On Friday evenings, I tutor a 15-year-old girl named Angela in English. Although Angela has been studying English in school for the past five years, she has not learned the past tense nor the future, and her vocabulary is quite limited. Despite this, she catches on rather quickly, and has improved significantly in the few weeks that we've been working together. Because of her rapid progress, I asked her about her English class at school. After all, if she is smart enough to catch on to new concepts as quickly as I have witnessed, why doesn't she know more grammar and vocabulary from her school course?
"Well," She told me in French, "This week we worked on present tense sentences with verbs that require prepositions, such as 'listen to', 'wake up', 'fall down', etc."
Okay, well those are useful and she already seems to have mastered them, so at least I'm sticking to her curriculum with my lessons, I thought.
"Oh, also, " she continued, "Our teacher gave us this." She handed me a sheet of paper. Looking it over, I saw that it explained the differences in spelling between UK English and American English - things like theatre vs. theater, organise vs. organize, etc.
"Yes, this is right," I told her. I try to teach the kids here English from the UK because the chances are that they might not ever make it to the USA, but most of them will go to the UK at some point. "We also have a lot of different words," I explained. "Because I'm American, I might teach you things that are a little different, but it's probably better if you do what you're learning in school if we come across something I teach you that you've already learned differently."
"Okay. Oh, yeah," She said as she flipped the paper over, revealing two lists she had hand-written. "Our teacher gave us this list of some different words between English and American English."
As I looked at the list, I was excited to see some differences between American English and UK English. I never realized until I lived in France how many different words and expressions we have. The first thing on the list was "cinema" for the English and "movies" for us. Yeah, that's a good one, I thought. Quickly, the smile faded from my face.
"Your teacher had you write this down?" I exclaimed.
"Yes." Angela replied.
"But this is wrong!" I said, staring at the list. "These are just so wrong! I wish I had my camera, I would take a photo of this list and show everyone I know in the States that French kids are being taught that we are idiots!"
Angela laughed. I finally tore my eyes away from her list, handed it back to her, and we began the lesson. In writing this, I realize that I never explained to her why I was upset. She must have just thought I was upset that the students had been taught incorrect words. The following is the list, as I can remember it.
English American
cinema movies
night nite
doughnut donut
going to gonna
want to wanna
see you cya
A few minutes into the lesson, I just couldn't resist talking about the list again.
"Why are the titles just "English" and "American"? Those are just adjectives without a noun!" At this point, I was just trying to find anything wrong with what the teacher had told them.
"Non, non," She replied, "Those are the names of the different languages," she told me.
"English and American?" I replied, faintly sensing my jaw touch the floor. "American is not a language."
"It's not?" She asked innocently.
I took a breath, reminding myself that my issue is not with Angela but with her teacher, who apparently studied English at the prestigious Text Message University. "No, in the US we speak English. We call it American Standard English, the 'American Standard' referring to the dialect. But it is English, just like how in Quebec they speak French. Even though it is different than your French, it is still French."
"Oh," She nodded. French people can all relate to Quebec for some reason.
As the saying goes, "You learn something new everyday." All my life I thought I spoke English!
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