Oscar Wilde highlighted a significant cultural difference on either side of the Atlantic when he wrote, in his 1887 short story The Canterville Ghost: “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
Since then, communication differences in everyday speech may have improved but still lead to misunderstandings in the relationship between the US and Irish English, a variety of vocabulary characterised by many influences. The semiquincentennial anniversary year of the US Declaration of Independence is an appropriate time to reflect on these imported linguistic ambiguities.
Aside from films and television, creeping Americanese has become more common here because of the increased transatlantic business connections involving tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. Americanisms that have stealthily been accepted into wide usage here include phrases such as “can I get a coffee?”, or “let’s take a rain check”. One pet hate – pet peeve if you are from the US – is an email starting with “Hi, I’m reaching out to you”, followed by “I’ll have him call you”.
Corporate jargon throws up hackneyed expressions from management consultants such as "is that deliverable?" or “should we have more blue-sky thinking?“. Eventually, it will be time for a ”deep dive" to analyse the figures, after which they will “touch base”, while they may give a “heads-up going forward" and decide to “circle back” before taking a “helicopter view”.
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Many parts of the conversational circuit are a constant cacophony of American influence, from “tell me about it”, to “it sucks”. Someone might say a task at work is “way above my pay grade”, while someone else might say “don’t even go there”. Workforce reductions have led to us contending with “right-size” references, while “scuttlebutt” is slang for water-cooler gossip in an organisation, although originally it was the water-cask on a ship.
An overused word is “appreciate”, often heard in a variety of circumstances and shortened to “‘preciate it” It can be a way of saying thank-you when tipping a taxi driver, or for when a stranger holds the door open for you.
The most infiltrated of all transatlantic adjectives, whose currency is seriously devalued, is “awesome”. Nowadays, this is applied to everything from a holiday, a new house or car, to a sporting achievement. Its meaning has dribbled down from the original “awe-inspiring”, relating to the word “awe”, and has been downgraded via the following: staggering, marvellous, impressive, wonderful, breathtaking or remarkable. To the chagrin of many, the word is sometimes prefaced with “toadly”, or “toe-dally awesome”.
Another phrase, in the form of a rating, that has made inroads into local parlance is “one-hundred per cent”. This is used to express agreement in entirety and complete approval, or sometimes the opposite, when it is “one-hundred per cent my fault".
More frequently used words include “elevator” for “lift”, “comfort station” for “toilet”, “desk clerk” for “receptionist”, “shoestring” for “shoelace”, “vest” for “waistcoat” and “garbage” for “bins”. American English, however, has also been innovative and many terms of standard English were created by Americans. These include “bookstore”, “lengthy”, “antagonise”, “belittle” and “calculate”.
On a flight to New York last year for a holiday (aka vacation) I heard an American ask a fellow traveller: “What time do we deplane?” He wanted to know what time we disembarked.
On that same trip and during a visit to Macy’s department store, a sharp-suited young man asked me: “How can I help you today, sir?” I was searching for a cash dispenser and asked where I might find an ATM in the building. He thought about it before replying with a splash of verbal finesse: “That is a concept I know nothing about, sir.”
In a diner – or, if you prefer, "eatery" – on the Upper West Side, I asked the server if it would be possible to substitute Brussels sprouts for another vegetable. She duly went off to ask the chef and word came back that it would not be possible since it would “seriously affect the flavour profile of the meal”.
Language discrepancies prevalent in books are often highlighted. Evelyn Waugh’s satirical novel, The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948) is about the funeral business in Los Angeles. Waugh dedicated the book to “Mrs Reginald Allen, who corrected my American, and to Mr Cyril Connolly who corrected my English”.
In 1828, the lexicographer and wordsmith Noah Webster published his two-volume American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was a revolutionary who had grown up against the backdrop of the American War of Independence (1775-1783) fighting in the Connecticut Militia against the British. He later became determined to create a separate American language from the one spoken across the Atlantic, which became a war of linguistic independence.
An amusing and possibly apocryphal story surrounds Webster, who was caught by his wife in flagrante delicto with his chambermaid: ‘Noah’, she exclaimed. “I’m surprised!” Unable to resist his compulsion for the correct use of vocabulary, Webster looked up from his compromising position and replied: “No, my dear, I am surprised. You are astonished.”
