It's English as a foreign language

Jeremy Clarkson

As you know, it is impossible to speak French because everything over there has a sex. Tables. Ships. Birthday cakes. Throat lozenges even. Everything is either a boy or a girl and they snigger when you get it wrong.

I’m told, however, that English is even harder to learn because although we recognised many years ago that tables are essentially asexual and invented the word “it”, there are several million alternatives for every object, subject or emotion.

This makes life very difficult for those to whom English is a second language. George Bush, for instance.

When those “trrists” flew their planes into the World Trade Center he went on television and referred to them as “folks”. That’s not right. “Folks” are people who line-dance. “Folks” are dimwitted but essentially quite likeable souls, whereas people who use Stanley knives to hijack planes and then fly them into tall buildings are “bastards”.

I understand his dilemma. Because “men” can also be called lads, blokes, chaps, geezers, guys and so on. And you try explaining to a foreigner which word to use and when.

I’ve just spent the week in Moscow with a Russian publisher whose English was so perfect he’d started to delve into the furthest reaches of Roget’s Thesaurus. This was a mistake. It meant he kept referring to Russian secret service agents as “lads”.

I wanted to pull him up on it, but you try explaining to a Russian why someone who puts polonium in a chap’s lunch is not a “lad” or even a “bloke”. And while he may be a “chap” to his senior officer, to the rest of us, and to his girlfriend, he’s a “guy”.

Worse, one of the girls I met over there had a book called Cockney Rhyming Slang. You cannot even begin to imagine how wonky this made her sound.

Even if English is your first language, it’s easy to get in a bit of a muddle. I, for instance, think that the word “whatever” as in “I heard what you just said and I can’t be bothered to even think of a response” is one of the greatest additions to the English language since “it”.

But I’ve been asked by my 12-year-old daughter to stop using it. Not because she finds it irritating but because she says it sounds wrong coming from a balding, fat, middle-aged man. “Whatever” is a word solely for the pre-teens, and I’m jealous of them because all I had at that age was the almost completely useless “groovy”.

It’s not just a question of age, either. It’s also region. Pete Townshend, for example, can say “geezer” and just about get away with it because he’s a sixtysomething Londoner. In the same way that a plump postmistress from Derby can call you “duck” and I cannot.

The worst example of getting it wrong, however, comes from Americans who, having lived in Britain for a while, think they can start talking English. Every time Christian Slater calls me “mate” I’m filled with a sudden desire to shave his face off with a cheese knife. Americans cannot say “mate” any more than Germans can say “squirrel”.

And it’s even worse when they stop using the word “pounds” and, in a Californian drawl, say “quid”. I’m told — and you should be aware of this — that we sound similarly idiotic when, in America, we use “bucks” instead of “dollars”.

It must be particularly difficult for foreigners if they are ever exposed to British advertising, because here we find all sorts of words that work well in a commercial break but nowhere else. “Tasty” for example. Or “nourishing”. Or my least favourite: “refreshing”.

My point this morning is that English is indeed a very hard language to master. It’s full of nuances and subtleties that take a lifetime to understand. But, and this is important, it does mean that for people who were born and raised here there is never an excuse for getting it wrong. Our wonderful mother tongue is always able to produce the “bon mot”.

So why then is official Britain so monochromatic. Why do the police close roads because of an “incident”? Why is every fight, from a pub brawl to a fully fledged riot, a “disturbance”. And why is the shipping forecast so bland. Why instead of “stormy” don’t they say the sea’s “a frothing maelstrom of terror and hopelessness”.

And most important of all, why can’t doctors be a bit more elaborate with their choice of words when describing the condition of a patient.

Last week, for instance, we heard about a young chap who had been using his mobile phone on the third storey of an office block when the lift doors opened. Without looking, he stepped through the gap only to find the lift wasn’t actually there.

In the resultant fall he broke his back in two places, punctured a lung and snapped several ribs. But even so, doctors later described his condition as “comfortable”.

Now look. Someone lying on a squidgy day bed under the whispery shade of a Caribbean palm tree is “comfortable”. Someone lying in an NHS hospital with a broken back and a shattered rib poking through one of his lungs just isn’t.

Crumpled would have been better. As would miserable, broken, or cross. They could even have said: “Well he won’t be playing on his Wii console for a while.” Even my Russian friend could have come up with something better than “comfortable”.

He’d have said “the lad’s a bit bent”. And it would have taken about two years to explain why that’s wrong as well.

From The Sunday Times

November 19, 2006

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