Americanisms in British English

When I returned to  Britain, I kept a list of Americanisms that had crept into everyday use in British English since I'd left. It's a bit old now, and you probably won't believe me on some of them - they're so embedded in our language that you'll find it hard to remember that they didn't used to be. But here it is, a snapshot of how the language changed between 2006 and 2012.

"I’m good", for "I'm fine" (or "Fine, thanks")  in response to the question "How are you?"

Store, for shop

Excited, used to be a word for children but adults can be that too now

Cute, for sweet

Smart, for clever (ubiquitous now)

Heads-up (as in "here's a heads-up" which I know for a fact I'd never heard before I went to America, because I asked someone what it meant)

FYI (similarly)

Call, (as in "call me" - we used to say "phone me" or "give me a ring", or even - remember this one? - "give me a tinkle")

Camps, eg short activity courses for children - what on earth did we call them before?

Fixed, for mended

Done, for finished

Mad, for angry

Pharmacy, for chemist

Medication, for medicine (or we used to call them "drugs" a long while ago)

Sick, for ill  (has "poorly" completely died out?)

"Sides" on a menu (did we call them "side orders" or "extras"? I can't remember)

Check out, for find out

Anxious, for worried

Butt, for bottom (and of course ass, for arse)

News anchor, for newsreader or newscaster ("newscaster" is rather a nice word, as if giving news is like being a magician, or a fisherman perhaps)

Regular, for normal (and, of course, for medium-sized)

"Could I get?", for "Please may I have?" (I'm normally easy-going about language change, but I do hate this one)

On your team, for in your team

On your street, for in your street

Fill out a form, for fill in a form

Cookies, for biscuits

Power outage, for power cut

Hiring, for recruiting

Round-up, for summary 

Not-for-profit, instead of charity, or charitable

Movie, for film (of course we all knew what a movie was, pre-2006, but we didn't use the word)

  

Shipping & handling, for postage & packaging

Ziploc bag, for freezer bag (yes, I've heard this one used)

File cabinet, for filing cabinet

Klutzy, for clumsy

Raising kids, instead of bringing them up

And as I mentioned recently...   Mac 'n' Cheese, for Macaroni Cheese

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American food arrives in local Sainsbury's

That's enough regrets. I think there are probably others, smaller ones, including something about not getting out and about enough in the local area, but heck, don't you always feel that when you leave a place? Or indeed even when you live there. So let's move on to new things.

One thing I remember getting very excited about when I lived in the Midwest, was when our local Dillons created a British section. Well, history is mirroring itself, and now I find that our local Sainsbury's has created an American section. I was intrigued to see what kind of things would be stocked. 12-yo and I were discussing in advance what we would like to see there, and, sad to say, I found it hard to remember the detail of what went in my supermarket trolley (cart). I do remember some particularly delicious soft Dillons cookies, but I'd pretty much given those up by the time we came home, once sugar had become the big foe, and I'd worked out that they probably had a higher sugar content than sugar itself.

It turns out that sugar is the predominant ingredient in the Sainsbury's American section. Sorry, Americans reading this, but that does seem to be what your foodstuffs are known for over here.

12-yo became very excited at the sight of Lucky Charms, but I swear we hardly ever allowed them to sully the inside of one of our cereal bowls. If anything falls into the category of "edible food-like products", it's Lucky Charms. You can't read the text on the photo, but those small pots are gluten-free Lucky Charms. Something so unfood-like doesn't deserve to have nutritionists working away at reproducing it in a gluten-free way. This is where capitalism goes wrong. The market isn't always right.

Reese's products are always sorely missed by American living abroad (I've read your blogs, I know your Reese's lamentations). Personally, I thought Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were invented by someone who was aiming to win the "Food most difficult to scrape off the roof of the mouth with the tongue" award, and none of my family likes peanut as a flavour (which was something of a problem for us in the US), so I suppose Reese's products were never going to do much for us.

Speaking of edible food-like products, what about these?

Including Ghostbusters limited edition ones, with key lime slime. Sainsbury's, what were you thinking? On special offer too.

Moving swiftly on...

12-yo was happy to see these, and I have to say I have a fondness for Nerds, because of their name.

Here's something that I'm sure the Americans living in my city miss from home.

