64. British Culture in America

I wrote about how I am appreciative of the Hispanic culture in America, but I would be crazy not to mention the British influence on our culture and how much I love it. I mean, come on, an Anglophile like me with a Master’s Degree in English? I’ve got to love it. In America we still use all of the English measurements from the pound to the mile. Oh sure, we don’t use the “imperial” gallon, but that was just a matter of 15^th century standardization. And our language, however Americanized we’ve made it, is still English. Yes, our English is probably a bit more apt to borrow pronunciations of the words from whatever original language they came. You won’t hear an American fishmonger (if we even have those!) tell you there’s a T at the end of that word when you ask for a salmon filet. We keep the French pronunciation because we know it’s not really an English word at all.

But come on. England has always been about taking on every culture as its own. How American is that? Maybe we don’t Anglicize the foreign words, but we certainly incorporate them into our everyday existence so that, in all honesty, we don’t really know why we don’t follow the typical Anglo pronunciations. Pints and quarts are as American as apple pie and that’s why we Americans, like any good Brit, know to mind our P’s and Q’s even when we’re all about watching everything else (except maybe our manners, which we do mind).

There’s no doubt that Americans are heavily influenced by our British brethren though most of us don’t even know it. It’s not just historically, but currently. We watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” “The Office,” and countless other TV shows that aren’t on PBS but still had their start not in Hollywood or New York but in London. We know about the Beatles and that British invasion, but “American Idol” is British? Yes, it is. And I don’t have a problem with it at all. I’m always up for a good bit of fun. And a nice spot of tea with a splash of milk because I appreciate how I’ve been shaped by my British ancestry and how it continues to influence my country.