On a recent trip home to my country of birth, that little angry island that used to be in Europe, I was drinking with some old mates in a pub by the river (or sipping tea in a chimney — or wherever British people hang out). While in a rambunctious gin-fueled debate, I must have uttered some Americanism, some bastardized version of the holy English tongue. This happens when you’re a Brit who’s lived in America for 12 years; you start to talk like them. I probably said “I feel like” before stating an opinion, like Californians do. Or maybe I called jam “jelly” (“jelly” is Jell-O there — it’s very confusing). Either way, it didn’t go down well. My friend told me I sound like an “American asshole.” Sorry, “arsehole.”
“Stephen Hawking once said, ‘Intelligence is the ability to adapt,’” I told him.
“He’s another arsehole who ended up with an American accent,” he said.
I’d lost that battle. I’d also lost my accent.
Years before, not unlike that scene in Love Actually when the idiotic blond British guy goes to the Midwest and somehow seduces a bunch of models by bumbling about a bit, apologizing profusely and saying “queue,” I also managed to impress a gorgeous Midwestern American woman. We got married and moved from Oxford to California. (We now have two American kids, who both do terrible British accents.)
I wanted to be in America from the day I read On the Road when I was 18. I used to dream of driving west in an El Camino on one of those endless straight highways toward the open horizon — something you can’t do for long in England without hitting traffic on a provincial ring road. The idea was magical to me.
At the time, I was tired of everything English — drizzle, bread sauce, repressed emotions. I was sick of the Old World — a bitter, damp former empire where everyone knows their place and still doffs their hat to an old lady on a throne. I didn’t care that America was crass and fake and gross. I wanted people to yell rather than passively-aggressively mumble. I was always drawn to people shouting about how they feel. British people rarely tell you how they actually feel; they tend to say the absolute opposite and hope that maybe in a few months you’ll figure out what they meant. Sometimes this English reluctance to emote is based on good intentions. My uncle had an actual stroke at my brother’s wedding but didn’t tell anyone, he didn’t want to cause a scene.
I wasn’t the only one who wanted to leave the crowded island. At the time, two of my closest British friends also moved to the States and shacked up with American women. It was the thing to do.
I grew up on a farm in a place called St Giles in the Wood in deep Devon, in the beautiful rural southwest of England. It’s a bit like the Shire but with more Tories. One of the last battles of the English Civil War was fought there in 1646. Rusty arrowheads can still be found in the soil under centuries’ worth of dead badgers and cow shit. In fact, every blade of grass in the British countryside has been warred over and over and over. Druids, Romans, Vikings, Normans — not to mention the fucking French, who we’ve had at least 25 wars with. From Julius Caesar to William the Conqueror, everyone’s had their merry way with merry ol’ Blighty. Meanwhile, there are parts of the American wilderness that have still never been trodden on by a single hoof, let alone a Druid.
Bill Bryson, another pompous British-American, once said, “I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.” And he was right.
The first time I saw an In-N-Out Burger, I lost my shit. The rugged Big Sur coast still makes me gasp. I don’t doubt that an American in London would feel the same upon seeing an old mossy castle or the dining hall where they filmed Harry Potter. Everything is relative. Everyone wants change.
Britain is like a doddering old grandad who used to be a war criminal but now tells funny stories about the old days while eating cucumber sandwiches.
When I moved to the States, beyond my wonder at everything American, what was even more fun was seeing how Americans reacted to hearing my British accent. It was like a superpower. “Courgette,” “queue,” and “shhhhhedule” became little verbal magic tricks that made even the most mundane conversations sound interesting. And there’s a real joyousness to Americans trying to do a British accent. “Oi! Fancy a cuppa marmite, guv?” There’s a resentment in the UK toward America that is not reciprocated. Brits hate the term “bro,” but Americans love the term “bruv.”
I even used this superpower to get a job that I never should have gotten. (Side note: My mum once told me that the word “gotten” is American and has no reason to exist.) I told an interviewer at a biotech company that I studied at Oxford, which is sort of true, and I even put it on my résumé. I actually went to the shitty university in Oxford, not the good one, but I didn’t bother correcting him. I had an accent! I sounded smart! And I studied in the city of Oxford, technically. I was immediately hired as a clinical specialist and tasked with growing enzymes in Chinese hamster ovaries to cure rare genetic disorders. I was really bad at it but somehow managed to not get fired for a few years, purely on the basis of entertaining colleagues with the way I pronounced “laboratory,” like Ron Weasley does.
