It’s entertaining, it’s charming, it’s informative, but…ultimately it’s disappointing. Every chapter shows great promise…and then it suddenly ends before that promise could be fulfilled.
That’s Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us, by Erin Moore, is a book for the modern age of short attention spans. Does everyone have ADD these days? Packing 31 chapters into a mere 215 pages, Moore uses linguistic differences to explain cultural differences between Britain and the U.S. That’s a fine idea. You’ll learn 31 words and phrases, each of which appears to mean the same thing on both sides of the pond but actually turns out to have quite different meanings (in the American sense of “quite”); these words illustrate various aspects of British and American cultures. So far, so good — a great topic, and I learned something from each chapter. But then, as I said above, the chapter always ended before I had learned enough. Moore whets the appetite but never reaches the main course. Maybe that’s all she intended.
I don’t mean to sound negative. There are, of course, plenty of other books about this general subject, and Moore’s effort is a worthy addition to the collection. Look through the 31 words/phrases listed below and see how many of them you can confidently analyze by explaining the cultural differences between American and British usage. If you can already do that for 25 of them, don’t read the book. If you can’t, and if you don’t require depth, then read the book…but follow it up with further research.
- quite
- middle class
- moreish
- mufti
- gobsmacked
- trainers
- sorry
- toilet
- cheers
- knackered
- brolly
- bespoke
- fortnight
- clever
- ginger
- dude
- partner
- proper
- OK
- whinge
- bloody
- scrappy
- pull
- shall
- sir
- yankee
- skint
- crimbo
- tip
- tea
- way out
Categories: Books, Linguistics
