wendy house

3 male colleages and I wandered along a crowded  Bourbon St (New Orlean’s) on a balmy November Saturday night.   The first night of a work related conference, we were full of smiles and energy.   A  Sassy Young American Lass (SYAL) worked straight up to me, flung her arms around my neck and attached her mouth to mine.   She stopped us all in our tracks.   I peeled her tentacles from around my neck, held her shoulders at arms length

wendy: excuse me,   but I don’t think we’ve been introduced

SYAL: ooooOOOOOOOooooo and a cute English accent TOO!

wendy: incase there is any doubt,   I’m not a lesbian

SYAL:  You look like a lesbian, ashame, ciao…

Turning to a giggling  colleague who,   unbeknownst to me at that time was ‘polyamorous’ (a swinger) and, was  much amused my complete lack of flow with the young lady.  

wendy: what does an american lesbian look like?

swinger: you

wendy: big nose, spectacles, flat shoes and a confident swagger?

swinger: short hair

Later that night  he put a slightly non-sober me in a Taxi to make sure I got home  without being accosted  for my cute crop. A subsequent informal  survey of my US friends determined that locally  short hair looked very lesbian….

Flat Eric looks out over the Mississippi as a steamboat rolls by

Since repatriating to the UK I have not been the lucky recipient of any spontaneous exclamations of ‘cute accent’.   It has been pointed out that I sound foriegn.    I attribute this ‘foriegn accent’ accusation to remnants of my regional, Bristol, burr.     It is possible that the following  comment counts as an English equivalent of saying ‘cute accent’,   it is also possibly something different:

English person in open-plan office (EPIOO):   I heard your dulcet tones nearby and thought I’d take the opportunity to talk to you

Wendy:   Oh (signifying a double message of I wonder if that means cute accent? and what does the EPIOO want?)

Lady on plane with English accent (LOPWEA):   where are you from?

Wendy:   Bristol, England

LOPWEA:    I though you had a  foreign accent

Wendy:   I’ve recently lived abroad for 8 years,   where would you guess the accent is from?

LOPWEA:   Austraila or  New Zealand

Wendy:   yes,    its ex-colonial English,   the NW US

Barista:   it’s not that I like your accent or anything,   but I just have to say that I saw the queen,   well 10 minutes of the Queen actually.

Wendy:   The Movie? (deliberately uses the American word to keep the cuteness thing at sub-gushing proportions)

Barista: Yeah,   and I didn’t know what it was about and that Diana is in it and I thought how important it is and that I should watch the movie.   Would you like a free sample caramel latte?

Wendy:   Yes please

Barista:   and the government,   I’ve seen that and they are so… ..so …how shall I say….     …candid…     I like the   way they stand-up and thump the table.   It’s not that i don’t like America   ….    

Wendy  :   Thankyou (pays for yummy pie and leaves with extra  free latte)

STOP IT!

Wendy reasserts a previous reqeust to stop making noise so that people can hear the speaker.   Reaction from the speaker was to attempt to immitate my accent:

I love the way you say “store pit“

Wendy:   How do you spell reoccur?

American: recur  (giggles)   re-OH-kerr,   with an o,   is that an English version?

I can spell occurance.   If I need a second occurance I may be cornered into  attempting a spelling of  re-occur, reoccur,  if it just keeps on happening I have to remember to drop an o and a c to let it recur.   It’s all too complicated…     …I wonder why,   I failed to find any evolutionary descriptions of these words.

Kenneth Wilson’s guide to American English (1993) cited on Bartleby.com gives advice that I can understand and follow:

The usual Standard words are recur, meaning “to return (to),” “to come back (to),” “to occur again,” as in The trouble recurred last week for the dozenth time; recurrence, meaning “one of several repetitions, yet another return,” as in If there’s another recurrence, we must take action; and the related adjective recurrent. Reoccur and reoccurrence are said to differ from recur and recurrence in that they suggest a first or single repetition: That odd noise reoccurred an hour later. They are rare in Edited English, and most desk dictionaries don’t include them, but they appear fairly often in the speech of the inexperienced as synonyms for recur and recurrence: That odd noise reoccurred just after you’d left. Its reoccurrence made me nervous. Especially in writing, best practical advice is to stick with recur and recurrence, for one repetition or many.

Wendy:   How-do-you-do (handshake)  my name’s Wendy

My  self-introduction to a boy who could prove a useful work contact.  

Wendy:   Blah-di-blah-di blah, blah, blah…….does that sound reasonable to you?

I pause to let him reply.   Silence.

He’s still actually holding my hand and just gazing into my eyes.   This behaviour is not unusual amongst US boys when they first hear me speak.     I slowly removed my hand and decide to let him recover speech on his own time.

Wendy: I’ll arrange for us to meet for 30 mins or so to work-out the details of blah-di-blah-di-blah,   does that sound ok?

Sometimes people snap-out of it when they realise I’m  going.   He smiled and nodded,   I smiled then  pranced out of the room….

Wendy:   “blah-blah,   blah-di-blah-di-blah, now THAT’s AWESOME!”
Canadian: snigger, snigger snigger “have you ever heard a Bostonian say Awesome?” snigger
Wendy: “Um,   no”
Canadian: “it’s good to hear someone who doesn’t sound like they come from Boston say Awesome,   though I’ve completely missed what you thought was awesome,   can you remind me?”

Call me paranoid,   but I suspect many Americans are so busy silently sniggering over the way I’ve pronounced a word that they don’t actually hear what I’ve tried to say.   This Canadian was exceptional both in laughing out loud and in admitting to missing my point.   I like these kind of exceptions.