Our own international English

Ever since we moved here I've noticed little British-isms creeping into our speech. There are so many Brits here, and many other residents who speak English as a second language have learned the British variant, including Miriam's Iraqi schoolteacher and not a few of her classmates. What ends up happening is that to avoid confusion when speaking in English with persons of indeterminate nationality, we often use the British word/term first. It's just easier that way, even though I feel weird doing it.

(Before you decide I'm being pretentious, please know that it's not Jeremy and me sitting in our living room chatting away in an affected British accent. It's only when we're dealing with someone else's sketchy English skills and we know we might only get one shot to get our message across.)

So instead of dropping someone off, we just drop them. No 'off' needed. And when we pick them up, we don't. We collect them. (I actually love the mental image conjured by this term.)



Miriam is the source of a good many of these Britishisms. She sometimes slips into a very slight British accent these days. It's so cute. She's always "tidying up" and admonishing us to do things "properly" and sending us on our business with an "off you go!"

She also calls erasers "rubbers," which has taken some, uh, getting used to.

In UAE English, it's a canteen, not a cafeteria. A lift, not an elevator. The "leisure" in "leisure center" rhymes with "pleasure." (Heck, it's called a "leisure center," which in itself seems pretty British.)

There's also this weird practice of attaching an "it's good, yeah?" at the end of a sentence to elicit an affirmation from someone. In fact, just "yeah?" all by itself sometimes gets tacked onto a statement.

If we're the one affirming, sometimes we say "very good" instead of the more American "OK."

I'm sure some of these (and the many more I can't recall right now) are not strictly British. They are more likely an odd, international pidgin English created by the massive mish-mash of dialectal varieties found here. I came here expecting a foreign language, but I confess that another version of English was not what I had in mind.

And it makes me wonder how the American accent sounds to other people. I love all the different English accents that we hear in the UAE (Irish, Scottish, Northern England-ish, regular British, and if you're really good at telling the difference, Australian and New Zealand-ish). Plain old American English sounds so flat and drawn-out in comparison.

Oh well. At least we don't call an eraser a rubber. We'll always have that consolation.