CURRENTLY around 4.5 million Americans work in European companies and about the same number of Europeans are employed by American companies. How on earth do they communicate with their colleagues?
Often with great difficulty, claimed Allyson Stewart-Allen recently, an American marketing consultant who was sent over to London by PA Consultancy Group. She learned the language and has stayed on ever since. When she arrived she admits she had problems with British English.
"I didn't know whether being 'pear-shaped' was good or bad, what a 'damp squib' was or if being 'knackered' was faintly improper. But being an outsider meant that I could ask questions which nobody else dared raise. In a first meeting over here it's considered totally inappropriate to mention money, but I could act the naive American and ask about the budget. It was met with nervous laughter but I usually got an answer."
There are numerous pitfalls for the unsuspecting British who think English is universally understood wherever it is spoken.
In the US, people can "grow" a beard or a tomato but not a company, and "slating" a meeting means that you schedule, not disparage it. Thus a headline "Third Harry Potter film slated" can mean good on one side of the Atlantic and bad on the other.
If people are asked whether they want hot milk in their coffee, "I don't care" in New York is the same as "I don't mind" in London, but reverse the response and they will get a reputation for surliness or indecision. This gap of misunderstanding reflects the different cultures and history that affects business between the two countries.
The well-known Irish author Oscar Wilde claimed that "the Americans and the British are identical in all respects except, of course, their language" Around the same time Henry Sweet, the famous British linguist, predicted that within 100 years American and British English would be mutually unintelligible.
Understanding the linguistic and cultural differences can make communication smooth. But even if the British and Americans learn each other抯 language, there is still a natural barrier that keeps two nations apart. As it is wisely observed: "America and Britain are divided by the Atlantic Ocean."
