That's Not English (6 page)

In which we find out why the English refuse to apologize for their overuse of
sorry
.

A
recent survey concluded that the average English person will say
sorry
more than 1.9 million times in his lifetime. This may strike some as a conservative estimate. From this, one could deduce that the English are especially polite. This might be true if
sorry
were always, or even usually, a straightforward apology. It isn’t. The reason they stay on the sorry-go-round is that the word, in their English, is so very versatile. A. A. Gill, writing for the benefit of visitors to the London Olympics, bragged, “Londoners are just permanently petulant, irritated. I think we wake up taking offense. All those English teacup manners, the exaggerated please and thank yous, are really the muzzle we put on our short tempers. There
are, for instance, a dozen inflections of the word sorry. Only one of them means ‘I’m sorry.’”

Here are just a few of the many moods and meanings these two syllables can convey:

“Sorry!” (I stepped on your foot.)

“Sorry.” (You stepped on my foot.)

“Sorry?” (I didn’t catch what you just said.)

“SOrry.” (You are an idiot.)

“SORRY.” (Get out of my way.)

“SorRY.” (The nerve of some people!)

“I’m sorry but . . .” (Actually I’m not at all.)

“Sorry . . .” (I can’t help you.)

It’s all in the tone, of course, and this is where
sorry
becomes permanently lost in translation. An American friend will never forget when she finally figured out that
sorry
can be a tool of passive aggression in England’s hierarchical social system—a form of dismissal. When she was a college kid in England and people gave her an apology that was not sincere, but meant to put her in her place, she would respond earnestly, “Oh, no, it’s okay! Don’t worry!” Why wouldn’t she? There are times when luck favors the ignorant.

The English have a reputation for being passive-aggressive because they seem not to be saying what they mean—at least, not with words. In English culture, an anodyne word like
sorry
takes on shades of meaning that someone from outside will not
be able to discern with any degree of sophistication, especially if he is from a culture that is more comfortable with confrontation, or one that condones a wider range of small talk among strangers. The English use
sorry
to protest, to ask you to repeat yourself, to soothe, and to smooth over social awkwardness as much as—if not more than—they use it to apologize. But most of the time, their object is politeness of a particularly English kind, to wit: politeness as refusal.

English courtesy often takes the form of what sociolinguists Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson have called “negative politeness”—which depends on keeping a respectful distance from others and not imposing on them. Its opposite, positive politeness, is inclusive and assumes others’ desire for our approval.

Only the Japanese—masters of negative politeness—have anything even approaching the English
sorry
reflex. No wonder visiting Americans are so often caught off guard, and so often feel they’ve been the objects of passive aggression or dismissal instead of politeness. Their misunderstanding of what constitutes politeness in England is not surprising, since Americans epitomize positive politeness.

When Americans say
sorry
, they mostly mean it. But, at least to English ears, they don’t necessarily mean anything else they say. Americans repeat seemingly empty phrases like “Have a nice day!” They also give and receive compliments easily, even among strangers. The English find this behavior highly suspect.Hence, the American reputation for insincerity.

The English novelist Patricia Finney has said that she loves Americans because “it doesn’t matter whether people actually respect me or not, so long as they treat me with courtesy and
respect . . . I really don’t mind if nice American check-out guys tell me to have a nice day and are really thinking, ‘hope you have a terrible day, you snotty Brit,’ so long as I don’t know about it. I think sincerity is over-rated in any case.” Americans don’t. Americans prize sincerity above most qualities. (How else are they going to ensure that the Great Pumpkin picks their patch?) An American friend of Finney’s accordingly defended the practice, saying Americans “. . . do respect people. It’s not faked.”

It could be that Americans have stopped hearing themselves. Just like the English with their
sorries
, they have certainly stopped expecting a response. Imagine the shock of a salesman who said, “Have a nice day!” to the grandfather of a friend, who answered, “Thank you, but I have other plans.”

