Pardon me, do you speak American?

When PAB first told me that he learned British English in his French high school I remember thinking--Shakespeare? But the more time I spend in this bloody country, with my increasingly Anglicized boyfriend, the more I realize that the Revolution happened for a reason. Americans and Brits are simply not the same, it's a wonder that we even come from the same species, a trickling down of a common culture.

My closest connection to British culture is my love for tea (albeit iced) and the Brits don't even seem to understand that commonality. I have this vivid memory of my poor Cajun "mum" ordering an iced tea in a London pub and watching in horror as a confused British bartender put hot tea into a martini shaker with ice and strained the "iced tea" into a pint. One cultural miscommunication coming right up!

When I observed in the Bristol high school last March I was astonished at the number of promiscuous little British girls shamelessly asking the male teacher, the boy next to them, even MOI for "rubbers". In the U.S. we use rubbers for a whole lot more than erasing, those I guess both could be considered not entirely accurate or reliable...

PAB is continually asking me questions along these lines: Do you say "fag" in American English? (Yes, but only in the South in narrow minded villages such as Friendswood), Do you say "wanker"? (only when making fun of British people), Do you call each other "cunt"? (Now this one had me wondering who exactly he had befriended on that tiny island). Each question making me realize more and more the ever increasing gap between the Queen's land and her colonies.

I have come to accept that American is considered the lesser English (though to hear some of the British locals talk you would think you were in the Deep South). I am certain that our wonderfully blubbering Chief Bush did not do great things for the world's perception of American English (Did he just say crusade?) Hopefully the Barackster will come in and show the skeptical and the critical exactly how we play rhetorical in the U.S. of A.

Meanwhile, I am going to make tea (heating the water in the microwave like any respectable American) and have a biscuit (not to be confused with the buttermilk biscuits us Southerners are so fond of pouring gravy on). If only the smell of the tea could overpower the stench of the fag smoking going on in the flat below me...