I've Read It Both Ways: Differences in English Usage From Country to Country

“…It [a shape-shifting alien…it makes sense in context] has amazing mimetic abilities. In one month it learned to speak English perfectly and to become well acquainted with British customs. That is no easy feat, Bunny. There are thousands of Frenchmen and Americans who have been here for some time who have not yet comprehended the British language, temperament, or customs. And these are human beings, though there are, of course, some Englishmen who are uncertain about this.”

           

The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others

By Philip José Farmer [full disclosure: an American writing a pastiche of British author E.W. Hornung's Raffles short stories] (writing as Harry Manders)* 

Communication as a form of connecting and understanding other people fascinates me. It’s probably an underlying influence on my interest in the written word. Spoken words are interesting, too, but they’re transient. They fly into oblivion almost as soon as they escape the mouth. Even if words happen to be recorded in a video or audio format, it requires rewinding and replaying to review the words intensively.

Written words, on the other hand, stay put. One can stare at them, dissecting, defining, rearranging, until the writer’s intended meaning is pretty well grasped. This orderly method of communication may be why, in many ways, I prefer writing to speaking. I can be methodical and take my time with written words where one wrong curve of the tongue may distort the pronunciation of a word (basically a verbal typo), potentially affecting the meaning in the process.

As an extension of my interest in language as a whole (English in particular), I’ve been reading a few books on the American/British conflict over the usage this leviathan of a language. There are a lot of different books on this subject, written on both sides of the Pond, with varying levels of bias on either side of the spectrum, and in tones varying from the hostile to the humorous. While, as an American, I tend to enjoy those with a philosophy that language is fluid, changeable, and nonprescriptive, I figure that reading a variety of these books should provide a balanced perspective.

I always begin reading these sorts of books with caution. Though I definitely feel defensive when I read books that are anti-American English, I’m not particularly looking to read anti-British English. I just want to understand the English language better as a whole, and learning about various regional differences is a part of that.

*From Sherlock Holmes through Time and Space ed. By Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. New York NY: Blujay Books; 1984: 52-53.