Niagara Falls

After stealthily blending in with the masses of Manhattan Island for five weeks, my inner-backpacker told me it was time for an out-of-city adventure. I contemplated Montauk and Green Mountain, pondering over maps and lack-luster tourist guide books, until I finally decided on what was both an obvious and predictable location; Niagara Falls. My reasoning was, despite the ten-hour train journey (a distance most Brits would treat like a round-the-world trip, packing enough food and water for a month) I was near enough to say I was in the “same part of the world” and therefore I should make the visit.

Staying in a hostel on the New York side of the border (just to enhance my hopes of becoming an explorer for the week), I quickly became acquainted with the town — its weathered exterior and seemingly restless inhabitants almost as intriguing as the falls themselves. In just under a mile, the bustling tourist destination dubbed the ‘Honeymoon Capital’ of the 1950s; hastily transforms from a deluge of 100 ft. cascading waterfalls, cliffside restaurants and bouncing tourists into a sea of derelict shopfronts and shy residents peering from the windows of tired houses, seeking out any sign of disturbance. Niagara’s 1950s population of roughly 100,000 has since halved, with whole families moving on to different towns and states due to the worsening employment conditions.

Consequently, the few locals that I did meet were working around Niagara Falls Gorge, entertaining tourists with boat tours and guided walks, and serving up a coolly polite “Enjoy your visit” to every photo-snapping swarm. Noticeably, also, was that although sharing one of the world’s biggest natural landmarks with an entirely different nation, both towns of Niagara Falls, Ontario and New York are more than willing to mock each other, culturally and linguistically.

Despite separation by a mere short stretch of water, accents, etiquette and official languages of the two cities are poles apart; I realized this on passing a souvenir shop five minutes within the Canadian border, with a t-shirt reading “I speak two languages, not just one. I live in a house, not an igloo. I eat meals not just maple syrup. I am Canadian.” proudly hanging by the door.

Right from the borderline there was an overwhelming sense of a cultural divide, experiencing both sides of gorge flippantly throwing about the casual “us” and “them” when referring to the other. Neatly displaying every road sign, tourist information board, and site map in both English and French, Niagara Falls, Ontario made for the more linguistically stimulating experience, — particularly for me — an outsider.

Bilingualism aside, eating breakfast in the U.S. and dinner in Canada couldn’t have been more different. A hand-on-hip “More coffee honey?” became a sprightly “Will that be all, Miss?” teamed with a side of sharp eye contact and a sprinkling of urgency. In essence, this reflected two things: the reserved, business-oriented atmosphere and the reminder that visitors are what keeps this town ticking. The falls themselves are also treated with similar possessive pronouns; “ours” and “theirs” to refer to the American and Horseshoe falls on each appropriate side, attaching verbal ownership to the already existing geographical.

Just like other natural phenomena in the world, Niagara Falls has shaped the towns around it, not just physically, but in giving its inhabitants a sense of pride. In this instance, a unique piece of geography becomes two, each receiving a different cultural family and therefore a different cultural history – and having roots in neither made my visit an ever more thrilling experience.

Athina Kontos is writer/photographer from the UK spending the summer in New York

Etiquette

It has been said that the best way to see a city is by wandering around, equipped with just enough of a plan to know where you need to be, but allowing room for improvisation along the way. It is with this mentality that I have managed to work my way around the momentous grid that is New York City, finding myself in wonder-induced reveries, overwhelmed with taxi rides at race track speeds, aromatic worldly cuisines (at any time desired) and enough vintage Hendrix records, theatrical Broadway excitement and ancient treasures on the museum mile to keep any culture buff occupied for a lifetime. Whilst absorbing the atmosphere to the best of my British trained abilities, I seem to have zoned in and out of different happenings, overhearing sound bites and snippets of conversations such as “…because this is New York” and “…yeah, but you know New York…” along the way.

After hearing this for the first time on a packed Subway train – all of the surrounding elements (a sea of commuters, failing air conditioning and a man slumped in a corner with a cage of newborn puppies) taken into account , it made complete sense. Although when I heard it again in a luscious green patch in Central Park and then something similar outside a painfully trendy espresso bar in the West Village, it sparked a sense of overwhelming togetherness that the city has; not only in its cosy architecture but in the relationships of its inhabitants. I realized that people here are proud of what they do and where they come from, having created their own rules and terms of conduct along the way and consequently maintaining a healthy city environment by talking about it.

