It’s often said that the first day on a job is the most memorable. That has certainly held true for my past two jobs. My first day on the news desk of the local newspaper took place on a day when there were three major fires and a gas explosion in town. The person who was in charge of training me had both her hands in casts due to carpal tunnel syndrome and I ended up being her arms while she taught me how to use the computer system, what the page processing system was, and how to move pages off the floor with lots of late-breaking stories and tight deadlines.In my current job, my first day was less exciting, but no less memorable. I was handed nine workbooks that were in the silvers (a final printing stage where the printer sends you print-outs of the negatives) and told to proof them. Nothing too exciting, except that the books were all in Mandarin Chinese. I did end up finding some mistakes, but no, I don’t know the first thing about Mandarin Chinese, nor have I ever learned any Oriental languages.My second task on this job continued to task my language abilities. I was assigned a seminar to write on housekeeping for housekeepers in the Asian-Pacific region. It would be written in English—British English. Yet another language I was familiar with only in how it coincided with my own. So we went searching for a reference book that would help us “translate” as we wrote. The book we ended up getting was British English: A to Zed by Norman W. Schur. It describes itself as a “rigorously researched, wickedly witty, and eminently useful collection of nearly 5,000 Briticisms (and Americanisms).In the spirit of being “wickedly witty,” it opens with several quotes about the American and British forms of English, some funny, some merely supportive of the need for such a dictionary. A sampling:“When the American people get through wit the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.”--Mr. Dooley (Finley Peter Dunne)“The English and the American languages and literature are both good things; but they are better apart than mixed.”--H.W. and F.G. Fowler in The King’s English Oxford, 1906.“Giving the English language to the Americans is like giving sex to small children; they know it’s important but they don’t know what to do with it.”--Morton Cooper as reported in The Times (London), Nov. 1, 1974“If it weren’t for the language, you couldn’t tell us apart.”--Bob Hope, to the British in a television program“…the English talk funny.”--William Safire, in On Language, New York Times, October 2, 1983.Most of the book is in dictionary format, offering the British word on the left, the American word on the right, and a definition of the two below. For example:nappy n. diaperA diminutive of napkin, and the everyday word for diaper, which is seldom heard in Britain.The book also contains two rather useful appendices. The first covers the general differences between British and American English. This appendix covers syntax, pronunciation, spoken usage and figures of speech, and punctuation and style. Certainly the figures of speech are what make up the majority of the dictionary entries, but the other areas are equally interesting. When it comes to syntax, one of the main differences is in the use of prepositions. “Britons live in rather than on such and such a street.”Other syntax differences include definite articles (Brits leave them out more frequently than Americans), compound nouns (Americans go for shorter words for the first half of a compound noun, Brits lengthen them), noun-verb agreement when dealing with collectives, and the use of who and other pronouns.There is also a section devoted to spelling differences. The most common ones are the British using -our for word endings where Americans use -or. Also the British use -reand -ise where Americans use -er and -ize.The second appendix is one of glossaries and tables. It includes:* Currency* Financial terms* Units of measure* Numbers* Automotive terms* Musical notation* Slang* Food names* Botanical and zoological names* Britain, Briton, British, English, etc.* Cricket terms* Connotative place-names* Connotative names of periodicalsI must confess. While we found this reference book interesting and entertaining, our deadline was too pressing to allow us to read and memorize the entire book in order to effectively write the seminar according to contract. We used it to check on some phrases, and then hired an exchange student from England to read our seminars and “translate” them into the appropriate language for us.Nonetheless, if you are a fan of linguistics and enjoy learning of the differences between American English and its mother tongue, I encourage you to take a look at this book. It may even make your next viewing of those delightful British sit-coms a bit more whimsical.
