It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it

Despite 20 years living in America, I never lost my accent, which is a curious mix of Irish and British. I lived in both countries during my childhood, plus I had an English dad and an Irish mum. The result was that I have what was once described as a ‘Pierce Brosnan accent’. When I lived in the States, Americans were always curious about my background. Some of their questions, though, were baffling:

Do you have 4th July in Ireland?

Sure. It comes between the 3rd and the 5th.

No, I mean, how do you celebrate it?

Why would we celebrate it?

Well, it’s Independence Day.

It’s America’s Independence Day. Ireland doesn’t have an Independence Day.

There were dozens of other questions, too, of course. Do we have TVs in Ireland? Have I ever met the Queen? (This was several years ago). Why do Europeans spell things so strangely?

These things happen when you move from one culture into another. Even moving to a different city in the same country can present you with baffling differences, so moving to another country can turn your world on its head. All those unspoken attitudes that define us as British, American, European, or whatever are so ingrained in us, we assume they are universal. It’s only when we come face to face with something very different that we question the edifice on which our lives are built. Here’s an extreme example:

Many years ago I worked in a hospital in the Middle East. One of our patients was a 40 year old woman who had cancer. There wasn’t much we could do for her except to keep her comfortable, and this meant giving her a blood transfusion. It was explained to the woman’s husband that the doctor would give him a prescription, and he would need to collect the blood from the blood bank in town and bring it back to the hospital so we could administer it.

The husband said, “I’m not wasting my money on that. We’ve been married for twenty years; it’s time I had a new wife. Let her die.”

I would have thought this appalling attitude was specific to just one man, but the woman’s doctor told me it was commonplace. The husband saw nothing wrong in his attitude; it was how he and all the men around him had been raised.

Oh, and while it’s not as jaw-dropping as the above incident, I should add that another time the same doctor scolded me for saying please and thank you. “You only say that to strangers,” he said. “We are not strangers!”

Differences, my friends. We have no idea how different we are until we crash into a culture completely at odds with our own. And the thing is, my doctor friend thought I was the one who was odd for not seeing something that was so obvious to him. None of us are aware of our fundamental beliefs and attitudes until we are faced with people who vastly at odds to our norms.

These differences take us by surprise when we meet people from different countries. Often, we learn that even when we use the same words, they can have very different meanings. For instance, in the US, pants means trousers; in the UK and Ireland it means underwear. Even within the same country you will find words that are specific to one area. Take those non-alcoholic drinks, for instance. In Ireland, they were called ‘minerals’ when I was growing up. In London, they were ‘soda’. Other places called them ‘pop’ or the retail name of the product.

Then there’s grammar. Americans love the word ‘got’. There is, for instance, a song called, “I Got you Babe.” In Europe we’d say, “I have you, Babe”. Americans would say, “I’ve gotten lazy,” while in the UK and Ireland we’d phrase it as, “I’ve become (or grown) lazy.”

Finally, know that various industries have their own slang, culture, and attitudes, too. Firefighters, policemen, and hospital workers all have their own domain. So, too, do airport employees and those who work in retail. It probably goes without saying that people who work in the Vatican see life through a unique veil. For most of these arenas, the general public are outsiders. We may observe, but we will never be part of the inner circle.

The nuts and bolts of what I’m saying is if you are planning on writing a story in a place where you have never been, be very, very careful. If you are an experienced writer you will expect your word choices to be an issue, but you might forget the sensibilities of the characters. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s a path full of potholes and barbed wire. Unless you have a very good reason for setting your story in an unfamiliar area, you would be better served keeping your writing to those places and customs you know well.

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