The BBC News Magazine recently posted an article about "Americanisms" creeping into the English language (meaning British English in this case). That article brought many responses, as British readers shared their pet peeves about the language as spoken by Americans. Some are just examples of bad grammar.
While others are purely cultural differences.
And a couple are just inexplicable.
Do all these complaints make perfect sense on the eastern side of the pond? Read the rest at the followup article. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Turner)
2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall
40.I am increasingly hearing the phrase "that'll learn you" - when the English (and more correct) version was always "that'll teach you". What a ridiculous phrase! Tabitha, London
41. I really hate the phrase: "Where's it at?" This is not more efficient or informative than "where is it?" It just sounds grotesque and is immensely irritating. Adam, London
While others are purely cultural differences.
14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow
18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester
29. I'm a Brit living in New York. The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when fortnightly would suffice just fine. Ami Grewal, New York
36. Surely the most irritating is: "You do the Math." Math? It's MATHS. Michael Zealey, London
And a couple are just inexplicable.
20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon
44. My brother now uses the term "season" for a TV series. Hideous. D Henderson, Edinburgh
Do all these complaints make perfect sense on the eastern side of the pond? Read the rest at the followup article. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Turner)
I'm not a native english speaker, but "suffice just fine" doesn't sound very good to me.. which for someone making quite a pedantic remark seems ironic.
But I may be wrong.
I've never heard anyone use this expression.
> 40. “that’ll learn you”
I believe most people use that phrase ironically.
> 41. “Where’s it at?”
Of course I agree with this one.
> While others are purely cultural differences.
I can see being irritated by the shift in language, however...
> Surely the most irritating is: “You do the Math.” Math? It’s MATHS.
Oh? And how many maths are you doing, old chap?
I dont get irritated by Americanisms unless its in offical spiel ie Bushisms. They irritate the hell out of me.
I'm always using Americanisms. My mother lived in New York in the fifties gor a couple of years but has been back in the UK for 50 years and she still says "in back of".
It works both ways though. My mother was in the Midwest years ago and went to a football game where the Greenbay Packers were playing. Apparently, she got right into the spirit of it and started shouting out 'Go Packers!' She couldn't figure out why people were laughing at her until someone explained to her that her Kiwi accent turned it into 'Go Peckers!' Kinda cute.
That said though, there is one Americanism that does really piss me off: the phrase 'write you.' If I'm going to send you a letter I'll 'write to you.' I've got no idea why the US version grates so badly, it's probably just plain bigotry and bloody-mindedness :=]
Oh, I don't 'deplane,' anymore than I 'decar,' 'debus,' 'debed' or 'dehouse.' Right, I think I've critecizated enough, already.
Also, any good-spirited brit knows at heart that they have no room to talk - with the UK's dense and varied dialects, everyone has some colloquialism that's "wrong".
"That'll learn you" is an intentionally vulgar expression meant to mimic White Trash speech, or what i think the Brits call "chavs.
"Where it's at" is slang derived from African-American usage later adopted by whites seeking to be more "street." A good example of the barely-concealed elitism and rascism underlying many of these linguistic discussions.
Most of the rest are just terminologies that evolved in their own cultural aquariums and are of no consequence. Canadians call a garbage disposal a "garburator" fercrissakes...
As for 29, I've heard enough Brits use biweekly. Fortnightly sounds archaic.
But seriously, so what? Not every English speaking country will have the exact same words for everything. Takeout/takeaway- if that causes offense I'd say you have bigger problems. If a British person says maths and sport instead of math and sports, I don't get upset because I use different words.
Do they see Australian or Canadian English as well?
Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta pull on my bunny hug and runners, and head to the LCBO. if I have any loonies and toonies left I'll pick up some timbits before I flake on the chesterfield.
I used to get very confused when watching British tv and shows would be described as having several series. From what I understand, US season = UK series and US series = UK program.
Joking aside, the complainants may not be aware of the regionality of these phrases. It would be unfair to jest calling a water fountain a "bubbler" when only a very small part of the country coins this phrase.
Think the lady with the cart/trolly issue has figured out that we got that one correct.
If I want something in alphabetical order would I not alphabetize the list? At least that is what the oed tells me. It is far better than the "ABC that" I have heard.
A deliverable is not a report.
But really, I think it's about resentment. America produces the majority of English language movie and television entertainment which is exported around the world, so Americanisms are more likely to infiltrate another country's language than the other way around. Probably 90% or more of American and British English is the same. Focusing on the differences and letting them grow to the level of a pet peeve is... wait for it... redonculous.
At any rate, there's no stopping evolution (unless you're an anti-evolution Christian in the U.S.). We all have to grow and evolve. I'm still trying not to put two spaces after the period at the end of the sentence.
Whereas, you watch British comedy like Fry and Laurie and it quickly becomes apparent that speech is a kind of artform in Britain. Stephen Fry's humor almost always boils down to a creative use of language. Personally, I enjoy the clarity of thought I get from a diverse language. Now, I dunno, just saying, the American culture ethos has always been a bit nitty-gritty and doesn't seem to pay much attention to detail or style.
