Let me reveal a secret: I love language. I love not just how it sounds and how it's used, I love in particular the fact that the way we use language can change the world around us, and language can tell us things about the world around us that we wouldn't otherwise have known.Now, dear reader, I can guess what you're thinking. You're probably thinking "What is he going on about now?", or "Why does he never write about interesting things?", or something along those lines. Both are good questions. On we go.
By way of introduction (no, the above paragraphs are not introduction, they're pre-amble, which is different), let me mention that the differences between American English and British English are well known and well documented. I don't propose to go on at length (!) about tom-ay-toes and tom-ar-toes and all that. It is what it is. And most of what it is is differences in vocabulary.
Differences in vocabulary (pitch v field, courgette v zucchini, tarmac v blacktop) are important to know. For example, if you're a Brit travelling in the US of America, you probably are well aware that Americans use "sidewalk" to indicate what you would call a "pavement"; but it might also come in useful to know that Americans also use "pavement", but to them it means the surface of the road. Equally, depending on what you get up to whilst travelling over here, it might be useful to know that Americans use the word "suspenders" to indicate what Brits would call "braces", ie something to hold up mens' trousers (aka pants) rather than womens' stockings.
And so, dear reader, if this was just any old expat blog, I would go on about vocabulary differences at length and we could all have a good laugh about what would happen if you mixed up your suspenders and your pants, etc.
But, as my hardcore following will know, The Referee tries to dig a little deeper, in order to give you the in-depth inter-cultural commentary you so richly deserve.
That being the case, I want to mention something much more subtle about the way that Americans use English and see if it doesn't indicate something interesting in outlook and points of view. There are multiple potential subtle differences, of course, but I want to focus on one I've noticed often recently, and which stood out on a recent visit to the cinema, aka movie theater.
The Littlest Referee was keen to take me to see a film and I was happy to go along; (it used to be the other way round). On the way in to the cinema, the very polite young ticket chap said the following: "Theater 7 is going to be upstairs, and the concession stand is going to be open up there".
Think about that for a moment. Ignore the spelling - I'm spelling "theater" that way just to be consistent with who the speaker is. (There appears to be a pattern of Americans anglicizing French words, but don't get me started on that.)
He said: "Theater 7 is going to be upstairs". I had to force myself not to ask "Where is it at the moment?", as though concerned that Theater 7 might not show up in time before we arrived at the top of the stairs, only to find ourselves on the brink of a frightening vortex full of anti-matter, whatever that might be. But I didn't, because that would have been a little mean to the poor chap, not to mention confusing.
Instead, I thought about that fascinating use of language, which is a very common American way of speaking. I have noticed it most often in the context of what you might call customer service, in the widest sense - at the cinema, in a restaurant, when asking directions, etc.
The thing that occurs to me about this phraseology is that the speaker is putting him or herself in the shoes of the listener. It is, I think, a manner of speaking employed when the speaker wants to be helpful by describing for the listener what they are about to experience, rather than simply expressing facts that the speaker happens to know.
Did the ticket chap at my local cinema believe that Theater 7 was not yet in place but would be so at some point in the near future? Of course not. What he was doing was describing for the Littlest Referee and myself what we were about to experience in the next minute or so. We would go up the escalator to the 2nd floor (which can be found where a Brit would locate the first floor), and then we would make our way, via the concessions or otherwise, to door number 7, and behind that door we would then discover our destination, and that destination was Theater 7.
This reminds me that I have no idea why Americans use the word "concessions" to describe food and drink places. Answers on a postcard, please.
But, more importantly, I like to think that, as the inventors of customer service, in movie theaters, diners, drive-ins, etc, the Americans have unconciously developed a manner of speaking which is empathetic to the needs of the listener.
And so, that leaves me to say only that I am going to be signing off this message, at some time in the near future.
There it is. Told you so.
2 comments:
Now that's something I hadn't thought about - good work. Not wrong, just empathetic.
In other news, if you were on the ground floor of this cinema and were going up one floor on the escalator, we (ahem) Brits would say you were going up to the first floor. Unless, of course, you meant the second floor (ie two floors above the ground floor) and that the Americans call the ground floor, the ground floor; the first floor, the super ground floor (or sim); and the second floor the first floor.
Well spotted, Self. I mixed up my floors entirely. Now fixed. In fact I was referring to going up from (Brit speak) ground to first floor, which here is first to second.
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