Americans are sociable and approval-seeking. They look for common ground with others and genuinely want to connect. This often takes the form of compliments—especially to complete strangers. (“I really like your wapdoodle!” “What a great snockticker!”) This is because American society’s fluidity can lead to insecurity. Your place in the hierarchy is based not on who you
are
, but what you
do
(and how much you
make
). Therefore, Americans incessantly seek reassurance that they are doing all right. But the marvelous thing is that they also seek to give reassurance. That may be the quality that Finney was responding to.

In English culture, you’re assumed to be secure in your place, to know where you stand. But in real life, who does? Practically no one.
Sorry
and American compliments serve similar social purposes. When there’s nothing to say, we can avoid social awkwardness and either deflect (UK) or connect (USA)—all in the name of politeness.
Sorry
simultaneously avoids
confrontation and, when used sincerely, allows people to show how lovely they are,
really
, despite their minor transgressions. American compliments allow for a little connection, and reinforce your belonging on a level that’s comfortable—at least if you’re American.

Either way, you’re left with something to say, and on that note, Jane Austen will have the last word on
sorry
. Here she is in a letter to her elder sister:

My dearest Cassandra

My expectation of having nothing to say to you after the conclusion of my last, seems nearer Truth than I thought it would be, for I feel to have but little . . . you may accordingly prepare for my ringing the Changes of the Glads and Sorrys for the rest of the page.—Unluckily, however, I see nothing to be glad of, unless I make it a matter of Joy that Mrs. Wylmot has another son and that Lord Lucan has taken a Mistress, both of which Events are of course joyful to the Actors;—but to be sorry I find many occasions, the first is that your return is to be delayed, & whether I ever get beyond the first is doubtful. It is no use to lament.—I never heard that even Queen Mary’s Lamentation did her any good, & I could not therefore expect benefit from mine.—We are all sorry, & now that subject is
exhausted.

In which we attempt to bring back a useful old word (while simultaneously discouraging the use of a vulgar one).

E
veryone has a private list of least-favorite words. Words that we shrink from using, and cringe to hear. They are like dog whistles, emitting a high and excruciating frequency audible only to us, while others go blissfully about their business. The renowned American gastronome M. F. K. Fisher, writing about her own opinions, prejudices, and aversions, used the antiquated Scottish noun
scunner
. Where has this useful word gone? Certainly the human race has only become less tolerant since her essay “As the Lingo Languishes” was published in 1980. These days, we take scunners against people, places, and things all the time. There ought to be a meme.

Fisher held scunners against the words
yummy
and
scrumptious
because, she said, “there is no dignity in such infantile
evasions of plain words like
good
.” Just because a scunner can be explained doesn’t mean it is rational. There is something a bit primal, or at least involuntary, about these antipathies. The word
succulent
makes me want to go hide in a closet and never come out. No idea why.

Scunners can be highly personal, even secret to all but the closest of friends. Scunners can also be ferociously tribal. A shared scunner can unite individuals like little else. If you doubt it, dare to Google a word such as
moist
,
which may, to you, seem entirely innocent. Or you may just have flung this book to the floor in disgust. Either way, you might be interested to know that several pieces of fairly serious journalism are dedicated to explaining the scunner against the
m
word, which is apparently widespread. Its haters have their own Facebook group.

It’s rare that a scunner crosses nationalities, but we have a winner in
toilet
. It is generally, though by no means universally, unloved on both sides of the moist, moist Atlantic. Neither the Americans nor the English like to say the word
toilet
, and not just because of the diphthong it shares with the
m
word:
oi
. (Oy.)

Americans, who love to accuse the English of prissiness, are a bit prissy themselves. No less an authority than
The
Economist
has pointed out that “bodily functions . . . seem to embarrass Americans especially: one can ask for the ‘loo’ in a British restaurant without budging an eyebrow; don’t try that in New York.” In America, euphemism is such big business that even doctors and nurses will say someone “passed” instead of “died.” Roosters are rarely cocks. American trash goes to a landfill. Its elderly (never “old”) pets are “put to sleep.” And Americans use the “bathroom” at home or “restroom” when out in public. Even “restroom” is too much for the sensibilities of
some Americans, who instead go to the “powder room” to “wash their hands.”

