That's Not English by Erin Moore Read Free Book Online

using it every chance they get. But how did
gobsmacked
go from a semi-obscure regionalism in northern England and Scotland in the 1950s, not showing up in the OED until 1987, to international ubiquity?
    The word has been common parlance on English TV shows like
Coronation Street
, England’s longest-running soap, for decades. Through television, it spread to southern England, where most of the English media are based.
Gobsmacked
began to appear in print around 1985 (according to the
OED
, first in
The
Guardian
), and its spread through the UK was soon complete. But this Britishism had yet to take Manhattan. Some commentators date Americans’ increasing use of
gobsmacked
to Susan Boyle’s star turn on
Britain’s Got Talent
in 2009. The self-described “cat lady” from Scotland wiped the smug smirk off Simon Cowell’s face with her pitch-perfect performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from
Les Misérables
. Her performance went viral, and she described herself as “gobsmacked” in dozens ofinterviews in the days that followed. Still, I believe there is more to the story.
    England and America have always traded slang. When America was young, and Anglophobia was strong, Americans resented any incursion. There was a drive to distance American from British English. Noah Webster’s 1806
Compendious Dictionary of the English Language
(the predecessor to his more authoritative and complete 1828
American Dictionary of the English Language
) was America’s first. It was a political document, an attempt to enshrine American independence through language, and to introduce uniform spellings for the first time. Webster’s essay “On the Education of Youth in America” left no one in doubt of his position:
    Americans, unshackle your minds, and act like independent beings. You have been children long enough, subject to the control and subservient to the interest of a haughty parent. You have now an interest of your own . . . an empire to raise and support by your exertions, and a national character to establish and extend by your wisdom and virtues. To effect these great objects, it is necessary to frame a liberal plan of policy, and build it on a broad system of education. Before this system can be formed and embraced, the Americans must
believe
, and
act
from the belief, that it is dishonorable to waste life in mimicking the follies of other nations and basking in the sunshine of foreign glory.
    Webster’s
American Spelling Book
, also known as the “Blue Backed Speller,” was one of America’s earliest bestselling books, providing American children with a moral and academiceducation for more than 160 years and reinforcing the spelling reforms (
colour
became
color
,
theatre
became
theater
,
oesophagus
became
esophagus
, etc.) that are among the most lasting aspects of Webster’s legacy. America’s beloved spelling bees are another, taking place at every level from the smallest classroom in the remotest corner of the country to the national contest, which is televised. Americans have a history of being territorial about their language, and it continues today, though England’s slang is the least of their worries. Now that Americans have established their national character, they find English slang charming, if always a little pretentious, regardless of a word’s original class connotations in England. Americans still love to think of themselves as uncorrupted by such things, but Ben Yagoda, an author and professor of English at the University of Delaware, tracks the progress of NOOBs (Not One-Off Britishisms)—traditionally British expressions that have been widely adopted in the United States—and he never runs out of material.
    Meanwhile, in England, one sees articles with headlines like “Top Ten Most Annoying Americanisms.” Matthew Engel, in a BBC article titled “Why Do Some Americanisms Irritate People?,” neatly captured the anxiety over American influence with a militaristic metaphor: “What the world