I’m quickly turning into an American, and, personally, I blame Don. It’s not even a conscious thing on my part (because if I was aware of it, I’d be darned sure to put a stop to it pretty damn quickly!).
But I’ll regularly catch myself saying “store” (not “shop”), “sailboat” (not “sailing boat”), “two-thousand-seven” (not “two-thousand and seven”), “sports” (not “sport”), “sidewalk” (not “footpath”), “go do that” (not “go and do that”) – and the worst and most appalling: “tomato” (and not “tomato” – y’all know what I mean).
It’s insidious, and we haven’t been living together for that long1, I imagine in another six months I’ll be completely Americanified. And it is not just me, the teachers at the daughter-formerly-known-as-Nancy’s former business college asked her if she was American, because she had a slight accent (apparently).
At least I’m not eating mustard and mayonaise on my sandwiches instead of butter – yet.
1I lived with Fenton for 7 years and did not walk about talking of the “dairy” and the “jandals” and the “chilly bin”.
1. Aaah, awkward moment…so Don is not Fenton? This clears things up a little, but also confuses them.2. Grumpy goes insane if I say store. I go insane if I hear people saying “math”.
No, Don is not Fenton.Don had his first mention on the old blog here. Yes, an office romance (departmental romance even) – all the cool kids are doing it.Fenton is having a wildly fabulous time in London.The Fenton thing goes some way to explaining why the old blog was unattended for so long.And I would have gone insane had anyone suggested that I would be using any of these terms! Fortunately Don has been Ausified enough to say “maths”.