IMPRESSION 1: Learning to speak English

Do the English speak English? Do all Britons walk with a bowler hat and an umbrella? Will they queue for no reason? Are there lots of Mr Beans? To help answer this I thought I would give you some of my impressions of the culture of the people I have met so far.

IMPRESSION 1:
On the first question of 'English' don’t confuse ‘the English’ with the spoken ‘English’. I am still yet to work out how a country with a language named after itself can manage to make it sound like a mixture between Spanish and a mouth full of food. There are so many language differences throughout the country in the form of different accents and different words. People in Yorkshire sound very different to people in Surrey; a Somerset accent is very different from a Kent accent; it's hard to believe that people from Birmingham are speaking the same language as those from Cornwall; and I haven’t even been north yet to Scotland. I sometimes wonder if this has evolved just so the football louts know who to have a fight with.

The accents obviously work both ways. People are still getting used to me saying G’Day and calling people ‘mate.’ I don’t think they understand the use of this one word. We all know there are various versions of that four letter word. There’s the cheery ‘mate!’, the questioning ‘mayte?’, the cautionary ‘mayeet?’, the belligerent ‘MATE! I am slowly getting used to the fact that 'G’day mate' is not the correct way to approach someone in the street.

You never know - next time we meet I may even be saying “Good morning chaps”.

More to come.....