And this too.

Ooh look. Another one on special offer.

Snapple has nothing to do with a Grapple, but I'm not sure I ever told you about my encounter with a Grapple in Wal-Mart, in my early days in the US. I came across a fruit that looked like an apple, but was packaged up and labelled as a Grapple, and purported to be a cross between an apple and a grape. Intrigued and somewhat suspicious, I bought it, wondering (a) what on earth food producers would think of next, and (b) why it looked just like an apple rather than what you might imagine an apple-grape cross would look like. When I got home and read the very small print on the label, I discovered that it was an apple injected with grape flavouring. Only in America... (Actually, it really is only in America that I've ever come across that distinctive grape flavouring which doesn't taste like grapes at all, but is often used in children's food products: Calpol equivalent, for example).

You've probably despaired of me finding anything I liked in the Sainsbury's American section. But wait! Look here!

Aaaaahh! Kraft Mac and Cheese. Love the stuff. Every mother's easy dinner. Cheap, quick, tasty. I seem to remember it was 99 cents in Dillons, unless you got the deluxe version which had posh creamy cheese sauce in a sachet instead of the powder version. The only downside to Kraft Mac and Cheese is that it ruins all those homemade macaroni cheeses you used to make, because your children think it's much more delicious and so you will never again think it's worth spending the time making a white sauce and grating cheese. Actually, I've just thought of two other downsides. First, naughty despicable Kraft bought up Cadbury's, promised they wouldn't close a factory in Bristol, and then did, and we all now live in fear that they're going to turn Cadbury's Dairy Milk into Hershey's. Second, I've noticed that in the UK, we now call good old Macaroni Cheese by its upstart American name, "Mac and Cheese". I've seen "Mac n Cheese" on several menus. Sigh.

12-yo and I thought of one item that wasn't in the Sainsbury's American section that we would have liked to see there. Goldfish! Definitely something we miss from our American days. What about you? If you're an American expat in Europe, or if you're a Brit who has lived in America, what American food do you miss here?

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Regrets: number 3

I never made a quilt.

I knew just a little bit about quilting from a friend whose mother was a very keen quilter. They had lived in Canada for a couple of years, and I think her interest stemmed from that time. When we arrived in the US, we stayed with a woman for a couple of weeks (a contact of a contact who very kindly opened her home to us) who was a quilting addict. It was a bit of a nightmare, as there were pins, needles and scissors everywhere, and I had a youngest who was two years old (the woman didn't have children). In those early days, I had time to kill in the house during the day. It was both strangely busy (sorting out bank accounts, driving tests, social security numbers, house hunting), and strangely quiet, because there were long spells when I was alone in a strange house, with my three children, knowing no-one and hardly able to go out because the weather was so bad and - as I was horrified to find - you couldn't walk anywhere. So I picked up a book about quilting.

The book was a series of short stories and reflections, and I found myself drawn in. So as the children watched rather a lot of the Disney channel and Nickelodeon and I began my lament for CBBC (a lament which would last five years), I would read short pieces about quilting. I began to understand some of the magic of it. It's not just the sewing, you see. It's the love that goes into the quilt. Women down the years have made quilts for their daughters as they marry, for their sons as they go off to a new city, for a cousin who is ill, for a friend who is bereaved. Quilts are an expression of love, of support, of caring. They are designed with creative excitement, stitched with love, finished with a joyful sense of completion, and given to their recipients as gifts from the heart. This all seemed a little over-the-top and too emotional to my newly-left-Britain ears, but I warmed to it. Perhaps it was the beginning of a new perspective on our famous British reserve and stiff upper lip.

The other aspect of quilting that caught my attention was the community of women it brings together. In the pioneer days, women desperately needed each other's support and practical help, and quilts would be - literally - pieced together from scraps contributed by friends and neighbours. The women would gather together to finish the quilt, filling it and backing it in one long session, that could last all day, all persevering together until the final stitch was done. If I remember rightly, this is called a "quilting bee". One of the stories in the book I read urged non-quilters to go along to one. "You'll find a warm welcome, laughter, and long-lasting friendship", it said. "Experienced quilters love a beginner to take under their wings." Alone in a strange land, that sounded like just what I needed. A ready-made group of older, wiser women, who would pass on their skills, and gather me up. I decided I would make a quilt, and then I'd be able to take it with me when we returned back to Britain, and it would be my American thing, full of American memories.

