British Drive on the Wrong Side, Too

One of the joys of traveling in the United Kingdom is that natives speak a sort of English, though it is not the same everywhere, and may be unintelligible in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

While English and American are the same language, their nouns and idioms are not interchangeable, as the parts of a car will demonstrate: A fender is a wing, a hood is a bonnet, a trunk is a boot, a generator is a dynamo, a muffler is an exhaust silencer and a tire is a tyre.

Dorothy and Robert Barrus of Camarillo were enchanted by road signs on a recent driving trip from London to Edinburgh and back. “Budge,” they found, meant that a driver should give ground to oncoming traffic at a construction site. Many California drivers, one finds, really hate to budge.

Do not overtake, of course, means “Do not pass.” Dead slow, or Give way, means proceed with caution. End of crawler lane means that one is reaching the top of a steep hill.

The Barruses were at first puzzled by a sign at a commercial rest site off the highway: “Football coaches not admitted unless registered in advance.” It was not, as they at first assumed, a bar to the persons who coach football teams, but to the buses that carry the teams or their sometimes rowdy fans.

They were amused by a sign at a housing center near Glasgow: “Caution: elderly crossing.” It is comforting to note that in Britain the same concern is accorded to the elderly that we accord to deer, livestock and golfers.

Jack Findlater, a fan of the British Broadcasting Corp., sends me a copy of a letter he sent to BBC asking them to clarify some of their language.

Findlater was not so concerned with the difference in nouns, such as lift for elevator , but with idiomatic phrases that differ from those used in America. He asks specifically the purpose of the phrase I’m afraid, when added to any commonplace statement. The secretary who answers, “He’s not in, I’m afraid.” Findlater wonders if this is supposed to convey fear, as the dictionary suggests.

He also wonders about the evidently meaningless addition of actually , as in, “Actually, I don’t feel like a drink,” or “He just came in, actually.”

“What useful purpose does the addition of actually serve?” he asks. “Is there a difference between ‘He just came in, actually,” and ‘He just came in.’ ”?

Actually, I’m afraid I can’t see any difference.

Findlater admits, actually, that he knows we also have many American phrases that are redundant or simply idiotic, like the inescapable at this point in time.

At this (or that) point in time seems to have come into widespread use during the Watergate scandal, having been drummed into the American conscience repeatedly by John Dean in his tedious but fatal testimony before the committee.

At this point in time it seems to have utterly replaced now and then .

Findlater also notes that in the United Kingdom highways are sometimes called carriage ways, which he calls “a quaint expression that conjures up visions of a road for hansom cabs or coaches-and-four.”

Carriage ways is obviously an archaism, and, as someone has said, “the British are stubborn” about relinquishing their past. Still, some plain words have such different meanings that confusion can result. Tube , for example, means TV in America; in England it means subway.

Alas, these quaint differences between the languages are being eroded by the cinema (movies), the telly (TV), and the wireless (radio).

The most subtle and charming differences are in words that are intelligible in both American and English, but not used in the same way. As Norman W. Schur points out in “British Self-Taught” (Macmillan), if an English and an American girl were out shopping together, the English girl might say, “Let’s go into that shop and look at that frock.” The American girl would say, ‘Let’s go into that store and look at that dress.” The English girl might say dress but never store . The American girl might say shop but never frock . “It is all rather delicate and subtle.”

Maybe H. L. Mencken was right: American is now the language and English is a dialect.