Speaking properly (or some nonsense like that)

Once people get to know you here the first thing they give you a hard time about is how you can’t speak properly. Don’t try to tell them how there isn’t a second ‘i’ in aluminum or that color doesn’t require a ‘u’. It won’t matter. The British will never believe that you’re speaking properly unless you pronounce every vowel in Hereford, or when you flatten every ‘a’.

Not that I mind the English accent. On the contrary I find it very interesting. When you’re here you can pick up more on the regional accents too. Picking out Welsh or Scottish from British is easy. The regional English accents are a little more difficult to distinguish. I haven’t quite figured out where they each come from, but I’m starting to hear them.

The scariest thing is that I’m picking up the manner of speech already. I haven’t been around long enough to get the accent, but it’s probably going to happen. Just the other day the American chick (don't yell at me, that's what she wanted to be called) in our office ended her phone conversation with a British accent. She’s only been here a year. Luckily, my spouse is American whereas hers is British. She gets the accent all the time where I hear the American accent every night.

I won’t even go into cursing, but I will say that there’s no English speaking accent that I’ve heard that can curse with more invective than the British. To my ear the accent gives cursing a measure of proper speech even while being as foul as an NFL coach’s halftime tirade after when his team is down three touchdowns.

But the absolute most entertaining thing about the British accent is hearing them try to speak with a Texas or Western accent. Flat a’s really make saying y’all difficult. It ends up sounding more like fowl than fall. Comedy of the highest form and they don’t understand why I find it funny. Maybe I’ll teach them how to conjugate y’all (yes, it can be done, ask any Texan).

As I end this post I’ll leave you with my favorite British saying: cheers.

Frog