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On Being Dialectical [1]
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Date: 2023-03-06
I like this image a lot because it combines the flags of five of my favorite nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They are the core of the Western Alliance, united by incredible bonds: personal, economic, political, sporting, and in four of five, Head of State. They are also united in the "Five Eyes" agreement that puts them together for intelligence work. However, I'm not writing about James Bond and other skullduggery, real or fictional: I'm writing about how I can get along in any of these five countries with both of my accents: American for the United States and Canada, and British for the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
So for the past 40 years, my younger brother and I have sat in various seats at the various Yankee Stadiums, exhorting the various Yankee teams to victory, in our Bronx/Washington Heights accents and phraseology.
However, when it happens that Willie Randolph, Derek Jeter, or Aaron Judge has made an excellent defensive play, my response is not to shout, “Boy, did smooth move!” like a Yankee broadcaster, but to slip into an English accent and give an English-accented understated, “He did that rather well.”
And everyone next to me wonders where this New Yorker with the Limey voice came from.
The answer is simple: my parents.
Dad, Grandpa, and I are all New York natives. Grandpa grew up in the Lower East Side and what is now Spanish Harlem. Dad grew up in Inwood and Washington Heights. I grew up in Greenwich Village. From both I gained a thick New York accent and a massive appreciation for the history of the city of my birth.
For example, when I take people around New York, I don’t show them where Woody Allen lives – hell, I couldn’t tell you where that is – but I show them the marks in the side of the House of Morgan when domestic terrorists tried to blow it up with a donkey-drawn wagon full of explosives during the 1920 Red Scare. That was the first recorded such incident in Gotham’s history.
Dad and Grandpa were the quintessential New York Jews. They could not envision living anywhere but the New York area. The closest Dad came was moving to Hoboken, a similar place to Manhattan, where he could purchase and restore his own brownstone. He couldn’t afford to do that in Manhattan. He became so enamored of Hoboken, he founded the Hoboken Historical Museum. Yet he never lost his love of New York, of everything from the subways to the little markers in Central Park that tell pedestrians where they are.
Grandpa had a more interesting time – he worked in his drugstore in Inwood and Washington Heights all his life to secure a safe retirement for Grandma. They moved down to a retirement community in Florida, and Grandpa died in his sleep a month or two later. I later learned that such was common with retired men there: having accomplished their life mission of providing for their wives, they died peacefully in their beds. I know he missed New York.
From them, I gained the harsh nasal twang and vocabulary of New Yorkers, along with a smattering of Yiddish phrases. Grandma spoke it fluently.
One time I was watching her and Grandpa carrying on a conversation in Yiddish not meant for this 10-year-old’s ears, and I asked her, “What language is that, Grandma?”
She laughed and said, “Chinese.”
I believed her. I told my friends that my grandmother could speak Chinese. Next time they all came over and she was there, I asked her to say something in Chinese. She was baffled, then irritated.
While I was learning to speak at one end of the Atlantic Ocean from Dad’s family, I was also learning the other end from Mom, and, on occasion, her family.
Mom’s family is from Manchester and London. They have provided the Crown with Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Civil Servants from Charles II (1680) to Charles III (2023). That has had three major impacts on me.
The first is divided loyalties. When I was in the Navy, I knew there was no way I would ever drop a bomb of any sort on London. I told people “A patriot is a person who loves his country. A nationalist is a person who hates every other country. I cannot hate Britain as my family is from there…I love it, having been there.” Like New York, Britain is the “mystic dirt of home.” So is New Zealand, where I lived for three years, got married, and my daughter was born. And so are the other two nations of the “Old Commonwealth,” whose Head of State is HM Charles III.
Second, because so many family members took the King’s Shilling and fought in action from Blenheim to Burma to Bosnia, I’m a fanatical monarchist. When people say, “Oh, this Commonwealth nation should become a republic and sever ties with that dysfunctional English family,” I say, “Yeah, and then you can elect your own version of Donald Trump. Or Idi Amin. Or Benito Mussolini. Or Don Alfredo Stroessner. Or any of hundreds of other politicians who turned into tyrants and crooks. The monarch and/or the Governor-General can ‘advise, counsel, and warn.’ They also remind the public what the nation should be.”
