English to English Translations

When people are extolling the many virtues of this fine island nation, you often hear the following phrase:
"…and EVERYONE speaks English."

This is true- everyone speaks English. On one very small piece of land you have millions of native English speakers- for example you may have Brits speaking English, Aussies speaking English, Kiwis speaking English, Indians speaking English, Singaporeans speaking Singlish, Americans speaking English and lots of other people who are in fact quite fluent, speaking English. What this results in is the biggest mish-mash, hodgepodge, garbage heap of the language that you will ever encounter in one place.

Now I admittedly work in a Non-US firm, so some language fails are to be expected. In my first few weeks here I often walked around having zero idea what people were telling me. Its often simple things that are easy to translate after some thought. However at least once a day someone says something that completely boggles the mind. And this is Singlish and "can lah" aside- these are people attempting to speak what they consider to be perfectly normal English! As an example, people routinely use the word "fortnight," which if you are interested, means 2-weeks, but never in my life have I heard someone use it in common communication.

Here are some of the most common encountered queen's english fails around my office:

I was getting beasted = I was getting killed at work

How'd you find it? = What did you think/Did you like it?

Get on with someone = get along with someone

I was absolutely pissed = I was drunk

That’s ace/brill - That's good/brilliant

Bugger it/Bugger job = screwed it up

"Look here darling, I have been doing this longer than you have been having hot meals" = ?

Hash key = pound sign

Pitch = field.

Now obviously some of these are more normal than others, but the never ceasing flow of foreign English words in my life is tiresome. In my attempt to translate the English of my co-workers, I have found the following website to be rather entertaining and occasionally useful in translating the vernacular around these parts: http://www.effingpot.com/slang.shtml

The problem I face now is not that I have gotten an ear for it and understand people, it's that their bloody mangled English has made its way in to my vocabulary. I have found myself saying something I swore I never would "keen." I am in fact not keen to incorporate this offensive word in to my world. I also have developed a penchant for using the words: query, queue, rubbish, bloody… the list goes on. "Query" as it turns out is word to be used in diverse manners as a noun and a verb. I have today had a query, and have also queried something. Even the manner in which I say things has subtly changed, I insert "rathers" and "quite" in places they wouldn’t have appeared before. While I have always admired the Brits for their cute little accents and thought it did sort of make them sound more erudite- I have come to accept that they have to utilize their adorable accent to distract from the fact that the words that are coming out of their mouths often don't make bloody good sense. Now there is an argument that it is in fact the rest of the world that is not speaking proper English, since the English as it turns our did in fact develop the language on their island nation long before the existence of the USA. As a response to this- I shall direct all Brits to acquire themselves a history book and quickly sort out what took place in 1774. That's right, we kicked your asses, or arses if you prefer. And I believe that one of the rights that came along with independence, democracy for all and the subsequent development of a massive catchment of English speakers on one continent is the right to be the authoritative source on what does and does not constitute good English. Also, but for us, you Brits would all be speaking German. You're welcome.

Thinking about good spoken English brings me to my next point- which is spelling, and how the Brits don't know how to do it properly. I recently had the pleasure of revising a 300 page document to make sure that the spelling was done according to British conventions. Harbor became harbour, color became colour; judgement became judgment (Ok- that one sort of makes sense), traveler became traveller- and I became enraged that there are so many damn ways to spell the same word. Sometimes it makes sense- I fully support getting rid of unnecessary 'e' in places where it doesn't belong. This probably came from the French, who love letters that don't contribute anything to the word- and since no one likes the French- au revior to the frog-influenced 'e' in many words. I also can respect that in fact it does probably make sense to put the date before the month when spelling out a date- but I do so begrudingly because it looks funny. But double 'l'? What good does that do you? None I argue. Neither does the constant use of 'uo' when just plain 'o' would be fine.

While I have focused my ire on the Brits thus far- let it be said that the residents of their former colonies also contribute to the bastardization of my mother tounge. The contortion of queens english into bizzare New Zealand English and worse, Indian English I can only assume is some sort of revenge for years of colonial rule. I can understand and appreciate this idea- down with imperialism. However, since the Americans, also former colonists, managed to take the language and improve it- I find it generally inexcusable that our fellow former colonies did not do likewise.