Americans have been accused, with some justification, of being more Victorian than the Victorians. In fact, Noah Webster’s purified Bible, in which he substituted euphemisms for words he judged potentially “offensive to delicacy,” predated Queen Victoria’s coronation. On Webster’s watch,
fornication
became
lewdness,
piss
became
excretions
, and
stink
was replaced by
odious
. Americans never want to offend. There’s a mania for putting the best face on everything, and avoiding the inelegant. It’s all terribly middle-class.

Bizarrely, this is where
toilet
prejudice began in England. The upper and lower classes historically had little use for euphemisms. As landowners or tenant farmers, they were in constant contact with birth, death, and excrement. At least in theory. It was the striving middle, in their desire to disassociate from the working class, who started prettying up their language by using French words like
toilette
, which the upper class cannot abide.

As Philip Thody explains in
Don’t Do It! A Dictionary of the Forbidden
, “The landed aristocracy shares with its tenants a suspicion of foreign habits which is reflected in its preference for Anglo-Saxon over Latin terms. Members of the English upper class say
chop
and not
cutlet . . . jam
and not
preserves
,
pudding
and not
dessert
 . . .” Upper-class avoidance of supposedly refined language has created many linguistic taboos. Thus
toilet
, which would seem to be about as direct and uneuphemistic as any word can be, came into use as an affectation of the petty bourgeoisie and is still seen that way. The affected have ever been the objects of scorn and ridicule (like the snobbish,
status-obsessed Hyacinth Bucket—pronounced
Bouquet
—on the BBC series
Keeping Up Appearances
).

It is hard to believe that antipathy to
toilet
lingers when many class markers in language have gone the way of the dodo, and every public convenience in England has a sign saying
TOILET
in one-thousand-point type. Maybe that’s part of the problem. It makes
toilet
seem all the more common, and those who say it even more so. In her book
The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British
, Sarah Lyall avers that
toilet
is considered by many “a virtual profanity, the biggest class marker of all.” She quotes a woman who told the
Guardian
writer Jonathan Margolis, “I’d rather my children said
fuck
than
toilet
.”

The English find American linguistic hedges rather droll—especially
bathroom
when used for public conveniences because, as they love to point out, “There is no bath in there!”—but they have their own in
loo
and
lavatory
.
Lavatory
comes straight from the Christian church, and refers to the ritual washing of the celebrant’s hands at the offertory. You can’t get much cleaner than that. Going to the “lavatory” is one of the humorously incongruous things Monty Python’s singing lumberjack does, along with poncing around the shops every Wednesday, having “buttered scones for tea,” and cross-dressing.

If you are an anxious American who wishes neither to offend nor come across as common,
lavatory
is considered unimpeachable. It is the
restroom
of English English. The origins of
loo
are unknown but vaguely, possibly French. This doesn’t make it suspect, exactly, but it’s less formal—the word to use at someone’s house if you don’t already know where you’re going. Of course, if you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks, you know what word you can use.

In which we find out why Queen Victoria said, “Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.”

P
ubs have occupied a privileged place in English social life since Anglo-Saxon times, and although their number peaked in 1869, and many have closed in recent years, there are still more than fifty-seven thousand pubs in Britain. In his prewar love letter to pubs,
The Local
, Maurice Gorham explains one of the reasons pubs are so beloved, and why they endure. “Every pub is somebody’s local, and every one has its regulars . . . You see them ensconced in the corner by the partition, deep in conversation with the landlady when you come in . . . The real regular is one of the family. . . . As a regular myself, I have heard more about the affairs of licensed houses than I know about any of my friends . . . Nothing much is demanded
of the regular except to come regularly and show himself interested in the pub’s affairs. He need not even drink very much.”

Practically every town, every neighborhood, in England has a pub fitting this description, which will bring to the American mind nothing so much as reruns of
Cheers
, a thirty-year-old television show that took place in an idealized local bar “where everybody knows your name.” America has no analogue to the pub—at least not as a national institution. Americans romanticize English pubs because they tend to drink in anonymous sports bars and chain restaurants with wall-mounted televisions, rather than fireplaces or polished wooden bars, as their focal points. Those lucky enough to have a charming local of their own don’t take it for granted, as much of the country makes do with TGI Fridays and Chili’s. (Although, to be fair, I haven’t yet found a pub snack that can compare to Chili’s Boneless Buffalo Wings.)

