Obama and Santa

Did you all catch President Obama's speech on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize? I like the man. I'd love to invite him round for dinner, him and his good lady wife. They could bring the kids too. I expect he's too busy though.

One of the exciting things in his speech was a very fine example of what I was talking about here. Don't bother to click. I'll remind you. I was talking about how in England we say

"the baby wants to be fed",

but in both Scotland and America, that would be

"the baby wants fed".

In his Nobel speech, Obama was talking about the US being a moral standard bearer in the conduct of war, and he said:

"That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed."

See? If he'd been brought up in leafy Buckinghamshire, England, he'd have said

"That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay to be closed".

I was listening to NPR, and they gave a pretty good broad-brush examination of the ideas in the speech, but honestly, for in-depth word by word analysis like this, you have to turn to 'Not wrong, just different'. Oh you must be so glad you read my blog.

Incidentally, since I know that you are on the edge of your seats with this post, I'm going to tell you about another of those items where Americans have followed the Scots rather than the English. Santa. Yes, jolly old Santa Claus. In England, he is quite definitely Father Christmas. When I lived in England I knew that the Americans called him Santa Claus, but I had no idea that the Scots did too.

And if you have any other questions on England, Scotland, America, Obama or world peace, then just drop me a line. I'll help if I can.

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