Word Freaks
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (SEPTEMBER 2001)
There
are an estimated 1.5 billion English speakers in the
world — with another billion or so now toiling away
at their English language primers — and English is an
official language in more than 75 countries. Last year
a Dutch study found that one-third of the commercials
on Dutch television contained English words and phrases,
and in Taiwan, language students will tell you they’re
not just studying English — they’re learning American.
Indeed, as the language goes global, the question of
whose English gets spoken — and published — is assuming
tactical importance. Just ask any world-class Scrabble
player. There are two English Scrabble dictionaries,
according to Stefan Fatsis, author of Word
Freak (“Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession
in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players”), and
the high-strung wordsmiths are at odds over which one
to use. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,
with 110,000 words, is used in the US, while the Official
Scrabble Words, used in the UK and most of the rest
of the world, carries an additional 30,000 words. The
argument, Fatsis points out, isn’t really about language,
but about the number of words that have to be memorized.
“Because there is the feeling that American English
is what people speak in the rest of the world,” he says,
“Americans feel the dictionary should conform to our
version.”
Linguistic jingoism cuts both ways, however, and American
Scrabble aficionados may want to beware those other
word freaks — teenage girls who have been rampaging
through bookstores in search of Angus, Thongs and
Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison’s
novel that has stormed US young adult bestseller lists
as a Bridget Jones’ Diary for teens. No matter
that most Americans don’t know a snog from a snivel,
Rennison’s text is an unabridged lexicon of British
slang, where “swiz,” “wally,” and “prat” are thick on
the page. Snogging, of course, means kissing, and American
teens apparently can’t get enough of it. “Competition
to sound more British than their friends is so fierce
that thousands of teenagers in the US are writing to
Ms. Rennison demanding more Brit slang,” reports the
London newspaper Express. As Rennison tells the
paper, “American teenagers just cannot get enough of
these old-fashioned English expressions, and I think
it’s probably because they are a bit rude.”
In any case, don’t expect a snogging fad in South Korea.
In that nation, an American accent isn’t just a hot
commodity — it’s the only one. “The widespread anti-American
attitudes of the ’80s have vanished,” says Mark Curry,
a visiting professor at a South Korean university. “Now,
youngsters who cannot enter good Korean universities
look no further than North America to improve their
lot.” American English is also dominant in Japan and
Latin America, while British English monopolizes former
Commonwealth domains such as the Middle East and Africa.
Elsewhere, the reworking of English Language Teaching
(ELT) materials to fit linguistic tastes — like the
loutish Americanizing of Harry Potter — seems to be
on the wane. “Publishers are much more likely to create
an entirely new language course than to adapt an existing
one,” says Shelagh Speers, Director of ELT Publishing
at Scholastic. Still, some publishers supply
two audio recordings: one with a British accent, the
other American. And others load up a smorgasbord of
British, American, Australian, Irish, and Scottish accents,
all ready-to-hand for the jet-setter. Though the book
biz is clearly heading toward a one-size-fits-all edition
for English markets, it seems that for the moment, anyway,
we may be one world, but we are still many dialects.
©2001
Publishing Trends
