Americanisms

Happy American

I look like I could be from the UK.  Red hair, freckles, pasty white skin?  Check, check, check, I fit right in.  And while I don’t have an English accent, which is the clearest indicator of my nationality, I also don’t brandish my American patriotism in a glaringly obvious way (as many Europeans would expect from an American) because I’m hoping to assimilate into British culture at least a little bit.  There are, however, certain things that I do or say that do shout America! and remind my friends exactly where I’m from.  I call these Americanisms.

Oh my GOD, seriously.  The most obviously American thing I do is to drop an excited “oh my god” into conversation.  Responses range from laughs, snickers, botched imitations -- you name it, someone does it.  Saying “GOD” emphatically is really easy to do with a super American accent, so I usually give a self-mocking performance of it when someone catches a natural one in conversation.  Better to make fun of how American I am than to just take the hit.  Besides, you have to open your mouth really wide to say it, so it’s halfway to a smile, or even a laugh.  Oh my GOD, ha ha ha.  It’s a little funny.

Charlotte, Prerna, and me on a night out

Every time I utter a gonna, wanna, gotta, or hafta, it sticks out like a sore thumb.  The Midwest is notorious for blending and smushing words together (or mumbling, if you want to be frank about it) -- I can’t help it!  This is my natural dialect!  Perhaps the worst example of mumbling is when I greet people with a rhetorical “howsigone?”  that just comes out like one big slur.  Dude, it was rhetorical, doesn’t matter if you didn’t catch that last bit.  I usually just reply to their quizzical look with a loud and clear “How are you?”  Saves everyone some confusion. 

Girls Only Cream Tea - me, Manu, Charlotte, Maria, and Prerna
in the courtyard in Castle Irwell

Totally, dude.  Sounds American, right?  Well everyone over here agrees.  No one, I repeat, no one begins a sentence with “Dude, that’s what I’m saying,” and hardly anyone would count dude as a natural way to address a friend.  But I do.  And every time, it’s another tick on the mental Meredith-Is-an-American-Stereotype tally.  Totally is a word that British people frequently use to mock Americans, but I don’t think it’s really stereotypically American.  We hardly notice it.  Besides, you can just replace every American “totally” with an English “absolutely” and you’ll sound exactly like a British person.  Simple. 

The moral of the story is that I’m working at it, but assimilating into a new culture is hard.  Really hard.  And it’s always little things that get me, betray my inner stars and stripes.  Sigh.  I’m still learning.

*None of these pictures has anything to do with American phrases, but everyone likes pictures, so I put them in anyway.