat came from communist China. But three things persuaded the Chinese that they could save their money and spend it on something other than a Soviet-style nuclear stockpile. First, the Brits gave up Hong Kong without a murmur and in great shape, leaving China with a third and even more internationally-minded economic powerhouse to rival their existing jewels: Beijing and Shanghai. Second, they quickly realized that as they were inevitably going to become the world’s largest trading nation, they didn’t need to kill lots of foreigners to gain control of the planet’s economy – it was going to devolve to them anyway. So letting it happen by peaceful means meant that they wouldn’t have to spend billions on rebuilding wasted infrastructure. The third and probably most powerful reason why the Chinese grew to understand that they were now the future socio-economic hub of the world was the fact they were ready to run the 2008 Olympics a clear six months before the Greeks were ready to hold the 2004 Olympics. No, the real reason why we English speakers who are not American assumed we were safe, for the time being, was because the President of the most powerful nation on the planet, couldn’t say the word “nuclear” – preferring instead, “nucular.” In other words, if George W. Bush had suffered a serious mental disorder and had accidentally ordered the unleashing of America’s arsenal on some undeserving nation (or France), Armageddon would never have happened. Sure, George would be on the emergency phone yelling orders, but most of us believed his generals probably wouldn’t understand what a “nucular” weapon was. “Sorry Mr. President, we don’t have any of those new-cue-ler gizmos.” It was obvious that George’s articulate wife, Laura, found this, if not slightly embarrassing, at least a little quirky. A part of George’s folksy charm. In fact she even made a joke of it at the 2005 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. She told the astonished audience, “George and I are complete opposites — I’m quiet, he’s talkative, I’m introverted, he’s extroverted, I can pronounce nuclear.” Although her gentle put-down of the leader of the free world was light-hearted, you couldn’t help imagining that behind the scenes, Laura was constantly trying to coach him: “One more time. Try this dear: think of it as two words. NEW CLEAR, NEW CLEAR. Now George, your turn. NEW CLEAR.” “Uhhh … Okay Laura honey … uhhh … Nnnnn … Nnnnn … NEW … uhhh … NEW-CUE-LER.” It was only after I had lived in the United States for a while that I realized a shocking truth about the role of the President: I had never really understood how powerless he is. After the terrible destruction of Hurricane Katrina, people from other countries were incredulous that the President didn’t do this, or didn’t do that. But in fact, the split of power between the Federal and State Government systems means that the President can do very little himself without the consent and agreement of many branches of government at all levels and even across the political spectrum. Riding roughshod over the quasi-independence of any of the 50 States – by sending troops in uninvited for example – would almost certainly cause far greater political controversy at home than riding roughshod over some hapless third world country. Even much of his party’s legislation needs a supermajority of 60% (not a simple old-fashioned one-man-one-vote 51%) to get through. And then there is the filibuster – a device the Brits got rid of years ago by importing a devastating French killing machine and turning it into a metaphorical, but equally devastating parliamentary device called … a guillotine. In simple terms, if the legislator speaking on a particular subject does not stop talking within a certain time, the guillotine comes down, cuts off the offender’s tongue and then a vote is forced. A simple vote, by the way. Not, an “up or down vote” as US political-speak would have it. But then again, why use one word when four will do? However, as Commander-In-Chief of the US Armed Forces, the one thing the President can do fairly easy is the one thing that most other countries find fairly scary: wage war. Not unilaterally declare war without the approval of Congress, but this is a moot point. Congress simply has to approve the use of force. The Vietnam business wasn’t a declared war, but I don’t hear anyone referring to it as the Vietnam Incident or the Vietnam Misunderstanding. So given the hypothetical fact that the President could have ordered the launch of hundreds of ICBMs (ICBM’s in American-English – an American-English plural of an abbreviation would generally require an apostrophe), the fact that George Bush couldn’t say the name of the weapon that might have destroyed the planet was some small comfort to us foreigners. In fact, it was one of the very few times that non-American-English speakers were grateful that Americans do speak a very different English language than the rest of us. So imagine my surprise – horror even – when I found that President Bush’s folksy pronunciation is now listed as an official US English alternative by no less an authority than American dictionary company, Merriam-Webster. They defend their decision by stating that the Bush Jr. pronunciation has been found: “in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, US cabinet members, and at least one US president and one vice president. While most common in the US, these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.” Who am I to argue? In fact the pronunciation has actually been attributed on occasions to, not one, but five US Presidents in addition to George W. Bush. And no, one of them wasn’t George’s father, Herbert W. Bush. If he ever pronounced the word like his son, history does not appear to have recorded it. But sources do claim that Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have all used what we will hereinafter refer to as, the nucular option. And it is, by the way, the favored pronunciation of that notable authority, Homer Simpson (who should know what he’s talking about considering he works at Springfield’s local nuclear, sorry, nucular power station). It would be misleading to infer that the nucular option is restricted to American leaders: apparently even former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been noticed to use it. Not that this surprises me a great deal. Actually Blair knows perfectly well how to pronounce the word properly, but he was obviously being sickeningly polite to his friend George by trying to confer some (small – make that, very small) legitimacy on the variant. To be fair to George W. Bush, public speaking is rarely easy – particularly for a politician. The ability to be spontaneously articulate (as opposed to scriptedly-articulate) is a skill possessed by very few people. It is far, far worse when your articulate prose also has to be politically acceptable and has to stand the scrutiny of a thousand journalists eagerly awaiting your every slip; or desperate to confer their own meaning on something that you never intended. Having been occasionally required to speak in public myself, I am only too aware that the pen is mightier than the tongue. Or, more accurately, the revisionist brilliance of the word processing program is more reliable than the processing power of the average human brain when you require it to connect politically-correct, analysis-proof inner monologue to the vocal chords. As Descartes might have put it if he had been President of the United States (unlikely, as he was French): “I think, therefore I blurt.” It is not surprising that politicians and captains of industry are often accused of using “politician-speak” for that is exactly the speech pattern that they are forced to adopt. To survive. Of course, skilled exponents of the art make it less obvious than less-skilled exponents of the art. However, it is an inescapable fact that the...