THE GULF WAR : Language Barriers

While the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes are on the same side in the Gulf War, the British are fighting against a country that sounds like Eer - awk while Americans are bombing I - rackies . “This war, run by the Americans and largely broadcast by them, is blowing breaches in the redoubt of OUR LANGUAGE AND OUR PRONUNCIATION of it,” Simon Heffer harrumphed in the Daily Telegraph in London. He complained about television reporters talking of lootenants instead of properly British leftenants , of missels instead of miss-aisles, of Patriot missiles beginning pate instead of pat . The Sunday Times of London offered a glossary of combat slang including the recently famous Americanism hellacious.