I was just going up to the chemist’s shop (pharmacy) to collect a prescription, when a guy stopped me in the street and asked if I lived in Leominster.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Is there a Lloyds Bank in Leominster,” he wanted to know. I told him there was one and gave him walking directions to the bank. Then he asked me if I was Canadian.
Six years ago, Susan and I moved back to England after five years in the States. I would have thought that my accent then was even more American than usual. It’s natural for people who hear my foreign accent to ask where I’m from, but since returning, I’d say that 70 or 80% of the ones who decide to guess about my origins opt for Canadian. In my previous nineteen years in England, I can’t recall anybody mistaking me for a Canadian. It doesn’t bother me to be thought a Canadian, but the change from a few years earlier is a curiosity.
Susan and I have discussed this phenomenon and we’ve wondered if it has something to do with the presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq war. Bush and Americans in general became very unpopular in Europe including the UK. This development came at the same time that we were in the USA.
Our conclusion is that English people who have the natural curiosity about my nationality feel that it is more polite to guess Canadian rather than American. The logic being that if I am, in fact, a Canadian, I won’t be insulted by being mistaken for an American. On the other hand, if I turn out to be an American after all, well, no harm done.
Or maybe I really do sound like a Canadian.
No comments:
Post a Comment