Memoirs of a Lit. Girl IV

Earlier parts may be found here:

Introduction

Part I

Part II

Part III

I MEET THE COUSINS



After I had been on-line a while I began to realise that one of the great delights of chat was being able to meet people from all over the globe. However back in my early on-line days, one of the first things I had to do was to reconcile myself our Colonial cousins.

Prior to joining Lit I can’t say I knew a lot about Americans. I’d never visited America but I knew they drank too much coffee, tended to be loud and had a habit of throwing perfectly good English tea over the side of ships but beyond that very little. At university there had been a few on scholarships following in Bill Clinton’s footsteps (well OK not all his footsteps), but they either seemed to be hairy rowing types or serious bluestockings who kept themselves to themselves.

It’s probably true to say that without Americans I would have never persevered with Chat. After my first visit to Lit I had intended never to return, but boredom is a great motivator and about a fortnight after my first visit I decided to give Lit one more go; this time however, instead of going into Lit in the morning I chose mid afternoon GMT.

Of course this time more Americans were waking up and beginning to drift in and compared to my first visit they transformed the place. Compared with the GMT morning crew of ‘wanna fucks’ and knuckle draggers they injected not necessarily more sophistication but at least raw nascent fun into the place – something that surprised me as I’ve always held the view that Americans take themselves far too seriously.

I soon realised that America had an affect on Lit rather like lunar gravitation does on the tides. Courtesy of their multiple time zones they managed a 24/7 presence, although they seemed to be at their lowest ebb around 9am to around 2pm when Lit was the domain of the English, Aussies and New Zealanders along with a smattering of people from Asia. I very quickly learned that without the Americans the place was dead and I soon mentally bracketed mornings as ‘Tard Time’ when Lit was at it’s most ugly and primitive.

Adjusting to American humour was easy, but reconciling myself to them as people proved more difficult. Partly because as many before me have noted, the English and Americans are two nations divided by a common language.

Meeting a French person in Lit, the mere act of conversing in bad French or broken English instantly reminds one of the distinct cultural differences. The pitfall with the Americans was the erroneous assumption that as they spoke English then they must be like the English. In reality of course they are quite different. Not as different as the French I grant you. Shakespeare, The King James Bible, a shared Anglo-Saxon view of democracy and of course the language does tend to mean we have similar values, but it was the differences that were often elusive and difficult to deal with.

I think I summed it up at the time with the view that as a Yorkshire woman while I was more inclined to think Brad Pitt was an open cast coalmine near Barnsley, most Americans thought that Jane Eyre was a low cost airline.

When I came to Lit I had a neutral view about Americans. Now while many Americans will see that as an anodyne comment it is important sometimes to comprehend the world-wide view of America. Either way my point is Lit became my first detailed immersion into American culture and language.

I guess the initial stumbling blocks were what I might call New World directness, which is easily misinterpreted by the socially polite and stuffy English as being rude. In most cases of course it was nothing of the sort. Clearly the language was easier to deal with than learning French or German. But the differences could still be problematic. Telling an American you fancy a quick fag is a classic example of the problems that can occur. Even when word usage is similar the subtle differences can still create misunderstanding. Tell an American you think someone is ‘mad’ and they instinctively tend to think the person is angry whereas as you really meant crazy.

Then of course there’s spelling. Blame that on Noah Webster who had this bright idea he would improve English spelling by Americanizing Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary, turning ‘defence’ and ‘honour’ into ‘defense’ and ‘honor.’ Improving the spelling would have been a laudable aim if the truth hadn’t been rather different.

In truth there was an enormous antipathy between Webster and Johnson. Johnson disliked the rebel colonists for their hatred of authority, their unseemly scramble for money, and especially their dependence on slaves. ‘I am willing to love all mankind, except an American,’ he wrote. ‘They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging. Not surprisingly, many colonists saw in Johnson everything they disliked about the mother country even though they continued to read and admire his work. Doubly ironic then that Johnson’s dictionary is still used in America today in the federal courts, when American lawyers and legal scholars need to unpack the meanings of America’s founders' most important documents.

Not surprisingly America's first native-born lexicographer, Noah Webster, had Johnson in his sights when he wrote his overtly patriotic American Dictionary in 1828, insisting that the need for ‘a dictionary suited to the people of the United States is obvious.’ In some matters, like the American tendency to use the suffix ''-ize'' rather than the British ''-ise,'' Webster has prevailed. But in the view of the New York Times his terse work is little more than a utilitarian spelling guide compared to Johnson’s.

This streamlining of spelling was all very well and good, but not when it led to confusion. Early on in my Lit career somebody confided they wanted to ‘fist my ass’. I was shocked that anyone would want to punch a poor innocent animal and when I pointed out to my admirer that I’d never owned a beast of burden the confusion simply continued. It struck me that any nation that confuses it’s posterior with the simple creature our Lord rode on Palm Sunday was bound to have difficulties. The English of course avoid this difficulty by deploying the far more elegant word ‘arse’




Thus my first couple of years in Lit were spent coming to terms with Americanisms. I learnt they kept their ‘toys’ in ‘nightstands’ and that they go to the ‘bathroom’ or even a ‘restroom’ when they really mean they want to go to the toilet. Their cars have hoods and trunks, instead of bonnets and boots. Then of course is the over-reliance on the ‘F’ word which can be used as a verb, adverb, adjective, command, interjection, noun, and used virtually anywhere in a sentence as in ‘Fuck! The mother-fucker said. Fuck the fucking mother-fuckers’.

Not withstanding these sundry and sometimes manifold irritations I came to admire two things about Americans. Firstly their pride in being American and the belief that their nationality needed to be earned. Secondly, their admiration of talent and success. A good example of this was given by the English actor Michael Caine, who in a recent radio interview said something quite revealing with regard to the Americans and the English to the affect that: 'when I drive my Rolls Royce around Hollywood the average American will stop and smile and say one day I will own one of those! Yet when I drive around London people say: look at that stuck-up bastard lets drag him out and burn his car!’

Perhaps because of this, the vast majority of my friends on-line have tended to be American. I’ve always enjoyed the company of ‘big’ people. Sadly, with only a couple of notable exceptions most of my countrywomen I’ve met in Chat have tended to be ‘small’ angry, resentful people. I’m sure in part this is because a far greater cross-section of American society can be found on-line compared to the English. Who knows?

None of this however has ever precluded me from winding Americans up at every conceivable opportunity. (to be continued.)