Divided By A Common Language

When I type ‘colour’, ‘favour’, ‘programme’ or ‘practise’, my computer underlines these words in red, indicating that the spellings used by me are wrong. When I type ‘recognise’ ‘apologise’, or ‘offence’, sometimes the computer on its own, corrects these to ‘recognize’, ‘apologize’ and ‘offense’. As most of us know, in American English, these words are spelt as ‘color’, ‘favor’, ‘program’, ‘practice’. And my computer says that the word 'spelt' is to be spelt as 'spelled'!

It was George Bernard Shaw who had said that England and America are two countries divided by a common language. The basic difference between Ameringlish and Queen’s English (or King’s English, depending on whether the reigning Sovereign in Britain is a female or male) is that the American spellings are more practical and are more in tune with how a word is pronounced. This makes spellings easier to remember and saves time and space in e-mails, newspaper columns and other modes of communications, even if it irks purists. The American English guillotines extra letters in words like ‘programme’ and ‘travelling’ and prefers ‘program’ and ‘traveling’.

The differences are not confined to spellings. There are many other words and figures of speech in Ameringlish which appear bizarre to a person familiar with Queen’s English. Autumn is ‘fall’; lorry is ‘truck’ and trousers is ‘pants’ ( a shortened form of ‘pantaloons’). Football is ‘soccer’; chemist (medicine-shop’) is ‘druggist’; petrol is ‘gas’; taxi is ‘cab’; road crossing is ‘crossroads’ and tick is ‘check’.

Here are some other American equivalents of English words:

Biscuit-cookies, insect-bug, cheque-check, currency note-bill, car-automobile, bonnet-hood, pavement-side walk, railway-rail road, fly over-over pass, ground floor- first floor, fries-chips, potato chips- potato crisps, soft drink-fizzy drink, lift-elevator, flat-apartment, class (school year)-grade, aeroplane-airplane, bill-check,blue-eyed boy-fair-eyed boy, dust bin-garbage can/trash can, funny bone-crazy bone.

The word 'first floor' referring to ground floor would be more soothing to us Indians. The term 'level I' is more neutral and appears to be better.

Americans ‘speak with’ rather than ‘speak to’. To the question 'How are you?', Americans reply, ‘I am good.’ and not ‘I am fine.’ Often Americans dislike propositions and say, “Let’s meet Monday” and turn nouns into verb (impact-impacts).

Recently, business, travel, Internet and television have brought the old and the ‘new’ world closer and have blurred language-differences. The American style has triumphed over the traditional English spellings and figures of speech. One of the apparent reasons is that the U S of A has become the sole super power in world politics and economy. In the process, English is becoming ‘Globish’.

TAIL PIECE

When television came to India, it was a government enterprise. In tune with the Sanskritised –and very apt- name ‘Akashvani ( literally 'Voice From the Sky' and officially, 'All India Radio') it was named ‘Door Darshan’ (literally meaning ‘view from a distance’). This reminds one of the word ‘doorbhash’ (talk from a distance), the Hindi word for ‘telephone’. There was no problem as long it was the only channel. When Indian air waves opened up and several privately-owned channels appeared, the generic Hindi term ‘door darshan” became a Proper Noun and the word ‘television’ became an adopted Common Noun in Indian languages!. Practically, there is no longer a Hindi equivalent of the English word ‘television’! 2: Francophones asked, "Why do Americans speak English?" The British would like to omit the first word and modify the question to: Do Americans speak English?