高中英语 Module 1 British and American English American vs. British English训练 外研版必修5(1).doc

american vs. british englishi had a bilingual childhood, in english and cantonese, and a bi-dialectical one, in american and british english.frankly, my brother and i didnt really notice. bridging the chasm between chinese and english took so much effort that my we hardly realized we said biscuit, lift and zed (or the horrible chinese e-zed) with our family - and cookie, elevator and zee with everyone else. compared to the horrors of learning cantonese, we found the difference between trash can / bin, roommate / flatmate mere niceties. i didnt think about it until a few years ago when my mother called with an announcement. ive asked your brother to switch to using mum with a u, she declared. not mom with an o.it turns out she had simply tolerated mom our whole childhood as part of her attempt to fit in, in the same way she learned to cook hamburgers and dress her children in strange costumes for halloween. it has been 15 years since shes fried a beef patty, or constructed a witchs hat out of papier mache, so there was no need to hold onto her old title either. *after the u.s., my parents and brother moved to asia / australia, and i went to montreal, which has its own linguistic problems. here was a city divided not on racial or class lines, but on anglophone, francophone and allophone ones - a place that tried to ban apostrophe s on public signs, changing marios pizza, for example, to pizza de mario. in a move that was more french than france, quebec insisted on stop signs that did not say stop, but arret, complete with circumflex. in an environment like that, who cared that mad meant angry in one place and crazy in another?*i then started working in hong kong. hk magazine was run by americans, so i used color and that, though the odd brit would write in asking us why we spelled things wrong. the south china morning post was british-styled, so i switched to colour and which.i was never a big deal until i started at the international herald tribune. i have great respect for the iht and the fact that it is one of the few places that care so much about the minutiae of style. industry people arent kidding when they call it the ultimate editors paper. but i have never seen britishisms so reviled. iht editors spend more time that you could imagine discussing, identifying and extracting them.once, i asked a colleague to read an ft weekend column he might like. on cookery? he gasped. on cookery? i cant read something that uses the word cookery. before i went to the iht, i was sure i knew the difference between the two. but the definition of what is acceptably american, at least according to some of our more conservative staff, is so narrow that even i cant figure it out. im going to visit my friend who is in hospital, i would say in my american accent. my colleagues would groan. god, there you go again. you and your british thing.what? what? id go over the sentence again; it would seem perfectly neutral.an american would say im going to visit a friend in the hospital.same with cinema, which some americans say is too highfalutin, when one can say movie theater. or cv, as opposed to resume. gone missing is another term i never knew was the providence of the british until i tried to use it in a headline about the gol airlines plane that, you know, went missing in the amazon last year.stop using britishisms, i was told.what was i supposed to say?americans dont say go missing. we say disappeared.i argued that the two had different meanings. disappeared seemed so final. gone missing just meant it was missing for now. knowing how deadlines work, the plane would inevitably show up right after we sent the paper to press saying it had disappeared. my whole childhood, i swore, i said things like dad, have you seen my new sweater? its gone missing. has the neighbors dog gone missing again? stupid house keys have gone missing. i looked up references to gone missing in american media websites, like . see? cnn uses it.the headline was changed to disappeared. *the funny thing is that americans balk when they come across britishisms, in a way that the british dont when they come across americanisms. i think the ubiquitousness of u.s. pop culture is a reason. londoners watching u.s. shows dont get thrown off guard when mom (mum) has to change a babys diapers (nappies), or dad has to get the stuff he bought at the drug store (chemists) out of the trunk (boot) on (at) the weekend. i mean, its not brain surgery. speaking of which, i sent a humorous column from some london tabloid to a highly intelligent, open-minded friend who actually is a neurologist. he read the first couple paragraphs, was baffled by the terms, and gave up. was this. irish or scottish? he asked me by email. was this in some sort of dialect? similarly, an editor, newly arrived from the u.s., was reading an article about garbage (rubbish) collectors in india when she came across a mention of yoghurt pots. whats a yoghurt pot? she asked.just take out the h, ill be fine, i said.no. the pot. what is it?did she think indians ate yogurt out of giant ceramic flower pots? metal cooking pots? did they spike it with marajuana? the funny thing was, i couldnt think of the american equivalent. you know, those little plastic thingies yogurt comes in.oh. yogurt containers.*i was asked if i had any problems communicating in england. i said i generally didnt, though the english at oxford is pretty standard, and people are used to international students, so i was lucky. i didnt embarrass myself the way my cousin did when we was sent to the u.s. and asked the teacher if he could use a rubber.i had only two blips. once, i was lost in an oxfordshire village on my way to my riding school. so i rang up and someone with an obviously local accent answered. she tried to give directions, spiked with various incomprehensible village and farm names. like some dumb foreigner, i asked her spell out every single one. (though i do think place names are the hardest. god knows ive embarrassed my london friends for asking to go to the tate modern on south-whark.)it was also at the stables that i was corrected when i asked for