People-watching in Dullus Airport

I knew they were English. Before I could even hear a word they were saying, I knew. Don’t ask me what particular features they possessed that made me peg them as Brits; British people, after all, really do not seem all that different from American people, at least superficially. Our clothes are basically the same, our food is basically the same,, our language is basically the same. We even look basically the same (WASP-y, usually). Therefore, I am not entirely sure what it was about these three boys and their father, sitting at the far end of the waiting area, that struck me as especially culturally different.

I guess it was a culmination of different little things. For one, all of the boys had straight, blond, too-long hair that came down over their collars and almost into their eyes so that they constantly had to be twitching their heads to have a clear view of each other. This could be considered “sk8ter” style, but they boys were of the age where their mother would have still had control over their hair styles, so this must have been one indicator. (Not that I was performing all of this mental “hair analysis” explicitly. In retrospect, it seems silly; I only mean to say that I noticed their hair and it made me think, “Hey, that family is English.”)

My second clue was their teeth. Now, this is not to say that the “All Brits have bad teeth” stereotype is necessarily true. I didn’t really notice poor oral hygiene as a significant British feature while I was in England. However, the boys in this airport were all a bit bucktoothed, and it simply made them look English.

Lastly—and there is simply no good way to explain this—the way they moved their mouths when they spoke clinched my certainty. Maybe it is because of the accent, but English people manipulate their mouths differently than Americans when they talk. I never would have noticed this difference had I not studied abroad and had some basis for comparison. (Granted, I never stopped to study the speech movements in fine enough detail to actually describe them, but they most certainly are different.) Imagine watching someone speaking in a southern drawl versus someone speaking in a Brooklyn accent—completely different timings, completely different lip formations.

Still, I could have been wrong. Needless to say, the moment I made out an audible word from one of the sons, my suspicions were confirmed. “Papa! Papa, where are you going?” [stomp] [stomp] “Papa!” Doesn’t it just sound so much more pleasant than the American “Da-aaaad…!”?