How To Speak English
Joseph Dobrian’s Column
How To Speak English
Oscar Wilde was right: The English and Americans are divided by a common language. While English and American are about 99% mutually intelligible, it’s not easy for an Englishman to speak American convincingly, much less vice versa.
But oh, how dearly most Americans would love to be able to speak English like the English-well enough to “pass” if we wanted to! It can be done, with long effort, and indeed being able to speak English might improve one’s drab, wretched life. For one thing, it’s guaranteed to get you on first base in the dating department.
To overcome the principal difference between American and English, just speak in your normal American accent, but pitch your voice an octave higher. You’ll immediately sound more like John Cleese.
Next, learn the standard Middlesex accent. By this I do NOT mean the “received pronunciation” used by the Queen or by BBC broadcasters; instead, I mean the accent known as “Estuary,” which has become the standard accent in southern England for anyone born post-World War II. The Duchess of York is perhaps the best-known speaker of Estuary, which is basically received pronunciation with slight Cockney overtones: You have to learn to make the glottal stop on words like “glottal” (pronouncing it, more or less, as “GLOCK-ul”), completely relax your lips when prounouncing any vowel, and swallow your “L”s, so that “pint of milk” becomes “pawnk a miwk.” If you speak Estuary, Americans will assume that you’re fun to party with-because you sound like Fergie, and we all know what SHE’s like!
Having mastered Estuary, learn to speak “Fraffly,” which is the standard accent of the upper-upper classes, those just below royalty. The late Princess Diana spoke Fraffly. (Fraffly comes from the phrase, “Weah seu fraffly gled yorkered calm,” which is the Fraffly for “We’re so frightfully glad you could come.”) If you speak Fraffly, you are guaranteed a job as a receptionist in any fancy office in the American city of your choice.
But the accents are only half the battle. You still won’t “pass” unless you pick up on the various differences in grammar, vocabulary, and class-based usage. Here are a few of them:
More so than American, English distinguishes between “U” and “Non-U” (upper-class and non-upper-class) vocabulary. Oddly, the most outstanding characteristic of this distinction is that the upper socio-economic groups tend to use more direct terms, while the lower tend to use euphemistic, circumlocutory or foreign (invariably mispronounced) terms. For example, the U would say “cake,” “napkin,” and “toilet,” while the non-U would say “gâteau,” “serviette” and “lavatory.”
ALWAYS mispronounce foreign words. The English consider it a grotesque effeminacy to pronounce any foreign word correctly. (Thus you’d pronounce “gâteau” as “GACK-eau,” “pasta” as “pastor,” and so on.
“Lemonade” in the U.K. means 7-Up or Sprite or any similar citrus-flavored soft drink, and lemonade is what you should call those beverages. The stuff we make out of fresh lemons is not commonly known over there.
Resist the urge to correct the London Times when it says “The Royal Family are at Sandringham,” or “Parliament have decided…” English uses plural verb forms with collective nouns, and there are nothing we can do about it.
NEVER use the American “Mm-hm” noise, the one that means, “Yes, okay, I see.” The English don’t use it, because it sounds a lot like their “Mm?” which means, “Please repeat.” The English are more likely to say “Ah-hah” when they mean, “message received and understood.”
Quite a few terms have almost exactly opposite meanings in the U.S. and England A “bomb” is a disaster here, but a smashing success there. “Nervy” means unflappable here, high-strung there. To “table” a motion or bill in legislative debate is to kill it in America; in England it means to bring it up for discussion. “Knickers” are what Bobby Jones wore on the golf course in the States; the Limeys use the term to describe ladies’ panties, invariably with a leer and a giggle. (And if you remark to an Englishman that you’ve torn your pants, he’s likely to inquire how you could have torn your pants without tearing your trousers.)
The word “fag” has two principal meanings in the U.K. Most commonly, it’s slang for “cigarette,” but “fagging” also describes the custom, once common to most English public schools, by which younger boys acted as servants for the older boys in exchange for tutoring and physical protection. Author and TV personality Alistair Cooke told the story of the American who asked an English acquaintance, “Do you know Lord So-and-so, by any chance?” The Englishman replied, “Yes, of course, known him all my life. He was my fag at school.” “Well!” the American replied, “I’ll say this: you English certainly are frank!”
You’ll probably want to learn “rhyming slang.” This is a form of Cockney slang that has to some extent spread throughout England, Scotland and Wales. (And to the U.S., for that matter. The slang term for money-”bread”-comes from rhyming slang: “Bread and honey” rhymes with “money.”) An illustrative, if highly unlikely, example of rhyming slang might be a Cockney doctor examining a patient who’s complaining of a headache: “Feeling ginger, China? Well, I’ll have a butcher’s at your loaf, then you can scarper home to your trouble.” Translations of the key terms: ginger beer=queer; China plate=mate; butcher’s hook=look; loaf of bread=head; Scapa Flow=go; trouble and strife=wife.
If you can master a broad Cockney accent, by all means do so. If you then adopt the right hair and clothes, you can get with a band that gets on MTV-and that, my friend, means sexual intercourse with anyone you want to have it with. Just don’t let it get too broad, or nobody will understand a word you’re saying-whether they’re English or American.
—Joseph Dobrian
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