Tuesday 2 August 2011

American boy

Littleboy 1 seems to be becoming more American than ever as a result of attending summer camp.

As well as him starting to call me 'Mom' rather than 'Mummy' (at which point I usually look around me, and say "Who's Mom? I don't see a Mom around here?"- it amuses me anyway) we have had several little debates over words and instances where I really haven't understood what he was going on about.

Standing in the queue for a water slide one day, he informed me that 'that boy is cutting me!'. I whirled around defensively, looking to see if someone was trying to hurt my son somehow and preparing to berate them, but saw no evidence of this. "What on earth do you mean?" I asked him. "He's cutting me! He's cutting the line!"

"Ah, you mean pushing in!" I answered. Yet another US expression I hadn't heard before.

Yesterday it rained, and despite it still being about 28 degrees outside he returned from camp wearing the jumper we'd been asked to provide at the start of camp. "You're wearing your jumper!" I said. "At camp we call it a jacket," he said.

"Well, it's not a jacket. It's definitely a jumper - or you could also call it a sweater, here, or a jersey."

He laughs hysterically. "How can it be a jersey? It doesn't have a baseball team on the front!"

A new enthusiasm for baseball also means that I have to play it with him in the evenings and am learning all about home runs and foul balls. I think my son is a little unimpressed that I talk about 'bowling' instead of pitching and keep trying to equate it to rounders. I am not good when it comes to these US sports and have only just worked out that one of the games he plays at camp is 'cone ball', not 'corn ball'.

But never mind. He has three days at a 'soccer camp' next week and I know all about that (well, more than I do about baseball anyway). I'll nonchalantly make some remark about the offside rule as I drop him off. Just have to remember not to call it football.......

13 comments:

Conuly said...

Some people also call it skipping, instead of cutting.

MsCaroline said...

Poor Mum/Mom! It really is a foreign language! My (Canadian) mother was always 'Mummy/Mum' which I had no trouble with because I went to a British school before moving to International Schools in Bangkok. Until we moved to the States when I was almost 10,I had no idea that I was calling my mother the 'wrong' name. Harder for me was having my own boys and very instinctively expecting to refer to myself as 'Mummy' but realizing that it might come across as extremely pretentious in our small city in Kentucky, where they hadn't run into many Canadians and wouldn't get why I referred to myself as 'Mummy' when I had no British accent.
Wishing you luck at reclaiming your dignity at soccer camp, but I suggest you bone(swot) up- do you use 'bone up' for studying?- on American soccer parlance before you start flaunting your knowledge. God only knows what we've done with that vocabulary.....
(on a personal note, I suspect I'm about to enter your world. Son #2's school has a large British division and the high school students take many classes together. Son #2 is taking I(international)GCSE classes which means most of his classmates will be British...I shall bookmark this post for future reference.)

Expat mum said...

I did this too but really, when you raise kids in a foreign country, you have to let them speak the lingo. It makes them feel more included and at the end of the day, if they;re really little, that;s all they know.
These day my kids are bi-lingual. They say "mum" and "mom" and know to say "please" when an American probably wouldn't.

Elsie Button said...

i think it's great that he is settling in so well, and throwing himself into it - must be fascinating (if confusing at times)for you to observe.

I am still trying to get over Betty suddenly deciding to call me 'mum' - not quite the same i know!

Kit said...

Don't worry, he's bound to switch back to English english once you return to the UK.
It's soccer here too and I keep calling it football by mistake. I've surrendered to most of the South Africanisms but am holding out against the ones that I consider grammatically incorrect, of which there are many!

Circles in the Sand said...

LOVE IT Alex! Brilliant post- love how you're holding onto your Englishness (you can take the girl out of England...and all that!) and I love that felix is enjoying all things American! It's such a shame that max doesn't remember anything about America. They really do love sports in the US - great for wearing little boys out! I think the American schools in Dubai are quite sports oriented. We're in England! Yesterday found ourselves playing in a sandpit in really hot and humid weather, home away from home!

Iota said...

I've come to the conclusion that the mom/mum divide is really a matter of accent. It's really mahm/mahm - perhaps the English version is a little more clipped, but it's not as different as the spelling makes it look.

Nota Bene said...

Well he's obviously happy and settled!

About Last Weekend said...

Yes my kiwi friends keep berating me through facebook about using words like broiling and cutting. With my accent there is so much I have to repeat anyway. BTW, a couple of my gay friends let me know that "jumper" actually means something else here....

nappy valley girl said...

Conuly - funnily enough that makes more sense to me. We talk about jumping the queue.

MsCaroline - For some reason I am determined to be Mummy. And everyone here seems to think it's quite cute, at the moment.

Expat Mum - yes, bilingual is probably the best thing. I don't want them to only speak American when we go back to the UK - they'll have to fit in there too. I think it's coming - Littleboy2 says both tomato and tom-ay-to, depending on who he's talking to.

Elsie - yes, "mum'" (and Mom) sound so grown up, don't they?

Kit - thanks for the reassurance!

Circles in the Sand - thanks, M! Yes, they are very into sports here. Great for LB1 - LB2 seems less sporty so far, so we may have to look a bit harder for activities for him.

Iota - you're probably right. But "mom" does me make feel like the mother in a US family-type sitcom. Which I feel like sometimes...

NB - yes. I guess he can't remember any different really..

ALW - ooh, I am intrigued about jumper now. Off to google it...

Conuly said...

Jumpers are, for those not googling, those things you wear over shirts when your elementary school has a uniform policy. Like sleeveless dresses, except you wear them over a shirt, as I said. I think you guys call them pinafores? (A word we have in the US too, but it's more specific here, I'd think of it as something that specifically TIES and is frilly.)

Boys wouldn't wear jumpers, of course. Because they're dresses. Usually girls in uniform schools stop wearing them after a few years, as a sign that they're getting more grown-up. And outside uniform schools as well. If I saw a pubescent girl wearing a jumper, I'd assume her parents are EXTREMELY conservative, probably Christians. (Conservative Jews in my city are more likely to wear denim skirts and 3/4 sleeves. Muslims are more likely to wear long-sleeved shirts and jeans or denim skirts, depending on how assimilated they are, with a hijab. Jumper just screams conservative Christian. NYC even has some Mennonites, though I've never asked if they live in the city or are just visiting, they wear long dresses and snoods. It's astonishing that you can work out what sort of religious group somebody belongs to just according to what sort of skirt they wear, but there it is.)

Tanya (Bump2Basics) said...

Knowing jumpers as what Conuly has described, that has been a hard one for me to integrate into my vocab here in the UK.

This all just shows how well LB1 is assimilating to the NY way of life. Have you guys been to a baseball game? They really do have a good atmosphere, and are not nearly as long as cricket....

nappy valley girl said...

Conuly - interesting - didn't know that. I think About Last Weekend is referring to something different though and very rude, which I won't repeat here (anyone interested can google 'slang for jumpers).

Tanya - we have yet to go to a baseball game, but it is on our list of things to do. And living so close to Citi Field, it would be rude not to see the Mets at least once...