Third, and most importantly, Mom gave me an “educated London” accent. Not the Cockney accent you hear in movies and GEICO commercials. Just a standard English voice. It’s closer to a BBC reader than a “Monty Python” character.
The transition is incredibly simple. I often do it within sentences. It often happens unbidden.
For example, I’ll be watching a news report, and the reporter will tell us that some questionable figure is going to “tell the truth” in an upcoming exclusive interview. I slip right into my English accent and say, “Well, you ain’t gonna get far.”
There are phrases I instinctively use in conversation or reaction that can only be rendered in a particular accent. For example, I cannot say “bloody hell” – which I do, frequently – in an American accent. Same with other English insults that will likely trip warning sites on this page.
On the flip side, I don’t call people “nutballs,” “jackasses,” “jerks,” in an English accent, or say “He’s dealing with 37 cards” in a British manner, either. The precise words I use in speaking, particularly reactions, are divided by “the pond.”
So is subject matter. With the exception of “He did that rather well,” I cannot discuss baseball in an English accent. Period.
My love of baseball came from Grandpa and Dad, and that’s all New York. Every aspect of my views about, fascination with, and love of baseball is rendered in a New York accent, down to the relevant obscenities.
“You gotta be freaking kidding me!” is my common reaction to a bizarre baseball development. I cannot say, “Bloody fools!” or “Twits!”
Oddly, I know absolutely nothing about cricket and rugby, and don’t care for soccer – or as it’s called outside America, “football.” I can’t believe a sport where a 0-0 score after a full game is an acceptable outcome. American football is called “gridiron football” in the UK, where they play a regular-season NFL game once a week. It’s only baseball for me.
However, when my favorite sport, and one of my two favorite teams took on its most hated rival in the London Olympic Stadium in July 2019 for a two-game set, I was beyond excited. The New York Yankees were the “visitors,” the Boston Red Sox the “home” team. The Yankees wore their home pinstripes anyway.
HRH the Duke and Duchess of Sussex greeted both teams before the games. The teams also got the ₤5 tour of London from the top of a double-decker bus. The most important part was that both teams spread the gospel of youth baseball while there, with both active-duty players and old-timers talking up the cause. I enjoyed seeing Reggie Jackson and Nick Swisher representing the Yankees to young generations of English baseball players, hoping that one of those kids would make it to the majors.
The only problem I had with the two-game series was that the first game, on Saturday, was broadcast on Fox TV. The second was on ESPN. That meant that in order to watch these historic games, I had to sit through some of the worst announcers in Christendom.
Here’s why I can’t stand Fox. First, Joe Buck got his job because he’s legendary broadcaster Jack Buck’s son, not on his understanding of Major League Baseball. He shows it. Worse, Fox regards MLB as merely being a marketing tool for their prime-time programming, so they place green screens all over ballparks to show rotating ads for said shows.
The most revolting portion of a Fox baseball broadcast comes during the inning – not between innings – when Ken Rosenthal stands in a dugout and interviews some celebrity, who “just happens” to be sitting in the first row.
What a concept! Another phrase I can only say in an American accent.
The game is put into a small corner on the lower left, so you can’t really see it, and we get a full view of Rosenthal interviewing the celebrity bubblehead.
The star tells us how he/she/it is a huge baseball fan, always rooting for the “Los Angeles Lakers,” and always arrives before the “kickoff.”
Undeterred, Rosenthal then casually asks the star about his/her/its upcoming show on Fox. That, at least, the star can talk about with authority: the mismatched buddy show involving two police officers, one a Boston blueblood, the other a reformed LA stripper, who break into song and dance when arresting suspects. Or something like that.
By the time the interview is over, so is the inning, and we have no idea that Aaron Judge belted a three-run homer to put the Yankees up, 5-0.
ESPN has different problems. Their top analyst is Hall of Fame pitching legend John Smoltz, who won 200 games and saved 200 games. Pretty nifty, that. Another phrase I can only say in American.