"Where are you located?" is tolerable, but "Where are you?" is all that is necessary. Still, almost every local radio ad I didn't write myself said "located at".
Then again, maybe it is just Canadians who use them...
On a related note, I always find it amusing when people accuse U.S. Americans of "having no culture." I would argue that, while American culture is much younger, it is also much less geographically fixed and more widespread. American culture is so ingrained in the global landscape --particularly via entertainment-- that it's not immediately recognizable as American.
So these people will claim that America has no culture... all the while enjoying rap, hip-hop, or any number of other things that are culturally American but not recognized as such.
"Burglarize" has been a part of English since 1871 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burglarize).
"Deplane" has been around since 1923 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deplane).
How long must a word exist before it is considered a "valid" expression of meaning within a language?
But languages change. Many years ago, when my brother was studying cultural geography in college, my parents were bemoaning the changes they didn't like in modern spoken English. So my brother started speaking to them in Old English. Once they had that explained to them, they agreed that language is a living, changing thing.
Then there's the English major I used to work with who maintained that English has barely changed since Shakespeare's time...
--Vikya
On a side note, a friend of mine is from Texas, and whenever I walk into the room he always says "How y'all doing?" My usual response is to take a quick peek down the front of my pants and say "We're all fine!"
It is going the other way in some cases. I've heard American kids refer to a line as a "queue" and the bathroom as "the loo."
Hell, a steady longterm diet of Terry Pratchett, Are You Being Served?, Monty Python, and Doctor Who has inserted lots of Britishisms into my and my husband's lexicon. I even put down "bogroll" when I make up our grocery list.
like in "herb"? ;)
Dearest James,
While "Scotch-Irish" is somewhat incorrect, the term "Scots-Irish" is not only possible, but common through much of the US.
(It refers to Ulster Scots. Here they are a significant slice of the 'Murrican demographic, especially in the Southeast.)
"On a side note, a friend of mine is from Texas, and whenever I walk into the room he always says "How y'all doing?" My usual response is to take a quick peek down the front of my pants and say "We're all fine!""
This makes me wonder if your friend does not originally hail from west of the Rockies or north of the Ohio, as any native Southron would know that "y'all" is only applied to more than one person. Were he enquiring after your health as well as the health of your kinfolk not present, he would properly ask "How's your mama'n'em?"
For example "that'll learn you" is something that's been heard in the West Riding of Yorkshire since before living memory. Learn being used instead of teach has been common here for a long time. As indeed has the use of lend in place of borrow.
My ancestors are Irish, Welsh and Scottish. I prefer to describe them as Celts. It's easier.
However anybody claiming such ancestry has to be careful. So many Irish people, for example, are at least partly descended from "planted" English families who went native. I mean, how many generations back do you have to go to claim pure Irish blood? It wasn't English or Norman blood getting into the gene pool it could have been the Vikings or even before them the Welsh. And how pure were any of those races?
I can trace my descent to Richard Tyrrell. Himself descended from an Anglo-Norman family who fought on the Irish side in the 9 years war. Now you don't get much more of an Irish folk hero from that period that Captain Tyrrell, but his blood was Anglo-Norman.
Not caring, at all, about what people in other countries think.
Most of them seem to need us more than we need them.
"Scots-Irish? Scot can be used as a noun to describe a person from Scotland, so scots is the plural of that. However in the context you are using the word it is incorrect. Scottish would be correct.
My ancestors are Irish, Welsh and Scottish. I prefer to describe them as Celts. It's easier."
'Scots-Irish' as a term would indeed be meaningless in the United Kingdom, as it specifically denotes a particular wave of immigrants in North America. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots-Irish_American)
Which river in England is Mississippi?
Ask any resident of Appalachia whose family has been there since the 18th Century their ancestry, and you will be told "Scots-Irish-Cherokee". Amazingly enough, the Cherokee part was always a princess.
@Tamara - Scots-Irish is still wrong. It's Scottish-Irish.
@Cormac - I can get by perfectly well without you. Oh and if you don't need the English why not invent your own language rather than butchering theirs?
@Mac - It's amusing that your reference is an American one. If it's English-English we're talking about the only reference is the OED.
When the Scotsmen who had been sent to Ireland (by and large, to keep their raiding parties the Hell out of England -- let the bandits in kilts beat up on the barbarians in Ulster, eh?), ended up going to America in the early 18th Century, "Scotch" was a perfectly appropriate way in British English (on BOTH sides of the border marches, and in Ulster) to refer to a Scottish person.
Read Robert Burns, for instance. Note that English lexigraphers and historians were using "Scotch" well into the 20th Century.
The British usage dropped "Scotch" as a term for Scottish culture, persons, or ancestry (aside from whisky), but the people on the other side of that rather large water obstacle kept the ORIGINAL Scottish and English usage far longer, continuing to refer to their heritage the way their ancestors did when they arrived here -- traditional English "Scotch-Irish" vs. the new-fangled Britishism of "Ulster Scots".
MANY of the so-called "Americanisms" (especially spelling -- spelling was still not standardized at the time of British recognition of American independence) are actually archaic Britishisms that survived in America longer than the UK; or they refer to terminology for things that that just weren;t in common use (or many times, even invented) at the time of American independence.