Reader, I never made that quilt. There was a moment when it came closer, when we moved into our own home, which had a lovely light-filled room that had been the previous occupant's sewing room. But for us, that room needed to become a child's bedroom. Life became busy with other things. I found friendship elsewhere, and I did find my group of older, wiser American women, but in a book club, not a sewing circle.

I enjoyed quilting vicariously through an English friend in Hertfordshire who took it up, and started blogging about it. Reading her blog, I could see how the old values of quilting are being practised in new ways made possible by the internet. Women are exchanging designs and techniques, helping newbies get started, sending each other packages of fabric through the post, enjoying competitions and challenges, and working together on projects. There are blog posts describing joyous real-life meetings of friends who have got to know each other online. The magic of quilting meets the magic of blogging!

Perhaps I will take up quilting when I retire. I'll have a table on which I can leave a sewing machine and half-finished projects, without having to clear them away before dinner-time; there'll be no-one wandering round the house in bare feet (those pins!); I'll have time to stitch away to my heart's content. Perhaps I will design a quilt called "American Memories". Perhaps I really will.

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Regrets: number 2

Travel. We didn't travel enough when we lived in the US. It wasn't that we didn't want to. Our restrictions were money, time and distance.

Money
We arrived in the US just after the crest of the Easyjet wave had broken in the UK, when you could fly to European cities for literally £10 a ticket, or occasionally even less. Not that we had done any flying to European cities, me not being a huge fan of city-breaks with toddlers/babies, but our youngest was nearly 3 when we went to the US, and I thought we'd be in a phase where that kind of travel would be more enjoyable. I envisaged us flying to interesting destinations: New York, Washington, San Francisco... Seattle... It was a shock to discover that the budget airline idea hadn't reached the US, and that to take a family of five anywhere by plane would cost several hundred dollars. I also hadn't realised that our little city, in the middle of the country, not being a hub, had a very limited choice of destinations, so that to get to New York, Washington, San Francisco or Seattle would involve two flight. That always ends up being the best part of a day, which makes the idea of a weekend jaunt a lot less feasible.

Time
The first aspect of time being a limiting factor was the way the school year is arranged. The UK school year is full of breaks: Christmas and Easter, and then half-terms here, there and everywhere (well, I suppose they're half-way through each of three terms, so not exactly "here, there and everywhere" but if you've lived the routine of the US school year, that's what it feels like when you compare the British system). We had three days off at Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks at Christmas, a week in March, and that was it. Yes, there's scope in there for trips, but if you want to be at home for Christmas and Thanksgiving, it didn't seem like much. Of course there is the hugely long three-month summer vacation, but of the six years were there, for three summers we came back to the UK, one was taken up with surgery and chemotherapy, and one involved our final move back. Only in our first summer did we really have the opportunity to explore the US. I guess the expat family will always be juggling their resources between making the most of their new adventure and keeping in touch with their roots.

Distance
I'm sure it would have been different if we'd lived in another location. If we were on the East coast or West coast, there would have been places of interest to drive to. But we were right in the middle of the country. It's hard to get a feel for the scale of journeys involved in the US until you live there. We all know it's big, but to experience what exactly that means is a different thing. In UK terms, it was a day's drive before you reached somewhere that looked or felt different. Yes, driving is easier and we had a big comfortable minivan (people carrier), but even so, it did mean that trips were for holidays rather than week-ends. In terms of places that we could visit within a day, or even an overnight stay, we pretty much exhausted those in our first year. I know you'll find that hard to believe, but there are vast tracts of the Midwest where there is nothing but wheat field upon wheat field, for tens, if not hundreds, of miles. If you do stop, the choice is this McDonalds or the next one. When you reach another big city, it feels exactly like your home one, all on a grid system, and you end up eating in a chain restaurant, because it's hard to find anything else in a city you don't know (I expect Google and TripAdvisor has made this rather easier now, but five to ten years ago, it was hard to get beyond the main street in a strange place).