There’s something totally disarming about a British accent in the States. A French accent can sound pretentious; a German accent can sound cold and authoritative; but a Cockney accent really does make Americans laugh.
It’s perplexing that Americans look so fondly on their former oppressor. The young country was born out of a bloody fight to be free of that archaic commonwealth. (Interestingly, in UK schools, the Revolutionary War garners only a footnote in history class, often referred to as a ‘minor colonial skirmish.’)
Maybe it’s because of the modern geopolitical dynamic — one is a former colonizing heavyweight on the decline, while the other is still puffing its chest out and policing the world. There’s no real threat from that quirky little island. Britain is like a doddering old grandad who used to be a war criminal but now tells funny stories about the old days while eating cucumber sandwiches. America is his yuppie son, smiling at Gramps’ silly tales while quietly signing the papers to put him in a home. America was born a teenager. There were no faltering first toddler steps; it strode into the world with all the arrogance of youth and none of the wisdom of history.
“Americans have dumb-ass presidents!” World, meet Boris Johnson. Oh, and our last prime minister fucked a dead pig.
Most of the conflicts between the two countries these days are not about world domination but about such things as who invented apple pie. The Wikipedia article on apple pie has been debated and edited more than almost any other topic on the site, in an endless battle over ownership of the dish. Turns out that both countries came up with it at around the same time.
Day-to-day life in America is easier when you have a British accent, but I can’t help but notice that my accent doesn’t impress people like it used to.
Maybe this is due to social media downsizing culture gaps, or maybe it’s the unfettered access to British TV, where The Crown, Downton Abbey, and Fleabag are binge-watched by millions. And Peppa Pig doesn’t fucking help.
The Atlantic Ocean is shrinking. The countries are more similar now than ever before. Brits used to love taking the piss out of Americans for things we’ve since become:
“Americans are overweight and eat cheeseburgers for breakfast” —Obesity rates in the UK are rocketing up.
“American TV is full of crass, fame-hungry idiots” — Geordie Shore would like a word.
“Americans have dumb-ass presidents!” — World, meet Boris Johnson. Oh, and our last prime minister fucked a dead pig.
I’ve gotten caught in many a circular argument about which side of the Atlantic is the better place to live. Here’s my final scorecard: Americans are better at bars, roads, burritos, and smiling. Brits are better at sausages, making people laugh, bands, and not shooting each other.
I can’t help but feel that as my accent gets less interesting, I get less interesting.
From a recent Ancestry.com investigation, it seems like I’m the first of my lineage to move to the New World in 500 years. Being what feels like nearly-kinda-half-American has always been a part of my identity, from obsessing over the Beatniks and road-tripping across the country to making dumb jokes on Twitter to finally getting my U.S. citizenship in 2013 (I still have my UK passport, just in case).
I’ve noticed that my British expat friends’ accents have changed since they moved out here too. Some try to hold on to words like “aubergine” and “bonnet” — it’s like Britain holding on to the Falklands. Give it up. The sun has set on your “trousers” in America. For a while, I, too, tried to hold on to my Britishisms. But I find it just makes life harder when you’re refusing to adapt. I don’t want to have a 10-minute conversation about the etymology of “aluminium” every time I insist on saying it the British way. I’d rather just say it the American way and continue the conversation.
Or maybe the reason why the accent doesn’t work for me anymore is because I’m losing it. And I can’t help but feel that as my accent gets less interesting, I get less interesting. Maybe I’m worried that my whole personality is not much more than the superfluous usage of the letter “u” and jokes about spotted dick.
I know I’ll end up with an even weirder transatlantic accent as I grow old. It won’t be a charming mid-Atlantic brogue like Cary Grant’s; it’ll sound more like Benedict Cumberbatch choking on turkey jerky. But I think I’m okay with that. Adapting to a new environment is more rewarding, albeit less fun, than being a novelty act who tells you that they’re “chuffed to bits.”
Also, Mum is right: “gotten” is an abomination.
