Years ago I used to lecture at the University of Connecticut. Invariably my students would gently mock my pronunciation of such words as "out" and "about" or raise a Spockian eyebrow at expressions such as "going down cellar" or "heading back north". Luckily I was smug enough to be assured that my way of saying words or use of figures of speech was, if not the norm, a sign of my excellent use of the Queen’s English (the King died when I was just a baby so I can’t claim to have picked up much from him!). After all, growing up, I knew that all of the TV news commentators from the U.S. sounded like they had been educated in Toronto—what could be more affirming than that?!
Imagine my shock the other day when my son Quinn asked me to make him an "Ang-glish" muffin. It all of a sudden occurred to me that Quinn, who has lived more than half of his life in Bermuda, had developed his own dialect that was an interesting blend of that of his school friends and his family.
In doing so, he had captured an interesting and somewhat unique aspect of life in Bermuda—a compact society, almost exclusively English speaking, with a global range of pronuncia-tions, expressions, and distinct vocabulary.
The lingua franca at Somersfield (which is a great microcosm of the country) is characterized by anglophones from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. all blended in with the distinctive lilt, cadence and expressiveness of native Bermudians. Our spellings see "u’s" added and dropped (honor, honour); z’s become s’s (organize, organise) and vice versa; "me" coming and going from programme; and even a titanic struggle for su-premacy between "zee" and "zed". One set of teachers tells students to "review" their work, while the other says to "revise" it. Petrol/gas; football/soccer; suspenders/braces, it is amazing that we can communicate at all!
My conversations are now peppered with expressions such as "no worries" (I used to say "no problem") , "brilliant" ("terrific"), and "sar" ("I am terribly sorry"). And I have learned a lot of unique Bermudianims as well: now I know how to "rest it down"; "cut cross" in a conversation; or trust my "first mind". No Canadian would ever use the word "coolish" (especially for temperatures that we would call "hot"!) and I am getting used to driving my "onliest" car. Where does all of this come from? The dialects that we hear all around Bermuda are a product of the islands’ rich heritage and history and its role as a cross-roads for the English-speaking world. Some things don’t change though. When Quinn reminds me at breakfast that he "axed" for an muffin, he is pronouncing the word exactly as Sir George Somers would have 400 years ago.
That is the richness, and persistence of language.
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