I've lived in the USA for 6 and a half years now. South Africa,
being a British colony for the first half of the 20th Century,
inevitably has very strong influences from the UK that still exist
today.
South Africa, however, has a much larger cultural
diversity. There are even 11 official languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho,
English, Afrikaans, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Ndebele, Venda and Northern
Sotho. There's a reason we're called the "rainbow nation" :D
Over
the years, I have had to adapt to using American words. Some have come
naturally. Some were with great effort. Some were with great
reluctance and some I just plainly refuse to use. Changing the
pronunciation of the words is a whole nother story. One which ends in
blank stares :p
I'm hanging on to some words, because, for some
odd reason, I feel like I'd completely lose my cultural identity if I
let them go. Luckily, my husband accepts and even enjoys my crazy
quirks, so he has adapted too. He'll happily ask me to "open the boot"
so he can get his golf clubs out and "open the bonnet" when he needs to
fix something. He won't put the windSCREEN wipers on at a high speed,
because he knows it makes me car sick. Another one I'll use til I die,
is POSTbox and every time I see a POSTman, I'll sing "Postman Pat and
his black and white cat" :p And when I remind Rick that's it's Tuesday
and he needs to take the RUBBISH out, I don't get a strange look.
Words that I've come to use without even realizing: elevator (lift), band-aid (plaster), yeah (yes).
Words
I've had to change for my own sanity: ketchup (tomato sauce), zipper
(zip), line (queue), stroller (pram), diaper (nappy), pacifier (dummy)
and a few others. Whenever I used these words, I'd get a blank stare,
so I'd have to "translate" them anyway :p Let's not forget that I'm a
nanny, so these words pop up quite often.
Words that are really
hard for me to say because they just sound really odd and boggle my
brain: pecan (pronounced pah-khan in Texas) but pecan (pee-kin) nuts in
South Africa and aluminum - alumINium. I mean, literally, it actually
hearts my brain to say them :D
People often ask me if it was
difficult getting used to American words. I tell them that we watch
American TV shows in South Africa so we are familiar with the words and
even use some of them. If you said "I need a new pair of pants" in the
UK, you would get an odd look, because that means underwear. You would
have to say trousers. In South Africa, you could say pants or
trousers. In the UK, soccer is football, but in SA, soccer is soccer.
We would say American Football for the US version.
There are differences in spelling too, but spell check takes care of that :D
- In British English, words that end in –re often end in -er in U.S. English. theatre; theater
- In British English, words that end in –our usually end in –or in U.S. English. favour; favor
- In British English, some nouns that end with –ogue end with –og in U.S. English. dialogue; dialog
- In British English, some nouns that end with –ence are spelled with –ense in U.S. English. defence; defense
- In British English, verbs that can end with either –ize or –ise, always end with –ize in U.S. English. magnetise; magnetize
I'm
watching BBC news as I'm typing and they've just reminded me that we
refer to Santa Claus as Father Christmas, so there's another one.
I
have some interesting stories of "misunderstandings" that have occurred
over the last several years, but I'll save that for another post.
Ya'll have a nice Christmas now ya hear :D
I
have joined the 2,015 in 2015 challenge, which has been a GREAT
motivation. We have a team of 3 for this virtual race, so we each have
to run an average of 2 miles per day. (See my previous post for details
on that challenge)
