If you think they refer to umbrellas as bumbershoots in the UK, think again. The word bumbershoot actually originated in the United States; in Britain, it’s more likely a brolly. You’ll learn that and much more about the differences between British English and American English in the marvelous new book The Prodigal Tongue by linguist Lynne Murphy. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Real British English”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. If I call my umbrella a bumbershoot, I suspect that most people in this country would say, oh, she’s using a Britishism. But they wouldn’t say that if they’d read the wonderful new book by Lynn Murphy. It’s called The Prodigal Tongue, The Love-Hate Relationship between American and British English. Murphy is a linguist who grew up in New York State, but she’s lived for the past 18 years in Brighton, England.
And Grant, as you know, her book is a delight.
And it goes far, far beyond the usual tired treatments of the differences between these two kinds of English.
We’ve all heard, for example, the stories of how the trunk of your car is a boot.
Right, yeah, or the bonnet and so forth.
Right, or knock me up in the morning, which in Britain means to wrap on my door to wake me up.
Or could mean that, but doesn’t have to mean that.
She kind of gets to that.
Right.
But the prodigal tongue shows us how much more there is to understand about these kinds of differences.
For example, in the case of bumbershoot, this term for umbrella originated not in England, but right here in the United States in the early 20th century.
And it became associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who’s often depicted in cartoons with an umbrella.
And then there was the 1968 Disney movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which had a British character in there who talked about his hat and his bumper chute.
But in England, there’s an entirely different slang term for umbrella, and that’s brawly.
Brawly, B-R-O-L-L-Y, brawly.
Right. So lots of stereotypes and misunderstandings get cleared up in this book.
And we’re going to talk about some more of them later in the show.
Yeah, the stereotypes and misunderstandings are what appealed to me most about this, because I think what Lynn Murphy has done with this book, The Prodigal Tongue, has created the new definitive linguistics-focused work on the differences between American and British English.
Like, I think I don’t have to look at my other books anymore.
This is the one.
This is the one.
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