Y’all Come Back Now, Y’hear?: Speaking Yankee to the Brits

After binge-watching seasons of The OC, the English kids would try again only to sound like all-wrong Valley Girls. And we Americans kept at drinking bottlefuls of cheap white Lambrini wine chased with too-sweet Ribena juice, all the while reciprocally trying their linguistic-isms on for size, only to fail just as comically. Not a one of us could passably parrot the other, but we were hearing truly all the same.

Once a boy smuggled me soggy chips back from the dining hall in Styrofoam and valiantly assembled them with cheese, canned chili and candle light. I tried Yorkshire pudding and agreed heartily that it was “well nice.” It was like an offering and an integration, together.

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My time in England wasn’t my first international experience, but it was one of my longest-lasting, both for time spent as well as impressions made. I steeped myself there, willingly and perhaps even a bit vulnerably, so that what spoke in me was heard and answered, accent and all.

It is perhaps one of the things about travelling I like best: the realization that for all the miles and cultural nuances and linguistic hiccups that separate, there is nevertheless some curious core element that binds too. And, even in far flung places with funny accents and foreign foods, that innate, impossible-to-name thing roots out its counterpart, its fellow, and what is deeply human and shared speaks out loudly, clearly, over even the wonky vowels and the twanged catchphrases.

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