I read a lot. Crime, comedy, the classics and a lot of non-fiction. Mostly books in English, and some even in German and French. And when it comes to books in English, I'll read books published in the UK and the US. I'll even read the cornflakes box if there's nothing else available.
Now, when my students find out I am from the UK and so speak the British variant of the English language, they often wax lyrical about how much they love the British accent (to which I often ask, "Which one?") and how much they dislike American English. I then often say that if a foreigner heard a Bavarian person speaking, would that mean that all Germans speak the same? It's called "tarring everyone with the same brush". And, no, not all Germans sound as though they come from deepest, darkest Bavaria.
One thing I have noticed, though, about UK and US publications is that I have never, ever, ever found any mistake in a book published in the United States. Sadly, I cannot say the same about books issued in the UK.
Until a few weeks ago, I thought the worst-edited book I had ever had the pleasure of reading was Springtime for Germany: Or How I Learned to Love Lederhosen by Ben Donald. Most of the mistakes in the book were spelling mistakes concerning German words and place names. With the Internet, though, it would have been very easy to check the orthography,
Then earlier this year, I read a book called
How to Be Confident by a gym instructor called James Smith. I picked it up for a euro at a Book & Cake sale at the English library and as I am a sucker for self-help books...
Oh, my!! Nearly every sentence contained a grammar or spelling mistake. I couldn't believe it. What was the editor thinking - letting so many mistakes go uncorrected? However, almost at the end of the book, the author admitted that the book probably (probably??) contained a lot of mistakes but that he hoped he had got his message across. Which, to be fair, he had. Okay, at least he acknowledged that he wasn't a great writer.
And then I was recommended two books that deal with legal issues. They were Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel, an American philosopher and The Critical Legal Pocketbook by various authors in the UK.
I took them with me on holiday. The American book deals with concepts such as 'positive discrimination' and how far these concepts are. The UK book deals with a much larger variety of legal issues and some of the short articles were very illuminating, such as how to see the legal system from a coloured or female point of view. Like the architecture that surrounds us, the justice system seems to be made by men for men.
But what really shocked me by this British book was the poor spelling and grammar. I started with one article written by a female barrister who didn't belong to the white majority in the UK. A barrister!? How could she qualify to become a barrister without knowing where to place a comma? Did no teacher at school or lecturer at university or even a colleague point out that you don't put a comma between the subject and the verb - no matter how long the subject may be?
I'm too lazy to get up and get the book again, but she'd write things like this: "The woman down the road who lives at number 43, is nice." Or "Everyone who commits a crime, must be punished." (Those weren't actual sentences of hers... but you get the idea of her writing style.)
As I read on, I found spelling mistakes such as "naiive" - oh, yes. Even though, if you type the word in Word, it will automatically suggest the correct spelling (which is naïve - but plain naive is also acceptable these days).
Other mistakes included grammar, writing 'intend' rather than 'instead', 'in fat' rather than 'in fact', starting long complicated sentences and then forgetting to write the main sentence, missing words out. And one punctuation mistake after another - sometimes on every second line. Incredible.
At one point, I thought that students had written the articles - after all, a university had published it. But, no, the texts were written by solicitors, barristers and senior academics. It was horrendous.
Due to all these errors, I often had to read a sentence a few times over before I could figure out what was meant.
And when I couldn't take any more of this horrific British English book, I'd put it down and pick up Sandel's book and, ah, everything was wonderful. Sanity again. Wonderfully expressed ideas, no mistakes whatsoever - and I did look for them.
Whenever anyone says to me that British English is superior to American English and that the Americans speak 'slang' (their word, not mine), I will tell them about this reading experience. Time permitting.
