Toe in the Water

I Say Tomato

I Say Tomato

I see a lot of silly Anglo-American competition on the internet - people saying how words should be pronounced or spelt in English, quibbling over customs and intentions, and so on. Both sides convinced that somehow they are right, better and clearly superior.

Yet how truly silly this is. The fact is that we talk about our differences so much because we’re basically the same and this makes our differences endlessly fascinating. Any need to use these comparisons to demonstrate superiority is born of insecurity. There is no right or wrong way to say “tomato” and nobody really knows how to pronounce “Marylebone.”

We learn so much from each other. Comparisons between how we speak and what we’ve done with the institutions inherited by both of us from the events of the 18th Century actually enable us to understand ourselves the better. It’s in these discussions that fresh light is shone (or even “shined”) upon things about ourselves that we’ve previously taken for granted. Thanks to our transatlantic contacts and friends, we gain a much deeper understanding of ourselves.

And that has nothing to do with superiority. One man’s English is another man’s dialect.


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