However, Smoltz hurled for the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox when the Yankees regularly humiliated both teams, so when he goes in the booth to analyze the Yankees, out comes his venom, which I cannot bear to hear.
So how did I solve the problem of watching the London Series and not having to listen national jerks?
Simple: I turned down their sound, plopped down my radio next to the TV, and listened to Jon Sterling and Suzyn Waldman do the Yankees’ official broadcast. The only problem was that radio was ahead of TV – there was a 10-second TV delay, so the home runs went out before I saw them be hit. Otherwise, it was great. And the good guys won both games in fairly dramatic fashion, despite heat, an unusual ballpark, and my having to go to the vet during the second game with my family to put down a very sick dog, which put a major damper on the day.
I later learned that BBC Sports Worldwide also did the game, and I would have liked to have heard their take. I wonder how the British render such American baseball terms as “ducks on the pond,” “Texas Leaguer,” “Rung him up,” “Frozen him in the zone,” “Pop up fell in the Bermuda Triangle,” and “dinger.”
In New Zealand, I saw the best softball team ever – a collection of colorful Maoris who learned their sport from Mormon missionaries. They never saw an actual MLB game. I never had the chance to show the coach my videos of the 1987 and 1989 Giants and the 1996 World Series. She would have enjoyed them.
Anyway, in New Zealand, a “Full Count” is called a “Full House.” Clever, but I haven’t picked it up.
Other fun British terms I use in my English accent: “About bloody time; about bloody last; there’s another man with all the answers; Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Stanley; Another man who wants his money back; haven’t a clue, mate,” and always, “rather,” rendered like a doctor doing, “Say ‘ahhh,’” to a patient.
Speaking of “mate,” I have been known to start a sentence in American and end it in English with “mate,” so a sentence starts off: “Can’t help you,” and finishes, “mate.” Pretty neat, that. The “pretty neat” sentence is usually American.
One of my favorite English phrases is one I often use when dealing with extreme idiots: “Get it sorted out!” Sometimes the last two words are rendered in full caps.
There are words I can only give out in “American:”
“Guy; Fella; Gotta; I’ve seen enough; I don’t believe this; Screwed up; Chaos reigns; What the Hell; Nutball; Mickey Mouse Operation; Holy Canoli,” and phrases I got from my in-laws, like “Gagootz.”
Nor can I render the American style of comedy, which is based on slapstick and the Jewish theater in an English accent: “A shame for the neighbors is this!” That has to given in as thick a New York accent as possible.
Mostly in those situations, I’m mimicking Grandma and her three sisters, who used to grill me at age 15 about my morals and whether or not I was going to marry a nice Jewish girl soon. I was just hoping to meet ANY girl and find out the answer to the two big teenage mysteries: what was under that dress and could I play with it.
“You’re such a good boy, just like your father and grandfather. Not like your gantze mizpocha, who is writing doctor novels for a living. A shame for the family that is!” they’d say. Actually, I once stumbled on one of those novels, and while it was not a shame for the family, it was more about Hollywood glitz than hospital drama. It wasn’t very good, either. However, I’m pretty arrogant about my writing abilities.
I also become highly American when discussing the New York Subway (one of my two favorite ways to travel) and American history. Invariably, that is delivered in an American accent, and I talk about “us” and “our.” If anyone asks me, I will tell them: the four greatest American accomplishments are:
1. The founding American charters. (Declaration of Independence and Constitution, for all of the latter’s manifold faults)
2. Ending slavery in the Civil War and beginning the long, slow, plod for equality for all. (including Jews, Irishmen, African-Americans, Latinos, gays, women, and left-handed Baptists who drive De Sotos)
3. Freeing a suffering humanity in World War II. (That was one of the most unselfish acts in history)
4. Putting men in space and finally on the Moon. (We basically did it to prove that it could be done)
To me, that’s “us,” the Americans, and I treat it as such. I cannot discuss those subjects in an English accent, unless a term like “Good Christ!” or “God’s Teeth!” pops in. In my American accent, my response would be “Holy Guacamole!”
