Two nations divided by a common davenport by Griselda Heppel
Twenty years ago the tragic death of a baby in the USA by what was thought to be ‘shaken baby syndrome’ made headlines all over the world. On trial for the little boy’s murder, the British nanny unwittingly sealed her fate by describing how she’d ‘popped the baby on the bed to change his nappy.’ What Louise Woodward didn’t realise was that an expression used in the UK to describe an action taken with lightness and dexterity doesn’t translate at all that way in the USA; there, ‘pop’ can only mean something explosive. No amount of explanation could erase the image in the jury’s mind that she had hurled the 8 month-old on to the bed with all the force of a rocket launcher. *Quip by Oscar Wilde... probably Misunderstandings between our ‘two nations divided by a common language’* aren’t usually so dangerous. Nor should any English people loftily assume our words are the ‘original’ ones; in many cases it’s the other way round. ‘Garbage’, ‘trash’ an...