Cowboys and aliens

There are of course many words and expressions I use that are not used here - in most cases employing these results in a blank stare or a polite request that I speak English.  Occasionally, though, the lauguage I'm using has quite a different connotation from the one I intended and the results are more unpredictable.

There are a few words which have fairly innocent interpretations outside the US but which can be offensive inside.  For example the name of the British show I know as Spooks but which is called MI5 here, because "spook" is apparently a derogatory term for an African American.  Mind you, the sense of the word to mean a spy is also of American origin so I guess it snuck across the border and then got locked out.

Another good example is the word "cowboy".  Before I spent any time here, if I referred to someone as a cowboy that had, to me, negative connotations.  A builder who was a cowboy was a bad builder, and so on.  Thinking about it, I'm not entirely why this is so.  I suppose there is some idea that cowboys are here one day, gone the next, or perhaps it's an impression lifted from old westerns that cowboys aren't to be trusted.  Maybe it is just a pale kind of anti-Americanism.

It doesn't matter why the rest of the English speaking world uses "cowboy" in this way, what is interesting is that Americans don't.  To them cowboys are heroic frontier figures, independent, rugged, living their lives in the saddle with a quiet sense of pride and dignity.  They're almost modern knights, rounding up cattle instead of the bad guys (but if there are any bad guys about, you know that the cowboys will do the right thing).  I understand this, it's almost exactly the same as the legendary Southern Man which pervades New Zealand culture.

So you can see why an American would feel insulted to hear you using the word cowboy in a negative way.  Cowboys are the good guys, they get the job done, and done right.  I'm sure Mrs Walles feels this more acutely than most, since she has spent a lot of time in Montana, where cowboys still exist, and she's got the boots and hats to prove it.

Of course when we non-Americans employ the phrase we don't even think about such things.  But maybe we should.  I'll tell you one thing, once you've tasted the beef here you know for sure that the cowboys must do a good job.  The real cowboys are definitely not "a bunch of cowboys".