Although Americans and the English have different drinking customs and habits,
cheers
has been used as a toast in both countries for nearly a century. It comes from the Old French
chiere
, meaning
face
.
Cheer
later came to mean an expression or mood, and later a good mood. In England by the mid-1970s,
cheers
had become a colloquial synonym for
thanks
.
Cheers
has been used that way by the English ever since, and is a remarkably flexible word. It is, for one thing, a great class leveler: Practically everyone says it, and it is appropriate to say to anyone (with the possible exception of the queen, and yet the younger royals surely use it).
Cheers
can also mean
good-bye
and is the simplest thing to say at the end of any small transaction, not just at the pub but at the newsagent, getting out of a taxi, or when someone has done you a small favor. It’s as friendly and warm as the pub itself.

Perhaps because of pubs, social life in England revolves around drinking to a greater extent than it does in America. English journalist Lucy Foster, who undertook a month of sobriety as an assignment for
Stylist
magazine, said, “There’s a rule of thumb within my friendship group . . . that you can’t trust people who don’t drink . . . They’re questionable. They have issues, dark secrets, or a health agenda.” Alcohol’s great appeal is that it “makes you talk and it makes you share, and it makes you feel good, if only for a little while.” After her harrowing account of her teetotal January, and skeptical interviews with a recovering alcoholic and a man who is sober for religious reasons, a box titled “The Sober Truth” asks, ominously, “After four weeks without a drop of alcohol, how do Lucy’s relationships fare?” (The short answer: Poorly.)

There has been a lot of hand-wringing over binge drinking in the UK in recent years, for good reason. An American friend who has lived in both countries summed it up: “The public health definition of ‘binge drinking’ in the USA is something like ‘having five drinks at one sitting.’ In the UK it’s something like ‘remaining intoxicated for 48 straight hours.’” Like most exaggerations, it contains a grain of truth: In the United States, five or more drinks in one sitting
is
considered a binge. In the UK, you’re looking at an eight-drink minimum. In his book
The English Pub
, Peter Haydon includes a telling bit of doggerel: “Not drunk is he who from the floor / Can rise again and still drink more. / But drunk is he who prostrate lies / Without the power to drink or rise.” But anxiety about drink has never dampened enthusiasm for the pub.

Two prints by William Hogarth,
Beer Street
and
Gin Lane
, published in 1751, tell a story that has changed little in the past
two and a half centuries. Hogarth made the prints
in support of a campaign directed against gin drinking among London’s poor.
Beer Street
is a wholesome scene that celebrates the virtues of England’s traditional drink. The subjects of this print are the well-fed, industrious, and prosperous middle class.
Gin Lane
is an altogether different place. The subjects of this print are malnourished and debauched. A carpenter sells his tools to buy gin. A mother drops her baby over a railing. A body is crammed into a coffin. The message is that drinking is not bad in itself; it’s excessive drinking, especially by the lower classes, that is the problem. In 1751, the aim was to stop sales of small amounts of cheap and highly intoxicating gin in local shops, to make it less accessible. There has been talk of instituting a per-unit minimum price to limit consumption of the alcohol available in supermarkets, with their ubiquitous three-for-two offers.

Irresponsible drinking costs the UK taxpayer twenty-one billion pounds per year if you count extra police presence and medical bills. The British Medical Association estimates that nearly a quarter of the population drinks to excess. The most convincing argument against minimum pricing is that it amounts to a tax on the poor, when it is the higher-income groups, undeterred by the price of a decent pinot, that have seen the largest rises in alcohol consumption.