However, across the pond, when I discuss British subjects – usually history, the perspective completely shifts. Suddenly the United Kingdom (and New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and any other nation whose Head of State is HM Charles III, by Grace of God, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith), becomes “us.”
In the United States, I’m a moderately liberal Democrat. In the British Commonwealth, I’m a liberal Conservative, an exemplar of what Lord Randolph Churchill called “Tory Democracy,” which sought to expand the party’s reach to the working class.
Other British phrases I sometimes used: “gutted,” “knackered,” “cheesed off,” “browned off,” and “kip,” which means to take a nap.
Some of my English phrases are a little outdated, as they came from older relatives: I tell people to “play the game.” In America, that would be “man up.” A more recent English phrase I use is when I snarl at a wheedling panhandler to “naff off sharpish,” which Americans would render in even more unpleasant terms.
I’m sorry, I won’t support a panhandler’s drug and liquor addiction. I know about Newark’s immense programs to support the homeless, which include the conversion of shipping containers into temporary housing, with medical, employment, and other counseling, all for free. Use them. Stop begging.
Anyway, British history is “our history.” “Our ships” and “our regiments” are manned by “tars” and/or “chaps.” Never “fellas” or “guys.” Our chaps “sorted out” the “Boxheads, Goons,” or “Jerries” on D-Day or in the Rhineland. A Fleet Air Arm Seafire “pranged” on landing on the flight deck of HMS Illustrious. “Enlisted men” are “Other Ranks.” American Sailors sleep in “Berthing Compartments” and eat in a “Galley.” British Sailors sleep in “Lower Decks” and eat in a “Messdeck.” American warships have a “Combat Information Center,” while British warships have an “Ops Room.”
Oh, and Americans eat “lunch” and “dinner.” Britons eat “supper” and “tea.”
In London, I enjoy riding my other favorite form of transportation in the world: the London Underground. It has three weaknesses compared to New York: distance fares, few express lines, and it closes at midnight. On the other hand, the London Tube goes EVERYWHERE, they keep adding to it, and it’s very efficient. Both the New York Transit Museum and the London Transport Museum are fantastic.
As we also know, British humor is very different from American humor and communication.
Dad met Mom in London in 1949. She was among a bunch of British college students hosting a bunch of American college students. They agreed to go to an Odeon to see a movie. Mom assumed Dad knew where they were going. Dad thought there was only one Odeon in London.
Instead of watching 12 O’Clock High or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, they watched Abbott and Costello Join the French Foreign Legion. This miscommunication set the pace for a 37-year marriage, but helped Mom learn about American humor from when Dad cracked up at Bud and Lou.
Meanwhile, Dad never – never – figured out British humor. While Mom and I would roll on the floor at British puns and running gags, he sat there stupefied. I still quote “Monty Python,” always in the original English.
And now for something completely different: my parents got married on Columbus Day 1957, at St. George’s Hotel in Brooklyn. The two families met and faced each other in mutual politeness, incomprehension, and puzzlement.
The Britons could not understand why the Americans scarfed down vast amounts of chopped liver, all ran drugstores and small businesses, and talked so openly of family issues. “You know that Uncle Frank sold $84 worth of tickets to a sold-out Bar Mitvah. Oy, the shame! But don’t tell him.”
The Americans could not understand why the Britons were so reserved, mostly worked in government (some in weird places like Southern Rhodesia, wherever that was), and weren’t interested in hearing their stories. “They want me as Deputy Postmaster in Salisbury, and I thought that was in England. Turns out I’m off to Southern Africa.”
At least two things went well: the wedding itself and the drinks: champagne for all, coffee for the Americans, and tea for the British.
The result is that I wound up with two voices, and they pop out at any time. It has some advantages: when I gave lectures on the US Antarctic Program in New Zealand, I could change my accent, depending on the audience. Senior citizens liked to hear my English accent. Youth wanted to hear my American voice.
The kids wanted to know if I had ever been a member of any of these organizations: a Los Angeles street gang, a rap group, or an NBA basketball team. I explained a few realities to them on those subjects.
