Rutabaga

I must have first become aware of differences between the English of North America and that of England when I was about eleven and my cousins visited from Toronto.

My mum and her sister communicated regularly, at least once a week using aerogrammes, or airmail letters, honestly I can't remember what they were called, a blue form with the airmail pattern around the edges that you bought from the Post Office. If at least one didn't come each week, my mother would fret. And you know what ? Half the time they'd bitch at each other in those letters. It was just like sisters carrying on a real conversation but each interchange took a week.
'Vera says my letter didn't arrive for ten days,' my mother would say, 'she blames the Post Office, but it must be THEIR post office,' and so on and so forth.
At Christmas there would be a phone call and that phone call would cost a huge amount in comparison with today, plus the transatlantic lines would always be busy over the Christmas period, it wasn't so easy keeping in touch then, but they did it.

Then the visit. My cousin Richard - later to be abbreviated to Rick - brought with him his collection of Archie comics. It was the Archie comics more than anything else that interested us. Thinking back, you had to wonder why my Aunt allowed him to take up so much of the baggage allowance with these things, but then they did placate him. He wasn't impressed with British food and culture and especially not the food.

My aunt had clearly pre-warned him about the differences in language, every so often he'd back up and translate for us,
'Skip it, that means never mind.'
But on the whole I wasn't aware of too much. My cousins certainly had a different accent from me but they had grown up with British parents, so they could understand us completely.

Now, so many years later and living here, I am still learning.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to buy a swede. Yes, it happens, odd but true. I finally found one in Superstore and discovered that it is called a Rutabaga. I'd heard the word before, but didn't have anything to attach to it. Rutabaga, sounds more exotic than Swede somehow. There are a number of differences with food items. Coriander is called Cilantro, Courgettes - Zucchini, Aubergines - Eggplant. When will I slip into using the North American words I wonder.

I already talk about movies for films, but I can't see myself ever calling the cinema the movie theatre. I say garbage but still talk about the bin men. I pronounce Home Depot Home Deepoh, but then depot isn't a commonly used word in Britain.
The first time my hairdresser asked me how I wanted my bangs (fringe) I was stumped. I knew I knew this word, just couldn't bring it to the surface.

When I went to Montréal I had the same inner conversation about French, if I lived here would I ever start saying 'breuvage' instead of 'boisson', 'facture' instead of 'addition', would I start pronouncing 'on' sounds as 'ann'?

One thing that I have noticed is that Kevin uses a lot more anglicisms than I use canadianisms, I think it's subconscious, but in a way he translates for me. I don't notice it a lot of the time of course because it all sounds natural to me, but sometimes I test things out in my head. Would a Canadian say this? And I try to imagine Kevin saying it. This only becomes difficult when he is using words that we use differently in Britain. Chips for example, or school. School is a very confusing one because they, like us, use it to mean school, but they also use it to mean university, so when someone here tells you they know someone from school, they may mean from childhood or from not so long ago.

Then there are things that we just don't seem to have words for. I have yet to discover what we in Britain call lima beans. They seem smaller than broad beans, greener than haricots. Maybe British people just don't eat lima beans so we don't have a word for it.

Perhaps I'm at that stage of bi-lingualism where you understand the other language but don't yet 'own' it, thus don't yet use it. On t'other hand, perhaps I'm just too damn long in the tooth for change. Only time will tell.