That’s Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, And What Our English Says About Us, by Erin Moore

This is not a book by a professional linguist, but rather a sort of a memoir of how it is that an American woman and a British man working together got married, had a baby and decided to move to England, where the American realized gradually the depth of differences but also similarities that existed between the two cultures related to their common language of English. As is sometimes the case, British and American people find themselves confused by the linguistic and cultural differences that are masked behind the vocabulary that is used as well as the cultural baggage that is behind the linguistic difficulties faced by both when communicating with others. By and large, the author finds herself to be generally sympathetic to both sides and seeking, as much as is possible given the immense complexity of both American and British culture, to get to the bottom of what divides them about the English language and how it reflects the deepset needs and beliefs of both Americans and British people. The book contains a lot of chapters relating to words but it although its chapters are short, there is a lot of depth here when one takes the book as a whole.

This book consists of a lot of short unnumbered chapters that look at a single word as an entrance into a larger topic that discusses some aspect of similarity or difference between the United States and Great Britain, or sometimes when there is an apparent difference on the surface that masks a deeper unity. The chapters begin with quite, then move on to such words and expressions as Middle Class, moreish, mufti, gobsmacked, trainers, sorry, toilet, cheers, knackered, brolly, bespoke, fortnight, clever, ginger, dude, partner, proper, ok, whinge, bloody, scrappy, pull, shall, sir, yankee, skint, crimbo, tip, tea, and way out. In these chapters we see that the British are stuck with holiday music even longer than Americans, which is tragic enough. We also see the way that Americans value proper customer service in a way that the British are not fond of, that the British are to blame for the tipping culture that they disdain in America, that Americans have little tradition of custom tailored clothing, and that neither Americans nor British people are fond of admitting if they are skint/broke. Unsurprisingly, British drink a lot more tea (of a lot higher caffeine content) than Americans, but perhaps surprisingly they eat a lot more chocolate, largely thanks to being grazers rather than eating in meals like Americans tend to.

One of the notable aspects of the book is the way it shows that the differences between English and American are often based on a combination of history and demography. The deeply entrenched class system in Great Britain, particularly in England, is something that the author brings up over and over again, showing how it is that people cope with a somewhat fixed social system where trying too hard is looked down upon as being too pushy. Similarly, the author comments how the larger size of the United States and the greater anonymity and separation of social circles that exists in the United States relative to Great Britain allows for easier social relations and the feeling that one can get to know someone else without it destroying one’s whole social world. Among the funniest aspects are when the author talks about her daughter and the goofiness that she brings to being an unconscious British child born of a somewhat anxious American mother, which creates all kinds of opportunities for laughter and mortifying self-reflection. While not everyone will like this book, and it certainly is not a formal linguistic discussion of the differences between British English and Standard American by any means, it certainly has a lot of insights that would help someone from the United States who was moving to the United Kingdom or vice versa.