You hear a lot about Ugly American behavior. You don’t hear so much about the ugly behavior of people from other countries. But it happens. Yesterday I was working at the HOSC and was doing an experiment with four British guys (and they were like 18, so a bit older than the typical visitor). The first half of the experiment goes along swimmingly. But it all crumbles in the second half, when one of the guys decides that he needs to correct my pronunciation of the word “vitamin.” Apparently Brits say it “vit-a-min,” whereas Americans say it more like “vite-a-min.” But he will not let this go. It was hard enough trying to explain what Kool-Aid is; I don’t need to deal with the differences between English and American English. Particularly when he started in on the whole, “We spoke it first blah blah blah” thing. I manage to push through the “vitamin” debate, only to have it start again when I say “iodine.” British pronunciation: “i-o-deen.” American pronunciation: “i-o-dine.” Argh. I was ready to smack this boy around by the end of the half hour. But the three guys he was with were nice. Oh, and none of them were cute enough to compensate for this; even their accents couldn’t counteract it.
Current song in my head:
“England 2 Columbia 0” by Kirsty MacColl