The PaddlerUK magazine July 2015 issue 3 | Page 65

STEFFAN MEYRIC HUGHES

You call it class, I call it grade…
let’s call the whole thing off
Steffan Meyric Hughes on two nations
separated by a common language

American modifications to English used to be a staple lament of the English. We used
to complain bitterly that they removed the ‘u’ from ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and so on; that
their expression was intemperate and crude, their new words so often rooted in the
enthusiasms of the day rather than in the scholarly traditions of Greek and Latin.
These days, most of us just speak in American English – perhaps unconsciously (“I’m
good” for instance, has largely taken over from “I’m well”). Nowhere has this
backdoor cultural hegemony been stronger than in kayaking, starting with the word
‘kayak’ itself. When I started paddling in the late 80s, we were all canoeists, doing
canoeing in… canoes. Our magazine of choice was, of course,The Canoeist. No one
went boating, the only sending that was done was of letters and postcards and people
did not fire things up.They just got on with it.

This Americanisation is all the more strange in a
culture that (outwardly) at least has come to
vilify, or even reject American values. Even
would-be leaders of Britain lapse into American
slang, like Ed Miliband, whose answer to Jeremy
Paxman recently, on the question of whether or
not he was tough enough to be PM, was the
speakeasy-vintage “Hell Yeah!”. Sometimes
though, American terms are better than their
British counterparts. Even Fowler and Fowler,
the best commentators on English usage there
have ever been, are fair-minded enough to
comment in The King’s English that ‘fall’, for
instance, is a superior word to ‘autumn’ in every
respect: more descriptive, more Anglo-Saxon,
and shorter.

The willingness of English to accept new words
is its strength, say some. This is not usually true:
new terms usually displace old ones rather than
complement them, and growth through
ignorance is just lexicographical cancer.
So the challenge for those of us who care about
our language is, therefore, one of judgement: if
an American word or phrase is better than an
English one, let’s use it. “Go big or go home” is,
for instance, a lot stronger than “do your best or
leave now”. If it’s not, let’s get high on our own
(dwindling) word supply instead.

Access, egress/put-in, take-out

Steffan has been
paddling on and off
since 1988, when he
first stepped into a
Perception Mirage.
He is a keen
historian of the
sport and author of
Circle Line: around
London in a Small
Boat (2012). These
days, he paddles a
dark blue Jackson
AllStar (2010). He is
a full-time yachting
journalist in his day
job.

Access points and egress points sound like Alan
Partridge trying to write the Highway Code. The
Americans open their score on this one, with
the vastly preferable “put-in” and “take-out”.

P D L RUK 65
A DE