Had I ever met anyone famous? I pointed out that the United States had 400 million people…did baseball players and actor Bill Murray count? The players went over their heads, and they’d never heard of the movie “Groundhog Day.”
New Zealand had just launched its fourth TV channel – did we have four TV channels in the United States? We had 57 channels and nothing on, I said, borrowing from Bruce Springsteen. Shocked looks all around.
An Air France Concorde had just flown in to Christchurch with a group tour. Did the Concorde ever fly to America? Yes, at the time, three times a day to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The kids were amazed. Incidentally, for the most part, New Zealand kids were well-behaved on my tours. After I ordered their teachers to get them away from our candy machine, which only took American currency, that is.
The most astonishing thing would come at the end, when the teacher would say, “Little Duncan has something he wants to say. Duncan?”
Duncan would then rise, and with careful rehearsal, say, “On behalf of the Fourth Grade of Waikickamoucow School, I would like to thank you for giving us this tour.”
At which point, amazed – New York kids, including me, would say tours like this “suck” or “blow,” being snot-nosed little sociopaths – I would slip into my English accent and say, “Thanks, awfully!” or say, “Oh, jolly good!”
Then I have to explain the accent.
The tours for adults and seniors were different. In many cases, I went out to some venue, like a church or a senior center with my slide carousel and narrated a visual history of the British and American Antarctic programs: Scott, Shackleton, Byrd, and today’s program.
The first thing the proprietors would do would be to ask me if I wanted a cup of coffee, me being American.
I replied, each and every time, in my English accent, “No, but have you got any tea going?”
They overcame double astonishment and always provided tea. I did the lectures in both accents. Actually, the request for tea had less to do with English ancestry than one would think.
The greatest baseball broadcaster of them all, Red Barber, wrote that broadcasters should not drink coffee before doing a game, but tea. It’s better for the vocal cords, he decreed. As I am not a coffee fan, I saw his point. Tea works. It also connected me directly to New Zealanders, who are more like the British than Australians.
After going over the history of the program, adults and seniors would ask a few questions about Antarctica, but then they’d move to their real fascination: an Anglo-American abroad. None of these folks had much interest in Antarctica beyond the slides and the souvenir rocks I’d pass around.
The result was that I spent 50 percent of the lecture telling them about Antarctica. I spent the other half about marrying my girlfriend from Hoboken in Christchurch (a mere 8,981 miles from New York), our daughter being born in Christchurch (and thus having dual nationality), and how our pure-bred Doberman Pinscher Leah the Wonder Dog made history by becoming the first dog to fly direct from the United States to New Zealand. After doing so, Leah became a national scandal for her cropped ears. New Zealand Dobie owners are not allowed to crop ears. I told that story, too, and how we dealt with it.
After that, I simply incorporated my personal story into the lectures.
Speaking in two accents has led to many interesting and unusual things in my life. I call “lieutenants” “leftenants.” When I’m discussing a “schedule,” I don’t pronounce it with the “k.” In both cases, I change accents appropriately, often the entire sentence.
My situation is not unique. Two well-known actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Gillian Anderson, who were brought up on both sides of “the pond,” have it as well. It gives them opportunities to expand their acting range.
Ms. Anderson played a Scottish doctor in Uganda in “The Last King of Scotland” and teamed up with David Duchovny as FBI agents pursuing UFOs in “The X-Files.”
Actor Robert Downey seems to have it, too, although he grew up in Manhattan and doesn’t have a British mother like I did. He still played real Briton Charlie Chaplin and fictional Briton Sherlock Holmes with effectiveness.
All of this double-talk had an interesting result when I was in the Defense Information School back in July 1991. I had to audition for Navy Broadcasting training, which consisted of reading some lines into a microphone.
The reviewing Journalist First Class told me my voice was a mix of “London and the Bronx,” which made me unsuitable for a broadcast assignment in the US Navy.
I stood there, faced the man, and said, first in English, “Well, look here, old boy,” then switched to American, “What the heck are youse talking about?”
They sent me to a broadcast detachment in Japan anyway.
[END]
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