Our 16th prompt comes from AK. They say:
The annoying disparity between British English and American English. 😀
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AK,
Don’t even get me started on this! I already consider myself a victim of autocorrect when it comes to Kiswahili/Sheng/curse words – I type them and it changes them to what it thinks I should be saying. However, the most egregious fault of autocorrect is when I type colour and it changes it to color; flavour to flavor, favourite to favorite, centre to center, odour to odor, programme to program, behaviour to behavior…I could go on for ages. Like, damn it, I typed what I typed, what is your problem? Right now, as I type this on MS Word, there are red squiggly lines under all the British English words. Ugh.
Then, there are the differences in names for the same thing – we (the colonized) say biscuits like our colonial masters, they say cookies. We say crisps, they say potato chips. We say chips, they say French fries. We say courgette, they say zucchini. We say boot, they say trunk. We say tyre, they say tire. We say holiday, they say vacation. We say lorry, they say truck. We say lift, they say elevator. We say sweets, they say candy. We say mobile phone, they say cell phone. We say flats, they say apartments. In fact, we even started saying apartments.
Even more annoying are the different measurement systems. We use the metric system, which is pretty straightforward – we have metres, litres and grams, and we add prefixes like kilo, centi and milli to show the magnitude. They, on the other hand, use the imperial system, which is just ridiculous and confusing. They have pounds, stone, ounces, inches, yards, miles, feet, and so on. But, whose feet? We measure temperature in Centigrade, they favour Farenheit. Why?!!
Let’s tackle the measurement issue first. I think it just makes sense for the Americans to go metric. It simplifies communication and facilitates information sharing. No more having to walk around converting things on Google or whatever app we want to use. Which means we all save time. So, why didn’t US Americans do this when the rest of the world moved from imperial units (called so because they came from the British Empire, which as you know colonized many of us)? Well, they had already based their infrastructure and machinery on the imperial system. They had already put money on the imperial system, and were not willing to lose it. The people who founded the USA rebelled, gained independence from Britain and decided to keep it, even though the metric system was taking over the world. I strongly believe that this choice contributes to the feeling that US Americans have that they are exceptional (barf).
What about the language? Well, there’s the fact that these guys wanted to assert their independence (cultural and otherwise) from Britain, and what better way to do it than language? Blame Noah Webster, of Merriam-Webster fame, for this. He wrote their first dictionary, a bunch of reading schoolbooks and basically defined US American grammar. If you’re thinking this is way too much power for one person, I agree with you. What did the letter “u” ever do to this guy?
There’s also the fact that in the new land that they colonized (and never left), they found different terrain, and integrated other languages, such as Native American languages, German, French, Dutch and so on. Language, so as to be useful, has to adapt to our circumstances, our surroundings and the people around us. Its purpose is to help us communicate, after all. Then, some words became outdated and unfashionable in Britain, but US Americans didn’t know this. So they continued to use them. Think of your favourite cousin that lives in Boston who visits and thinks we still say Wallapa.
Me? I just want my phone to stop it with the autocorrect terrorism; for MS Word to finally accept when I change language settings to British English. For all of us colonized people to own our bastardized versions of the colonizer’s language with pride. Kenyans, it’s okay for you to say “Me I…” Take this language that was imposed on you, and make it your own! Ama namna gani?
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This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?