Learning to speak American English
An unanticipated moment in Corporate America
I remember the day very distinctly. It was my first week at a new client on Wall Street and I was the token Brit on the project. At the end of a fairly long meeting, I said the following “Don’t worry all, at the next workshop we will have a break with fizzy drinks”.
The reaction that proceeded was a relevation of sorts. A British accent in New York garners a welcomed assumption of high intelligence. [And yes this is still true after Brexit]. With the exception of one person to whom my accent was poshly patronising, I had little trouble communicating.
Yet after those words, everyone in the room paused and stared intensely. “What do you mean fizzy drinks?”. Troubled by the question, I stared back with double the intensity. An awkwardly long stand off ensued. Until someone finally said “Oh, you mean carbonated drinks”.
“You call it a carbonated drink?!” I was mortified, fizzy is the right and proper word I thought to myself. In the years that followed, I had many more of these moments, the most fatal being the beets/beetroots, the burgalarized/burgled and the lucked out/lucky.
In a business context, I learnt to adapt to most. Will you reach out to her? Sure. Can you eliminate the use of EOD, COP, AOB* on agendas? Nobody understands. Sure. Can you email all the other folks to come along? Sure. Don’t you think the deck sucks? Sure. Can you be more in your face? Um.
Greater wisdom over time in New York taught me when to adapt and when to retain home grown British . More often than not, the idiosyncrasies built a sort of corporate camaraderie. We took the best of both worlds deftly switching between trousers and pants when required.
Some things though, I cannot adapt to. I am sticking firmly to my fizzy drinks and beetroots.
*Footnotes:
- EOD: End of Day [too much ambiguity; midnight NYC, 5.30pm London]
- COP: Close of Play [worst offender, nobody gets obscure cricket terms]
- AOB: Any other Business [met with New York’s finest acronym WTF?]
