New Yorker and Americanisms

[abendgules]

I've been enjoying the Borowitz Report, a satirist from the New Yorker magazine. It's like a finely condensed Onion without the occasionally tasteless bits. Borowitz has been paying particular attention to the NRA and the gay marriage stories of late.

Browsing New Yorker led me to this post about 'spoiled kids'.

I can't decide which is weirder, having a six year old who can catch food and cook it, or the families from LA. I know my upbringing was certainly closer to the latter, if not quite so accommodating as described. I tied my own shoes, for one thing.

The author refers to someone writing 'Bringing up Bebe', which sounded familiar - it was sold in the UK as 'French children don't throw food' (no idea why, unless 'bringing up baby' is somehow an 'Americanism').

As a nice Canadian, I've found that many expressions, that I just thought of as 'two ways of saying things' prove to be firmly divided here: one will be the British expression, and one is judged an 'Americanism', which is always said with disapproval and a sniff.

It's that napkin/serviette, toilet/washroom/loo, trash/garbage type dichotomy, where I can't see a difference, but are apparently class indicators as well as signs of American influence, that I feel I'll never get hold of.

No real point, just passing on today's reading.

Comments

[my-stitching.livejournal.com]

Bringing Up Baby was the name of a classic film starring Katherine Hepburn and (I think) Spencer Tracy.

But it is a term I have heard a version of on both sides of the pond. People say they were brought up to do this or they were brought up in this town, etc.

[jpgsawyer.livejournal.com]

I too suffer from some of this having grown up in Australia. There are something in Australia which are frowned upon for being too American but not all.

What I also suffer from is oddly misplaced cultural references. Australian TV and music is a weird mix of UK, local and US and I never know if a TV show I am about to reference has been released here.....

I once was heavily criticized in the UK for using the term real estate. Not that I cared as the chap involved was a moron but there you go.

[ethnowoman.livejournal.com]

Yes, Bringing Up Baby was a movie in which Katharine Hepburn raised a tiger in a NY city apartment building ("Baby" was the name of the tiger). So perhaps it is sort of an "Americanism". But an esoteric one.

It is neat that you see all these differences! I am fascinated by class structures and how they work. Feel free to keep posting on this topic. =)

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

If you want a great review of modern class indicators from England, I recommend 'Watching the English', by Kate Fox
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Hidden-Rules-Behaviour/dp/0340818867

It's a really fair review of modern British behaviour, written by an English woman, that is easy to read and funny for both English and 'expat' readers alike. I think you'd really like it, because what you study is culture, through music.

Its observations might have saved one of my jobs here, where I completely misread my manager and eventually left in great frustration.

The English moan about how 'there's no native culture anymore' but this lady demonstrates that there is a very strong shared culture, it's just not the one they think of when they think of 'culture'.

[ethnowoman.livejournal.com]

I've read the article for "French kids don't throw food" elsewhere, I think, but I read the other one just now. Sadly, I know a lot of kids like this. Parents are indeed desperate for their kids' approval, and they don't follow through on their demands to the children. And children are little sociopaths, they will take every opportunity to rule, and abuse their power! I say this with all love in my heart for my own children and others.

[chequey.livejournal.com]

"It's that napkin/serviette, toilet/washroom/loo, trash/garbage type dichotomy, where I can't see a difference, but are apparently class indicators as well as signs of American influence, that I feel I'll never get hold of."

I think that's a Canadian thing. English Canadian culture is to a large extent a blend of the American and British (although perhaps moreso 20+ years ago than now). As a result we tend to be comfortable using expressions such as those you cite above interchangeably.

[acorngirl.livejournal.com]

This article is long and quite technical, but it does give a pretty good overview of not only what words we Canadians use, but how we say them. Naturally, we do have similar speech patterns and pronunciation to some of our cousins south of the border, but with a few regional exceptions (most notably, places in The Maritimes and the Ottawa Valley), we are amazingly homogeneous across this vast land, much more so than either the US or Britain, the two main contributors to our Canadian English language heritage. However, despite our physical proximity to the US and their overwhelming influence on us, we still stubbornly and proudly retain British spellings (favourite, colour, etc), if not their idioms. So we say trunk where the Brits say boot, gas rather than petrol and TV, not telly.

We are a blend of our founding fathers and mothers, both direct immigrants from Britain and UEL from the States, but have very much linguistically grown into our own, unique and proudly Canadian skins. I find it fascinating how endlessly varying our common language can be and yet still convey the thoughts we desire to communicate, one to the other. And if our idioms mark us as "not British" (insert proper Brit sniff here) - oh well. We're Canadian, and proud of it! :)

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Wow, how on earth did you dig up this article?

It's certainly the expressions that I've picked up.

I found another Canadian yesterday on the bus because she said 'totally! eh?' in conversation. I couldn't help but smile.

[acorngirl.livejournal.com]

No magic here. :)

I have to credit Zite, (my fav go-to news aggregator app).

Actually, if you're interested in the topic of linguistics, the section I quoted was only a small part of a larger article on North American English which focused primarily on the US and its myriad of regional dialects.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's essentially a line across the the UK where the names of the mid-day meal and the evening meal flip-flop, but it''s doubly weird in that in some locations it also betrays how long ago your family climbed the social ladder.

I ran into a howler on this when I worked under a retirement-age mouth-breather in a double-glazing company in 2008.

He was off to a salesman's conference in Bournemouth that was being held the next day.
Him: (At about 11:00 AM) Make sure you have the quotation letters ready for me to sign before I leave. I'll be driving to Bournemouth after I've had Dinner.
Me: So you'll be here 'til 5, eat at home and then do an evening drive? I not sure what difference that makes to to our normal deadlines?
Him: No you daft posh sod! It means I won't be after 12:30!
Me: Ah! Ok then! (starts typing slightly faster)
Him: Humph! I expect you're the sort of twit who calls yer Dinner "Lunch", and yer Tea "Dinner"!
Me: (Fixing him a steely gaze) No, I'm the noveaux riche twit who only ever says "Lunch" and "Supper", because only one of those is ever eaten in the mid-day, and only one in the evening, avoiding this whole nest of vipers. By the way, do you want me to tell the M.D. who deleted the entire company web-presence for nearly 72-hours last week?

(If I sound haughty this chap had also spent the period 1971-2008 *not* noticing that "Stop"-signs had had a radical design change, too)

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

I can picture you in this exchange steely gaze and all. :-)