Talking like a Brit, Sounding like an American

“Are you living in the UK?” the American border guard asked me as he scrutinized my U.S. passport.

My pulse began to quicken. I had given him my friendliest smile, answered his questions with confidence, and knew I had nothing to worry about. Yes, I was living in the UK, but my Hungarian passport meant that wasn’t a problem.

At the same time, I also knew that the US doesn’t particularly like their citizens to be carriers of more than one passport. It’s legal – you can hold a foreign passport as long as you don’t travel on it to and from the states – but I was nervous. Maybe the rules had changed. Maybe this was a trick question. The easiest answer would be “No, I’m living in the states,” but that was a lie and if caught would be far worse than telling the truth. So I took a breath.

“Yes,” I answered.

The border guard looked back up at me.

“You sound like it,” he said, “Careful, your accent is changing.”

“Oh is it?” I asked with an airy laugh as I took back my passport and bolted for the exit. Feeling like a fugitive who had just made it over the border, I tried to remain calm. There was no going back now. I had to blend in, I had to reassimilate.

Being told by someone from your country that you sound like a foreigner is a bit of a weird experience. Then again, that’s been the story of my life. I’ve been mistaken for German, Danish, French, and Ukrainian.

Recently, a lawyer I was interviewing told me he thought I was from Poland when we met for the first time. “On the phone you sounded Polish,” he said. “Like a very fluent Polish speaker with excellent business English…” he blustered as I patiently waited for him to finish.

So now I have British to add to the list. But let me make this clear, I don’t actually sound British (the same way that I don’t sound German, Danish, French, or Ukrainian). The border guard, hearing my apparent “accent” and seeing that I was coming from Manchester, made the assumption that the weird intonation escaping my lips must be of a British lilt. The girl in upstate New York, who thought I spoke with a “thick” German accent, clearly had earmarked all-that-is-not-quite-American as German.

Nevertheless, I get a bit of a kick out of sounding like a foreigner to certain ears. Whether it’s because of my early years in Hungary or because I was in speech therapy after returning to the states, apparently I sound exotic. It’s too bad that I don’t actually speak Hungarian or any other language fluently to validate my foreign position…

But I do speak English fluently and my relationship to that language has developed over the past year living in the UK. Again, I must emphasize that I don’t actually sound British, but I have picked up a few words.

Like “flat.” For someone who was in the process of moving cities and into a new flat, I had a lot to say about my new apartment. (I also moved flats three times in one year, which also kept coming up in conversation.) And so for me, “flat” was probably the single most difficult part of coming back to the states. As soon as “flat” escaped my lips, I would see my friends exchange looks, looks that said, “Oh, she’s becoming British.” It’s just one of those words you use all the time, that immediately singles you out as either American or British. Either you live in a flat or an apartment, you don’t live in both.

“Cash machine” was another difficult one to break. “It’s more logical, anyway,” an American friend told me after I asked him where the closest one was. “What does ATM stand for?” another friend asked. Let me just say this: if you all just called it “cash machine,” she would never have had to ask the question.

Another old favourite in Dundee was “jumping.” While Brits everywhere like to “pop” and “nip” about, the Scots seem to be particularly adroit at jumping. “I’m going to jump into the shops if you need anything?” a colleague of mine would say. At first I thought it was the funniest thing, but then I got used to it and started using it without a second thought until my mom started making fun of me. Now that I’ve moved south, jumping also makes me think of bunny rabbits.

All of these vocabulary lessons have in the end made me adept at identifying other overseas Americans.

“Do you mind if I just pop out for a moment?” the American woman next to me on the plane asked. Standing and stepping aside, I studied her carefully. An American who isn’t, I thought to myself. And indeed, I later learned that Susan has lived in France for over a decade and has travelled extensively throughout the UK for work. Like myself, she still sounds American and yet has adopted the vocabulary around her.

So here’s my theory. We overaseas Americans adopt the vocabulary but not the accent of where we live. We remain vestiges of that fateful year when we left America. In the future, when I return to the states, an astute linguist will overhear me and pull me aside. “A real 2014 accent!” she will say, marveling at me like a circus act. “Say something else,” she will implore me in her whiny, squeaky voice.

For as the years pass, Americans will continue to sound every more whiny. I already noticed it over this past trip home. If I sound foreign it’s not because I don’t sound American, it’s because I don’t whine.

Whether Donald Trump is making Americans particularly sulky or the valley girl is making a comeback with a vengeance, mark my words America: your language is changing. But then again, I suppose it always has.