English Speakers – Can They Understand One Another?

“Where’s the loo?” she whispered.

The “loo”? Images, words, … came rushing to my mind: Lou, was there a Louis or Louise around?
Not that I knew of….
Maybe the comic strip character my mother so loved, Little Lulu? Was she looking for a comic book?
Nope, couldn’t be that…
Kate had asked for “THE loo” …

I was at a loss…. I didn’t know what my fellow native-English speaker was asking me for …. And moreover, she was whispering; so it might be something, well, delicate.

It was the late 80s and we were both studying and working in northern Pakistan up (6,000 ft up) in the foothills of the Himalayas at an Urdu language school. I was the adminstrator and Kate was my assistant. Nevertheless, our primiary objective was to learn Urdu, the national language of Pakistan.   

However, from day one, we found we had a bigger challenge…. We had to understand each other!

Both young, full of energy and enthusiasm for the country we were in; we found our English language dividing us.

Formal English writing was not a problem, but with conversational English – we felt that we were coming from different planets. Kate was from Britian and I from the States and we were witnessing what Bernard Shaw had so elequently expressed when he said that “America and Britian are two nations divided by a common language.”

Years later, I discovered a fantastic book which helped me to understand in a better way this “Great Philosophical and Cultural Divide which is obscured by a familiar lingo” as Jane Walmsley described it in her hilarious book, Brit-Think, Ameri-Think: A Transatlantic Survival Guide, Revised Edition (Harrap, 1986)

Walmsley, an American journalist married to an Englishman and living in England, went on to point out that Americans and Brits have different cultures, different values and different ways of thinking.

“We cherish widely different values and aspirations, and have developed separate habits of mind. Only the names remain the same… and there’s some doubt about those….”

I laughed till I cried as I read her description of Americans – it was so true! But could the British really be like that? To find out I loaned and bought another copy of the book and gave it to various British friends, asking them to honestly evaluate Walmsley’s description of Her Majesty’s subjects.

Their response: yes, yes, it was accurate… but were Americans really like that?

Two peoples divided by a language that unites us!

Living in Europe has given me the opportunity not only to develop my British vocabulary and grammar, but to increase my familiarity with the Irish, Scottish, south Asian and Maltese English varieties, and to get greater exposure to the  South African, Nigerian and Australian ones as well. However, the two main varieties on the Continent remain the British and American. Therefore, I jokingly tell my clients/students that they are learning 2 languages for the price of one.

But all joking and teasing aside, our English language differences which are largely culturally and historically based do impact our communication.

And this is the challenge we face in teaching English, particularly English as a foreign language. All language is culturally based, so as we help English language learners master the grammatical and lexical aspects we need to always bear in mind to help them with the cultural functional aspects so that when they use their newly acquired linguistic skills they will be using them appropiately in the correct context.

Sometimes it can be just a small thing, such as when we need to remind Italians, especially young Italians, that although they can sign off an email or sms in Italian with “baci” – “kisses” aren’t normally expected in some circumstances in English.

What experiences have you had in the English linguistic divide?
 Have you found one variety of English particularly challenging? 
Have you faced misunderstanding when trying to speak English with another English speaker who speaks a different variety of English?
Or perhaps you have had experiences with other languages?

Please feel free to share your experience in the comment box below. I look forward to hearing from you….

Oh…,  the loo – I’ll let you look that up in a good British dictionary!

Eileen