Whether it’s the lady named Bonita serving me my morning latte and telling me to “Have a great day” or the homeless man in 86th Street Subway station pleading with commuters for any spare change with a remarkable politeness for such desperation, people here are courteous and genuinely believe in the power of language. For me, coming from a city where people avert eye contact if they see someone they know walking towards them down the street, this is a new and inspiring experience. In comparison to the UK, it seems like language manners have been taken to a new level of brilliance, even if “Have a nice day” comes as part of a job description.

Londoners are constantly reminded to be politically correct, taking care not to offend anyone in any way that could be held against us by law and ensuring that any text message or email we write doesn’t give the recipient the “wrong impression.” With so many rules and language concerns, one would think that customer service and even simple politeness should be first and foremost, but even during my last moments in the country, a trip to the airport magazine stand left me feeling disheartened and like I was more than lucky to have a crumpled piece of paper reading “London LHR to New York JFK” in my hand.

So far New York has proved itself to be firm but fair, if you treat people with respect then you will certainly get it back and it seems like the way to start is to show concern for the wellbeing of others through language. Before I came here I would never have dared speak to a stranger in an elevator or discussed football scores with a taxi driver, and the idea of saying hello to an innocent dog walker on the street just because your paths have crossed would probably seem entirely unnecessary to most Londoners. But in actively doing all of these things, I have managed to find a sense of belonging, even if it is approximately 3458 miles from home.

Athina Kontos is writer/photographer from the UK spending the summer in New York

The Shift

On a tiny island of which one could drive across in less than four hours, it would seem plausible that after a few hundred years, its regional accents may start to merge. The UK has done much over the past three decades to encourage the use of regional accents other than the ‘traditional’ Received Pronunciation in its media and broadcasting, which has in turn created an immediate exposure to speech we might not hear in our own neighborhoods.

Despite the unquestionable intermingling of some regional accents and dialects in the UK, recent evidence has shown that with the amalgamation of Geordie twangs and Brummie expressions, comes an equal measure of linguistic variance scattered around the British Isles. Research from the University of Lancaster has suggested that newer linguistic features are taking effect in a “wave-like” manner, first affecting major towns and cities, followed by smaller, more rural areas in between. As a result, it would appear that the whole country is constantly undergoing a colossal linguistic make-over.

In younger circles, American pronunciation is becoming increasingly more common, often being taught in schools with an absence of awareness regarding criteria of ‘traditional’ British pronunciation and instead enforcing a new take on how we ‘should’ speak – I am a definite culprit of skedule as opposed to schedule. So with these language shifts and the introduction of Americanisms into British society, could a similar process be taking place across the pond?

Professor William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania determines that North America is currently experiencing a ‘vowel-shift’. A change beyond the influences of every day media and most prominent in Northern and North-Eastern cities, even longer vowel sounds in “back” and “pack” and even shorter “pits” and “bits” are formulating a new age of speech, seeing cities such as Chicago, Rochester, New York and Cleveland speaking more differently to the rest of the US than ever before . – Now after watching a Canadian friend bet on the possibility that a bartender in Williamsburg was from Chicago and consequently proceeding to ask a series of embarrassing questions including “Did you get that tattoo in Chicago?” and “How’s the weather in Chicago?”, the sharp response “I’m from Brooklyn” with which he was met, confirms that the Great Vowel Shift of North America is perhaps more visible than first thought.

So while the UK might be a little behind on certain TV shows and the latest Hollywood blockbusters, unlike a lot of things in relation to the United States, language change is happening at a similar rate. Although incomparable in scale, the changing faces of British and American English are encompassing the entirety of our nations, with small towns impacting big cities and big cities impacting entire regions. In the not so distant future, we may have new stereotypes, new token accents and maybe even new attitudes towards our language.

References

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8305645/The-conTROversy-over-changing-pronunciations.html

http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/kerswill/pkpubs/Kerswill2003DialectLevellDiffusion.pdf

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090

http://www.economist.com/node/18775029?story_id=18775029

Athina Kontos is writer/photographer from the UK spending the summer in New York.