At least Two Nations

We had only lived in the U.S. for a couple of weeks when, during a family visit to a furniture shop, I found myself in need of a dustbin. Having been entrusted with the care of my two youngest siblings I yanked the two of them by the hand over to the counter where I proceeded to ask the lady where I might find such a receptacle. Well I would have done, if when I caught her attention and she turned to look at me expectantly I hadn’t suddenly found that I couldn’t for the life of me think of the American word for dustbin. (It’s garbage can if you’re curious.) We had moved to Connecticut from Paris, so I was used to finding myself in public places without the required vocabulary handy, but somehow searching for a word that was English but wasn’t, utterly stumped me. In panic I ended up blurting “trash! ... litter! … rubbish! … dirt?” and eventually “things people don’t want any more!” before, flustered and burning with the shame and self loathing that can only be felt by a mortified pre pubescent, I turned on my heel and ran, dragging two toddler brothers behind me. The poor woman must have thought that I suffered from some bizarre and G rated British form of Touretts'.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago, when there was a lively discussion on Rockband regarding some “sparkly pants” that Jon Farriss had worn during a recent INXS concert. “Flipping heck, how did they all get to see his pants?” I thought, cursing the fact that he’d worn trousers throughout the show I’d seen. Of course, given that he was sat behind a drum kit for the whole thing I realized that I couldn’t, in all fairness, swear to the presence of trousers but I was fairly sure that I'd have noticed visible pants. Given that it’s taken me this long to recover from the infamous Y fronts from the Taste It video, I was a bit apprehensive of finally stumbling across these mythical trousers-less shots. And slightly concerned – isn’t that the sort of thing one gets arrested for in America? And sparkly pants – wouldn’t they, err, chafe? I was in such a panic that I very nearly shouted “things people don’t want any more” and ran away, before I realized that these were Americans discussing his pants – he wore sparkly trousers. Not even my ensuing concern for his fashion sense detracted from the relief.

My confusion was not unlike that experienced by a good friend of mine when she signed up for a temp agency upon moving to Vancouver and was told to wear “smart pants” to her booking – she wondered what sort of job she was being sent to where the state of her knickers was relevant. Or the reaction of another friend to bars in Australia who seemed to positively encourage VPL by mounting signs on their doors saying “no thongs.” (Thongs being the Australian word for flip flops.)

There can be quite serious consequences to not speaking the appropriate version of the English language. On my very first trip to the States, at four years old, I developed an irrational terror of my uncle. He’s over 6 foot with red hair, a long red beard and unintelligible Boston accent, and I was entirely convinced that he would feed me to their equally ginormous and red haired dog given half a chance. So it was to my utter horror that I awoke late one morning to find my mum and my aunt had popped to the shops and I was alone in the house with the Scary Uncle and suspiciously hungry looking dog. When I slunk into the kitchen trying to be invisible, he asked if I was hungry. Too afraid to do anything but nod mutely, I was astonished when he then offered me a jelly sandwich. Jelly? As in jelly and ice cream? (or Jell-o to Americans) I was being offered jelly before I’d even had lunch? And what sort of sandwich could there be that had jelly in it? In joy I leapt to the table, thinking that maybe this country and my Scary Uncle weren’t so bad after all, only for my horror to return with a vengeance when he placed a jam sandwich in front of me. I hated jam. Loathed it. No idea why, but I felt it very strongly.
“What’s the matter? You said you like jelly, don’t you?” Demanded my scary uncle.
I whimpered mutely to myself: “then why did you give me jaa-aamm?” but could only nod again. As soon as his back was turned, I realized that I could both keep him happy, and the dog from eyeing me up, by feeding the detested jam sandwiches to the dog. Who gobbled them up then proceeded to throw up everywhere. Apparently he felt the same way I did about jam, but the following day when my cousin took me into school for show-and-tell she introduced me by saying “this is my cousin Claire. She’s from Scotland and she made my dog puke.” And 20 Bostonian kindergarteners radiated waves of hate in my direction as only dog loving kindergarteners can.

So I think that George Bernard Shaw had something when he observed that we are “one nation divided by a common language” although I must say that it is with some pride that I inform people that ‘A’ level French isn’t my only foreign language. In addition to being able to say “I love you” in Italian, Russian and German, I am also a fairly fluent speaker of American, Canadian, Australian and one of my 2006 resolutions is to master Irish.