An American Linguist in England: Reviewing "The Prodigal Tongue" by Lynne Murphy

Lynne Murphy is a linguist from the United States who emigrated to England and teaches at the University of Sussex. In her book, The Prodigal Tongue, the humor carries a little bit more bite than Erin Moore's That's Not English! 

Almost as if the author has been given a bit of a hard time over her nationality of birth, and finally wrote a book so that when she gets corrected on word usage she just hands the critic her book.

Take “math” vs. “maths.”

Now, personally, it doesn’t matter how it’s spelled to me, because I hate it in all its forms. 

But what Murphy says is rather interesting. The way Americans shorten it, “math” is a clipping. It literally clips the end off of a word:

Math-ematics

In Britain, “maths” is the shortened form, but it is more of a straightforward abbreviation, like “Mister” or “Attention”:

M[iste]r.

Att[entio]n.

Math[ematic]s

When “maths” was originally written that way, it was like the other abbreviations: although it was written in shorthand, it was spoken (or read aloud) in full. You don’t say “murr” when you read “Mr.” or “at-tun” for “Attn.” I’ve noticed that some of the European-published books (particularly older ones) don’t include the period at the end of abbreviations. “Mr,” for example, is driving my American spellcheck crazy. Maybe that’s just another example of how American English is distinct, and maybe why “maths” looks so strange to me.

Before reading this book I happened upon the Goodreads reviews of it and noticed a few that sounded upset, even defensive.

“Basically every entry is about how American English is right because SURPRISE that’s how it was in Britain first,” was the general (paraphrased) complaint. 

These people, I assume, were from the UK.

I felt this conclusion was fairly obvious to anyone reading the subtitle: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American English and British English.

“ ‘American’ comes first in the subtitle; doesn’t that imply they’re biased that way?” I thought. (Though it could have been just an alphabetical listing....)

Then I saw online that the version published in the UK was, hilariously, slightly altered from my version: The Love-Hate Relationship Between British English and American English. 

Ah yes. The ol' switcheroo. 

While I see where the detractors were seeing the “America is right” messaging in spots, I think they must have been suffering from the sort of perspective that only notices criticisms while taking compliments for granted.

(You know the phenomenon: you may receive a dozen compliments on an outfit, but let one person point out a flaw and you never wear it again.)

The reason I think this is that Murphy corrects both American and British assumptions about our common language.