American consumption rivals that of the English, and causes the same kinds of social problems. But America is a much more religious country and there is shame associated with most pleasurable activities, especially drinking. Although Prohibition was repealed in 1933, some local communities opted to keep its strict regulations against public drinking in place, with the result that today there are still more than two hundred dry
counties in America, and many more that are partially dry. Most of these counties are located in a single swath of the Bible Belt, but there are outliers. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan all have strict enough laws in most of their counties to qualify as partially dry, and even in liberal New England, deep in the heart of Cheever country, where WASP reserve requires some dousing of its own, there are still dry towns.

America has always been more conservative and less relaxed than England when it comes to drinking. In 1832, Frances Trollope (mother of Anthony) came to America to seek her fortune and ended up writing a book about American manners instead. She wrote, “We [English] are by no means so gay as our lively neighbours on the other side of the channel, but, compared with Americans, we are whirligigs and tetotums [spinning tops]; everyday is a holyday, and every night a festival.” American attitudes to drinking vary by region. Whereas in Brooklyn a two-year-old’s birthday party could be held at a beer garden, eyebrows might go up in Albany, and in some cities you’d actually be breaking the law. Many Americans avoid drinking for health reasons, without the same stigma that this carries in England. And as much as Californians, for example, love their local wine, they have to be careful not to run afoul of ever-stricter drunk driving laws. On the other hand, drive-through liquor stores were certainly an American invention, and are dotted all around the South, near some of the same areas where regulations are most stringent. Americans are conflicted drinkers, to say the least.

Prohibitionists once advocated punishments for drinkers, including giving them poisoned alcoholic beverages, banishing them to concentration camps in the Aleutian Islands, branding,
whipping, sterilizing, and even executing them. Is it any wonder that, fewer than one hundred years later, American attitudes to drinking have not recovered? What would the purists say if they knew that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was written to the tune of an old drinking song?

This is why Americans envy English pubs. Pubs are safe and friendly places where everyone is made to feel welcome. You can have lunch, bring your kids (at least during the day). Visiting Americans might find the mixed drinks a bit stingy, due to strict standardization of measures (twenty-five to thirty-five milliliters is the maximum legal serving of spirits), but one could argue this is a public service, given the well-documented perils of gin. The beer is much more interesting anyway. For their part, the English in America might be surprised by the quality of American beer. Craft breweries are proliferating and giving the drinking public options beyond the very cold, very bland national brands in cans. They would be less impressed by the mixed drinks served in American bars, heavily iced and inevitably containing straws, which no English person over the age of five would be caught dead using.

Where does this leave
cheers
? Perhaps because of visits to England, or the influence of English novels, television, and journalism, Americans have begun to adopt the “thanks/good-bye” meaning of late. As one American said, “I enjoy hearing [cheers] instead of the worn out ‘later’ or ‘see ya later.’ Like it or not, the Yanks and the Brits are cousins, and that’s that. Cheers!” Needless to say, not everyone shares his enthusiasm.

An English banker living in New York groused, “I’m getting sick of my clients saying
cheers
to me. Americans say
cheers
like Dick Van Dyke in
Mary Poppins
, with too much enthusiasm. It
must be delivered laconically.” Delivery does count. The English say “Chis” out of the sides of their mouths when they mean
thank you
or
good-bye
. Americans do not pick up on this, and say
cheers
the same—toothily, hitting the
r
a bit hard and implying an exclamation point—whether they mean it as a toast or a casual good-bye. Some Americans are just as irritated by their compatriots’ appropriation of
cheers
. One ranted, “Why is everyone saying
cheers
these days? . . . I am going to start saying . . . ‘Did I just have a drink and not know it?’”

The backlash against Americans who borrow
cheers
may seem churlish, but it wouldn’t surprise a linguist. As M. Lynne Murphy wrote in her blog, “Separated by a Common Language,” “If you’re using words from a different place that you don’t have ‘birth rights’ to, you’re seen as ‘inauthentic’ in the use of those words . . . as aspiring to be associated with a group of people who may not always be positively stereotyped in the culture you’re in—and those stereotypes rub off on your word usage . . . So, taking on American words is seen as ‘sloppy’ and ‘lazy’ in the UK. Taking on British words is seen as ‘snobby’ and ‘pretentious’ in the US.”

There is only one way this could end:
Cheers.