This all sounds rather more negative than I meant it to. I suppose I have in my mind an anonymous reader taking me to task: "Seriously? There wasn't anywhere interesting you could go for a week-end? You lived in another country for all those years and you hardly took your children anywhere!". I want to explain to that voice what it was like, and I guess that is one of the frustrations of the returning expat, that you can put something into words, but as your audience hasn't experienced the context, it's hard to make it understandable. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I like to think, as well, that it's a sign of how we assimilated to where we were. After our first summer, I started conversations at the school gate as I would do in Britain. "Did you have a good summer? Did you go anywhere nice?" I was amazed at how few people had been on vacation at all. People had perhaps visited family for a week-end, but very few had had what we would call a holiday. I stopped asking those questions, because they weren't the right questions to ask. I started asking "Did you have a good summer? What sports teams and camps did your kids enrol in?" Perhaps, over time, my travel aspirations dwindled.

Having said all of the above, we did manage some travel. I went off on some cheeky week-ends on my own: to Chicago for the week-end of the Expat Brits Blogging Six, to New York to visit an old friend and meet up with my brother's family on holiday there, to Chicago again to stay with the hugely hospitable Expat Mum who also put up my brother while he was on a conference. They were real high points. We did also craft some trips with our kids. We went to San Diego in our first year, when we were flush with cash from our initial move when the pound had been particularly strong against the dollar. We went to Colorado too, a 12-hour drive from home, four times in all - or was it five? The place we went to in Colorado became special to us, and we loved returning there. We may not have taken the children to a great number of different places, but we do all share strong and happy memories of that one place. There is something nice about returning to the same location over three or four years, and that thought goes some way towards dissipating any regrets I have, if ever I look at a map of the big, big continent of North America, and think "New York... Washington... San Francisco... Seattle...".

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Regrets: number 1

This time four years ago, we were planning our return. Husband had a job, we knew what city we were landing in, the kids had places at a school, our house was on the market, and we were embarking on the endless list of small things to do when big moves happen.

My mother-in-law asked me this week-end if I regretted going to America. I don't. Not ever. Not for one minute. We missed out on things here, for sure, and we made life difficult for ourselves, our children, our wider family. But we are the richer for it. We ended up staying longer than we meant, so what was intended as a short adventure became normal life, and there were some scary times when we thought we'd perhaps end up staying for good. In our bones we knew we wouldn't, but it also became very hard to see a route back to the UK. Thank you, credit crunch of 2008.

So no, I don't regret it at all. But there are things I do regret about our time there. Things I would like to have done, but didn't. Opportunities I didn't take. I don't want to be judgemental on myself, because it's easy to look back and forget just how exhausting and bewildering it is, making sense of a new culture. I didn't have a lot of spare imagination and energy. As a mother, now, of increasingly independent teenagers (did someone say "floordrobe"?), I forget how much of one's day - and sometimes night - as a mother of small children is taken up with their well-being, and the sheer domesticity of life. And that's without having to learn a whole new barrage of brand names in the supermarket, school routines, local etiquettes. I had cancer too, which tends to be rather absorbing. I battled cancer, I should say. That's what people say, isn't it? So I offer you these regrets with something of a wry shrug. If I had my time again, I would try and find a way to do these things - but I didn't at the time, because I was doing other important things instead.

First, I didn't make the most of the opportunities afforded by my English accent. I really can't over-state how much an English accent gets noticed in America. It never got old, when people commented on mine. The comments were always well-meant, and warm in tone: "I just love your accent". It seems strange that the British accent is so highly admired, but it was lovely to be in possession of something so prized - for free! I'd never practised it, never had to pay for training, never learned it consciously, didn't have to worry about its upkeep. Effortlessly mine. Putting this unique selling point of mine to work seemed like a good idea.

I first thought of using my accent when a local video studio put the word out that they needed a native Brit. They were making a series of training videos for a global pharmaceutical company, and the European office had asked for a British actor. There weren't many Brits in the city where we lived, so it was a request along the lines of "anyone? please?", rather than something that might involve an audition. At the time, I didn't have any hair, and though I generally felt confident in my nice selection of caps, I didn't feel quite confident enough to be in front of a video camera. Yes, I could have got fixed up with a wig, but I never liked that idea. There was also the issue that, at the time, I didn't have a Green Card, so I couldn't work for payment. I toyed with the idea of offering my services on a voluntary basis, but what happened in the end, was that Husband did the job. So if you are in Germany, being trained to sell pharmaceuticals to doctors, watch out for Dr Husband in the training videos, asking his probing questions, and reacting to your answers in his oh-so-British accent.

