“KISSING MY ASS”

TRUMP LAYS BARE US/UK LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES

When Donald Trump boasted at a Republican dinner that other countries were kissing his ass over tariffs, he highlighted one of the many differences between how the Americans and British speak the English language.

He was, to British ears, suggesting that other leaders wanted to kiss his donkey. Maybe it grazes on the White House lawn…

On our side of the Atlantic, an ASS is definitely a donkey. The British word for the human backside is ARSE. We all knew what Trump meant, of course, but the imagery it conjured was best not contemplated.

And if other world leaders were to turn up to pay their respects to the Presidential posterior, either metaphorically or literally, they’d presumably have to “stand in line.” Whereas we Brits would ask them to “join the queue.” We love a queue.

It was George Bernard Shaw who supposedly said that we are “two nations divided by a common language.”

But exactly a hundred years since Shaw won the Nobel Prize for literature, it seems our divided languages are coming closer together, particularly for Generation Z, as the English language is homogenised by the global nature of media.

And by the way, in the UK, it’s “Generation Zed”, not “Zee”. But 21% of Generation Z in the UK actually call themselves “Generation Zee.”

Our countries have very close ties and much shared culture, so cross-fertilisation is inevitable. During and after the Second World War, with so many Americans based in Britain, words like “buddy” and “sweetheart” infiltrated British English.

A YouGov poll this week found that 44% of Britons think negatively about the use of Americanisms, 42% are neutral and 11% are positive about it. But it’s young people up to to the age of 24 who think most positively about American English.

American words which have crept in or even overtaken the British ones include “train station”, now more common than the British “railway station”. The American “cupcakes” has overtaken the use of the British “fairy cakes” and “pharmacy” is now used by Britons almost as often as the word “chemist”.

About 20% of Britons now refer to “movies” rather than “films” and 17% would say “truck” rather than lorry.

Sticklers for correct use of English have written to newspapers for decades about the use of Americanisms.

Here’s someone moaning to the Guardian letters page fifteen years ago: “Your journalists are increasingly using ugly Americanisms, presumably in the belief that it’s “edgy” and trendy to do so. Recent examples include pony up, mojo, sledding, duke it out, brownstones and suck – many of which are quite meaningless to me.”

In the later years of my career in journalism I was often the arbiter of issues about language, and even wrote a guide about it, to ensure that our people in broadcasting and online wrote with clarity, avoided jargon and cliches, and we had consistency across platforms.

For example, there really were twenty-four different ways of spelling Colonel Gaddafi because of transliteration from Arabic. So, you want your news organisation to only use that one!

My only qualifications for this professional side-hustle were age, pedantry, and that I knew how to spell Middlesbrough, which people often don’t.

One of the sections of the guide was about avoiding Americanisms, both in use of words and spellings. It was written about twelve years ago, and looking back at the content now, I realise the battle has been lost in some areas.

For example, Americans hijack nouns and turn them into verbs, such as “hospitalised.” Hospital is a noun. We would say “taken to hospital.” But “hospitalised” is creeping in.

I used to rail against British journalists using “homicide” for what we would call “murder.” But then UK police officers, who like the rest of Britain watched American TV and films, started talking about homicide in their interviews. I almost expected a Chief Superintendent from Yorkshire to say: “Book ‘em, Danno – murder one.”

Language evolves. Especially in the mouths of people who’ve been watching crime dramas.

It’s the same with “autopsy.” It’s an American word. But persuading young journalists these days that we’re supposed to say “post-mortem examination” sounds like an exercise in British long windedness, even if it’s technically correct.

What I’m sure of in British journalism is that we should still refer to rubbish, not garbage; pushchair, not stroller; pavement or path, not sidewalk; trousers, not pants; nappy not diaper; sweets, not candy; holiday, not vacation; queue, not line; boot, not trunk; lorry, not truck; film, not movie – I could go on.

But even these examples will get diluted. There will be very few British people who don’t know what all of the above American versions of words mean.

And a generation growing up watching Mr. Beast and scrolling YouTube and TikTok will surely not really care whether they should say film or movie.

There’s another important factor to consider in the evolving of language since the digital explosion. Here’s another historical extract from a reader’s letter to The Guardian: “American English is fine when living in America, but please stick to British English when writing for a British audience!”

The world has changed. 50% of Guardian readers are consuming its journalism from outside the UK, and roughly 30% of its readers are in America, where defence, colour, moustache and doughnut are among scores of words spelled differently. (Defense, color, mustache, donut)

Once, you could only read the LA Times by buying a copy in Los Angeles. Now you can read latimes.com from anywhere in the world.

Language, spellings, customs and styles have been put into a global mixer of infinite content.

And in case anyone thinks that it’s only British English that’s being infected by Americanisms. It also works the other way around.

The glorious word “gobsmacked” is a British slang word for being totally astonished and it’s now being used by Americans too.

The crude British exclamation “bollocks!” has also been adopted by Americans when they want to say something is nonsense.

Americans will also now sometimes employ the British use of the word “fancy”, as in “do you fancy a drink?”, or even “I really fancy someone in my yoga class.”

British exports like Harry Potter and Love Island have introduced Americans to the word “snog”, as in kissing passionately. And that quintessentially British word “kerfuffle” is now appearing in America, where I’m sure it’s treated as something charmingly eccentric.

These words and more are all high-quality British exports to the United States which didn’t even attract tariffs or require anyone’s arse, or ass, to be kissed.

Thank goodness for that!