Yo-gurt or Yog-urt?

Had a very enjoyable and, at times, hilarious dinner last night with a wonderful American mummy blogger and expat from California. I was on my way back down south after a day in London for work and thought it would be a great opportunity to meet Elfa of Californian Mum In London in person. We’d connected online some time ago and always shared each others’ posts and tweets etc. so, naturally I thought it would be a good idea to meet for real. The good thing, as she commented on Facebook afterwards, was that we discovered neither of us were serial killers. Always a great start! And, as someone else commented on her post, not setting the best example for our kids! Oops.

What I found so interesting was that because we both landed in the UK around the same time (Elfa arrived only three years after I moved here) we were both very settled and very used to life in the UK as Americans married to British men and with British born children. Often times when I meet other Americans I’m the ‘veteran’ where as with Elfa, we’d had very similar experiences during the ‘early days’. (Don’t get me wrong, of course I don’t mind being the ‘old’ one, the one who’s been here longer because I love supporting people and talking to about what it’s like to live here.) So it was great to chat and get to know one another while on the exact same wavelength.

We did have some giggles about American vs British which is always good fun! And we each told our yogurt stories and how our children mock us, scold us and get angry at us for pronouncing yogurt the wrong way. We say yo-gurt with a short o that rhymes with ‘go’ instead of saying it the British way e.g. yog-urt with a long o that rhymes with ‘log’. If you’re not sure what I mean, listen to this.

I think it’s normally more pronounced than that example but it does give an idea of the different pronunciations. Although we do both pronounce some words the British way and we both use lots of British words, phrases and colloquialisms, saying yogurt the British way is simply one step too far!

The reality is that we’ve both become very British in our own ways, obviously because of our surroundings, our husbands and of course our children. But maybe there’s more to it than that? We love living here (for me, it took a long time to love it here) and we both like the quality of life and what is on offer with regards to bringing up children and all that entails such as school and healthcare. I’ve not met many other Americans here who are like that. Most still very much have the American mindset (in the negative sense of comparing and contrasting in a critical way) and are here only as a stop-gap or for a temporary work placement. It was a real pleasure to meet another American who, apart from where we each live, is very much like me and in a similar expat/American/British situation.

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Meghan Peterson Fenn is the author of Bringing Up Brits, co-author of Inspiring Global Entrepreneurs, co-founder and Director of Design and Web at Shake It Up Creative. And, she is an award winning expat blogger.