The people at the studio were very friendly, and told Husband to tell me that they were often on the look-out for voice-over artists. If I wanted to, I could go in and do a trial for free. Somehow I never got round to it. I did do a few recording sessions for the local Radio for the Blind, and that remains the extent of my recording artist career.

Who knows? If I'd gone along to that recording studio, maybe now I would have a career as a voice-over artist. My silky tones would be wafting over your ears when you hear a commercial for fabric conditioner or tea bags. Maybe I could have gone on to full-blown radio acting. Perhaps I would now be on The Archers, a long-lost sister returned from afar to bring a new plot line into the action.

There was a nice outcome of having my accent widely admired, though, even if I didn't make more use of it. I'd never liked my voice (though, does anyone like their own voice?) I'd always thought it rather heavy and ploddy. It was a drip-drip healing balm to have complete strangers and close friends tell me regularly how cute or beautiful my voice was, how they could listen to me talk for hours. I'm not a radio artist, but I do like my voice more than I used to - and that's worth something.

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The Pursuit of Happiness - book review

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book to review, through BritMums. For other reviews of the book, see the BritMums Book Club discussion.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Part of that enjoyment was that the author wrote it when she moved with a young family from the UK to the US. Transplanted to a new culture, she was challenged to ask herself what it is that really makes you happy. I found so many echoes of myself, ten years ago. There is nothing like moving to a different society to make you ponder what exactly are the happy-making elements of daily life, since almost all of them change overnight.

Other reviewers found the author overly critical of other cultures and snarky, with a tendency to make sweeping statements. I remember when I started writing a blog from America, I got rather bored of always saying "... but this might not be typical of America generally, it's just my experience". Each post seemed to need a disclaimer. It would be very hard to write a whole book with disclaimers all the way, and I felt that Ruth Whippman included enough personal detail about herself and her children to make it clear that she was writing from her own situation. She didn't come across to me as smug. For example, she notes that she didn't like the stereotyping judgement that a Mormon man makes of single New York women in their thirties, and why they find it hard to find a marriage partner, but in noting her reaction, she acknowledges that other people's views (including hers) of Mormon women marrying young into lives of domesticity are equally stereotypical.

Whippman's criticism is of sub-cultures, institutions, systems, ways of life, rather than of the people within them. I always felt she was treating the individuals she wrote about with respect, and I didn't find her tone judgemental. It was clear to me that her investigation was always about the wider phenomena in which people live (a religion, a parenting fashion, a self-help conference circuit). I warmed to Whippman when she describes how she and her husband decide to have their son circumcised, as they are both (at least part) Jewish, without being able to articulate the reasons why. For her husband, it's "instinctive tribalism", and for her, well, she doesn't quite know, but senses that belonging to a community is an important thing for her son's future. I liked her for not being clear cut, and for understanding that other people's lives aren't clear cut either.

I enjoyed Ruth Whippman's writing. Her experience as a journalist is evident. Her style is clear, concise and elegant. I often found myself re-reading a sentence, simply to enjoy the way she had said something. She can also be very funny, in witty one-liners which had me reading paragraphs out loud to Husband, and telling him he had to read the book after I'd finished it.

What I enjoyed most of all about the book was that it set out to ask (and I don't think it set out to answer) a question that seems such an important one for our time. The clue is in the sub-title. The book is "The Pursuit of Happiness - and Why It's Making Us Anxious". For all the opportunities available to us now, for all the scientific knowledge, for all our improved health and education, it seems obvious to me that we are an anxious society. I found the book at its most interesting when Whippman was looking at the 'Positive Psychology' industry (for it is an industry). She describes how it is increasingly the case that the responsibility for happiness is laid at the door of the individual. The logical conclusion of this, is that if you're not happy, it's because you're not trying hard enough. I've begun to notice this insidious attitude, and I really don't feel comfortable with it. It smacks to me too much of the Victorian well-to-do who held the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor. Whippman gives a few concrete examples where this underlying philosophy has permeated public policy, which I found disturbing (unemployed people in the UK are now subject to "attitude profiling": those with a negative attitude or not displaying enough evidence of motivation are required to spend 35 hours a week at the job centre, whereas those with a more positive attitude may continue their work search on their own schedule at home). Whippman brings her journalist's thoroughness to her research. The lack of integrity she uncovers in the world of academic 'Positive Psychology' is dismaying, given the amount of faith we all place in it, and the way it feeds into public policy.

