After spending a fortnight in various places around the USA: Wichita (Kansas), Kansas City (Missouri, not so obvious), Oklahoma City (Oklahoma, obviously) and Dallas (Texas). I saw how different the country is from the UK; their accent and dialect, driving skills (or lack of) and the size of both the country (and the people that live there).
America is obviously a vast place and naturally the population of major cities such as Dallas live in a more frantic way than those of Andover, just East of Wichita. A frustrating difference between the two nations is the way in which the Yanks drive. I know there are many shocking drivers in Britain, but I think the Americans top the amount of those shocking drivers! It could probably be argued as a good thing, but the majority stick to the speed limits far too much- it soon becomes clear that they’re all scared of the ‘state troopers’. Most people wait at a junction about three times as long as they really need to and then slowly creep out onto the road. However, the most infuriating part of their driving habits is that not one driver has any lane discipline on the freeways; the left hand lane (remember they drive on the ‘wrong side of the road) is often being hogged by a 40 something year old women on her phone, who has no awareness of anything around her. She’s put her 4x4 in cruise control and unless I flash repeatedly, there’s no way I’m going to get past 80. So I opt for almost every time this happens, I opt for the route of back to the right lane, speed past the middle aged woman too busy on her ‘cell’ to concentrate on the road, and back to the left lane. The freeways even have signs saying ‘’all slow moving vehicles stay within the right hand lane’’. Perhaps the Americans can’t read. Or, the more likely scenario; a lot of them are oblivious to anything else on the road.
‘May I have a bottle of water please?’
‘What?’ ‘
May I have a bottle of water please?’
‘A bardle o’ wawderr?’
I would have never have guessed that the American people actually speak the English language. The differences in the way we nations speak is huge. It’s not just the obvious different in our accents- it’s the vocabulary used. There are obvious words, which we know, such as soccer/football and petrol/gas. But it was when I ordered a KFC that I saw an amusing difference. For some bizarre reason a big bucket came with a number of ‘biscuits’. Now, firstly I thought I was going to get a packet of chocolate digestives to eat after my chicken. How wrong was I- I receive 2 scones with some honey and butter, to be eaten parallel with the chicken. I soon discover that there is no such word as a scone but they are in fact ‘biscuits’. My family who I’m visiting keep repeating it is not a scone, which I try and argue, naturally. I loose this battle because they (obviously) have a completely different word for what us Englishmen would call a biscuit. Ah, yes, a cookie- how could I forget? But the most concerning thing is why they are eating these so called biscuits with a KFC. Madness. Although there are many words we have inherited from the Americans (awesome, dude, rad and jerk to name a few) I most certainly won’t be picking up words with completely different semantics attached. I found it very odd that a lot of the Americans I interacted with, including the family I was staying with, found it difficult to understand my accent. Is a plain Surrey tone really that difficult to grasp? Perhaps I spoke too quickly; I dread to think how difficult it would be for a Geordie and a Texan to understand each other.
It is strange how different parts of America are to the United Kingdom. It really is a completely different a culture, a different way of life. There are obviously many aspects of life in the USA that are similar to our lives in England, but the different aspects are surprising. I think the size of the place has a lot to do with it; it’s as if they have too much space. And because of this great amount of space, many parts of America look exactly like a part you’ve just driven through- especially the suburbs of the major cities. Take Dallas and Oklahoma City for example; even though the Dallas outskirts sprawl for far longer, many parts of them could easily be in the outskirts of Oklahoma city. Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, American Bank, Ford, KFC and QT line the grid like streets. And as much as I like the USA, it would be nice if these suburbs had a little more character. Come to think of it though, Dallas had some rather nicely designed houses in their suburbs…
I believe there is one last thing which interests me about America: sport and it’s popularity. It is a known fact that American football (NFL) is the most popular sport in the country, followed by baseball, then basketball, ice hockey and lastly (our favourite) soccer. I will always find it difficult to grasp the fact that American football is so much more popular than the football the majority of Brits grow up to love this side of the Atlantic. Their answer is that football is ‘boring’, it is too ‘simple’ and not enough points or goals are scored. What? You have to be joking, right?. Nope- the Americans prefer a sport, which stops at least every five to ten minutes, and has so many rules I doubt even the players understand all of them. Now, if I’m being perfectly honest, I do enjoy watching American football (I’d be terrible at playing the game) and I do think it’s an exciting and interesting sport, but I just cannot understand why football/soccer is so unpopular in the States- the game moves faster than that of the American game, it’s smooth, it flows and well, it’s the beautiful game right? Not to the Americans. But I’m hoping all will change soon; many more kids are playing it in school, watching it on TV and showing far more of an interest than the adults who are too busy eating hot dogs while another fat man attempts to smack a ball with a bat over a fence (even that’s more exciting than football/soccer to the ordinary American). On Independence Day I was pleased to find that the youngsters at this party were far more eager to play football/soccer than American football. Some of them were rather good, but lacked any organisational concept of the game. I’m sure as coaching becomes better at schools, the standard of football in America will become far better, and hopefully the MLS will be able to compete with the giants of Europe. Time will tell but in my lifetime, the average Yank will either rather watch TV adverts every five minutes (American football), clap along to god awful organ music (baseball) or watch tall men run up and down to ‘put’ a ball into a hoop many times (basketball).
The Americans may find driving difficult, they may find speaking the English Language even harder, and they may not be enjoying the most exciting sport but I actually really like the place. The people are polite, most the country is clean and I felt safe everywhere I went (apart from once when a homeless man was following us underneath a freeway in Dallas). Maybe I’ve just been treading in the right places or bypassing the right people? But until my next visit, I don’t think I can slag the country off too much…
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