Talking Like a Brit

We only lived in England for three years, with only the three oldest of us around, and Ryan was the only one who went to school and developed a distinct accent, but for as long as I can remember we kids have tended to burst out into all forms of British speech, usually when we were feeling particularly silly. I like to say I can pull off the accent because my linguistically formative years were spent on British soil, but we've all been pretty good at accents, born in Ipswich or otherwise. I think you've got to have a good ear to do it, to recognize a different sound and fit your mouth around it. We were always good at making goofy noises.

So the British accent has always been a part of my life. As a child in dress-up clothes, I'd adopt it as part of my regal bearing. I'd affect it as the voice of a crotchety old sea captain. And, for fun, one of my old roommates and I would pretend to be Londoners whenever we went grocery shopping. ("I used to live near Ipswich," I would say truthfully to the cashiers who asked.) And then there are so many different British accents--Cockney, Yorkshire, Northern, Scottish, Irish, etc--it was fun to try and sound them out. One of my fuzzy-round-the-edges dreams about coming to England was to sit in an English pub eating fish and chips, hearing all kinds of British accents sounding off around me, and to join in them and fit in perfectly. I was excited to see if I could fool a Brit into thinking I was British too.

My first reaction to being in a British-speaking country was euphoria. Every time I heard someone using the accent, I wanted to grab the nearest person, grinning like an idiot, and say, "Did you hear that? Can you believe people really talk like that?" I turned on the TV and laughed at commercials for stupid things narrated by perfect British voices. While Americans will save the British accent for high-end automobiles or fine wine or chocolates, here Lord Fustypants sells toilet paper! Lady Straightlace invites you to try this insurance comparison website! They actually say words like "jolly" and "chap"!

In my eagerness to ply the accent with natives, I came across a bit of a conundrum. The Camerons, old family friends, picked me up to stay with them for a few days, and they knew perfectly well that I was an American. Would it be impolite or come off as cockiness to speak to them in a way they didn't expect? I decided to stick with American for the Camerons. When I got settled in my flat, I decided to go with British. The couple who maintain the place (and the adjoining bed and breakfast), Mark and Kay, also know I'm American, but I decided to risk them thinking I'm screwy for the sake of perfecting the lingo. After all, I talk to them more than any other English people.

It's become a bit of an oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave. I can't revert fully to British because now I go to church, and the ward here is about half American (military, mostly), half English. Of course everyone asked me where I was from, and of course I didn't lie, so I go with American speech there too. In other day-to-day encounters with people in stores, shopkeepers, and local townsfolk, I usually stick to British, unless I feel like I might need more help (like at a train station in a four-leg trip to Bath). Then I go for American, with a little extra dose of wide, lost-looking eyes. Then if a conversation with a stranger lasts more than half a minute, sometimes I can't remember whether I started out in British or American, or I'll realize I need the American advantage, so I sort of switch in the middle. Fortunately, it's all English, one way or another. I wonder if anyone notices it as much as I do.

After I stopped feeling giddy every time I heard a real British accent, I began feeling embarrassed. I'd spent my whole life seeing the accent as a novelty when yes, duh, that's perfectly ordinary stuff to people here. I felt like it must be obvious to every Brit how much of a naive, gawking American I was. And then for some reason it became harder to distinguish the different accents, like being here blurred my sense for it, and I listened to myself trying to speak the local accent, sometimes coming against words I wasn't sure how to say, if people even used them here. Like "guy," for example; such a basic, oft-used word in the States, but it sounds horrible in British and I haven't found a good replacement for it yet. Was I ever really as good at this accent as I thought? I wondered what Mark and Kay thought of my attempts to talk British with them.

Through it there were signs of hope. A few weeks ago I went to a YSA gathering for the rebroadcast of a CES fireside with Elder Holland. It was really nice to meet young singles my age, and I spent some time talking to a particularly interesting fellow named Jonathan. His accent was different from the others; a very laid-back British, drawled out slowly because otherwise the words would slur together. It was a perfect match for his dry sense of humor. Anyway, we talked about accents and he told me that he thought I'd been from Britain from the start of the activity, when I was introducing myself in my regular American accent. "And when you said you were from Albuquerque, I tried to think where Albuquerque was in the UK," he said. So I guess some of my English intonation is carrying over into my American. I talked to him in American and he wasn't quite convinced I was from there. ("Do you hear these rs?" I said, exaggerating them for him.) I pulled out my regular British accent for his inspection, and he laughed and said it was perfect Cambridge.

"I can do some other ones alright, like Scottish or Cockney," I said.

"Do Cockney!"

I took a minute to summon the vowels, then just said a few things, "Oy'm a good girl oy am. 'Ellaw, 'ow are you doing tiday?" It was hard, but for the first time I separated this accent out. It became Cockney, by itself, instead of the mash it used to make with other variations sometimes when I'd practice it in the States. He laughed with amazement, and I felt quite proud of myself.

Most of the time I'm ignored, English or American, but there have been a few times I've talked to people in both and found out I'd fooled them. On the tube through London, coming back from Bath, I talked to a sightly drunk Australian chap who squeezed in next to me in the full car. I started chatting in a British accent, but when he asked me where I was from, I told him I was an American and switched. "Hey, that's pretty good, I couldn't tell," he said.

When I was in Cambridge the other day, a handsome young man selling punting tour tickets came up to me and made a sale. He walked me down to the ticket office to pay for it, and we chatted a bit, me in my best Cambridge accent. "I'm actually an American, did you know that?" I said.

"Really? No, I couldn't tell. Where are you from in the States?"

I should have used my American accent on the actual boat, because the man punting it was really beautiful and maybe I'd have gotten more attention from him. But I still haven't discovered whether the American accent holds any of the fascination to Britons that the British one has to Americans, so maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Are Britons fascinated with anything? They are so staid compared to Americans that it's hard for me to make them out sometimes.

Aside from the accent itself, there's the intonation, the vocabulary, and some different phrases and syntax used here. I think I'm picking it up some. I used the phrase "eat it," as in eating an expense, with Mark and Kay the other day and they were baffled, so I'm learning which idioms I use are American. Then sometimes I'm baffled. Why "Strictly Come Dancing" instead of "Dancing With the Stars," or "every little helps," with no "bit"? Overall, though, I am pretty much used to the accent. I still notice it more than probably the everyday Brit does, but I've passed for one so many times that it's not a big deal. Sometimes I don't want to bother with it and just speak American. Sitting on the plane to England, grinning every time a British voice came over the intercom, I never thought I'd feel that way!