I thought the book had gaps. She considered whether religious faith makes us happy solely on the basis of the community it creates. Surely she should have looked into whether believing in a higher power is of itself a factor? What about the health and fitness industry? These days, we're bombarded with advice about exercising or eating our way to happiness. What about family life? What about friendships? Is there something peculiarly 21st century that we're doing with those now?

Whippman came across to me as clever, funny, kind, compassionate, and full of common sense. I wish she lived down the road, and then we could mull things over, proper British cups of tea in hand. I think we would agree on many things, and on those we disagreed over, I would still enjoy her sparky, intelligent style of discussion. Would I recommend the book? Absolutely. In fact, when Husband has finished reading it, if you would like my copy, I will pass it on to you. First come, first served.

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Ramblings

I have just lamented to a friend in an email that I'm not writing enough these days. So I thought I'd just sit down here, at an empty "new post" screen, and write about this moment.

I'm sitting at my desk, and the view from the window speaks of early spring. There's a colour associated with this time of year, which is on the spectrum where yellow and green meet. It's a damp morning, so the yellowy-green hues seem vibrant and zingy. It's a colour I enjoy in nature, because it's a colour of growth and newness, but I don't usually like it when it's reproduced in man-made items. Orla Kiely uses it well, mixed with orange and brown, but I saw some paper napkins in IKEA yesterday which were that same greeny-yellow, and they just looked very sickly. Nature gets away with so much in her colour palette that we can't copy.

I also see the recycling bin, stuffed to over-flowing, which triggers a little ping of frustration. Will my phone call to the Council have worked? Will someone come and empty it, thereby making space for the contents of the bags that are piling up in our garage?

I enjoy the view from the study window. It looks over our small front garden, and then a quiet driveway. Beyond that, there's a high wall, shielding us from a major road. The wall is just the right height that when a double decker bus drives past, it looks as if the upper deck of passengers are sliding along the top of the wall. It amuses me.

I can hear traffic, and birds. From inside the house, I hear Husband helping my oldest with his Economics revision, sitting at the kitchen table. As I write this, I feel a little uneasy, as it makes us sound like such great parents. Me, engaged in a spot of creative writing, Husband, wrestling through some Economics issues to support the education of our son. I have to add that this is not a typical moment. These days, school work is usually too advanced and too specialised for us to be able to help with, and in any case, I've never been a big homework-doer. They either do it themselves, or they ask the teachers for help, has been my usual approach. My involvement in homework, and Husband's, has been sporadic, to say the least. But this is the Easter holidays, and the next few weeks are 18-yo's last weeks at school, with exams that are weightier in significance than all the many others that have preceded them.

There's a sneeze from the sitting room, reminding me that hay fever season is on its way, and I hope that 15-yo won't be too badly affected this year. There's girlish chatter coming from upstairs, where 12-yo and a friend are talking and sharing (I can hardly use the verb "playing" any more, though I expect there is some of that going on too).

So that is where I am and what I'm surrounded by. What is in my head? Thoughts of a friend who had back surgery yesterday the other side of the Atlantic, and another just a few streets away who is hearing what her cancer treatment plan involves. Thoughts of my mother, dealing with health issues associated with ageing. Anticipation of heading away for the week-end on Friday, for a family birthday celebration, with an accompanying sense of how much easier that is these days, with everyone in the family doing their own packing. Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd have been writing a list, and shopping for journey-friendly snacks. It makes me smile to remember how for years the list began "Bottles, Beakers, Wellies". I miss that level of involvement in my children's travel bags, but I also don't miss it. Until the moment in the day when I've walked the dog, there is always in my head a sense that I must walk the dog, but otherwise, my mind is mellow and my time is soft.

And now I will stop writing.

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