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Is American English Going To Take Over British English Completely? (scroll.in)
Paul Baker, writing for The Conversation: Brits can get rather sniffy about the English language -- after all, they originated it. But a Google search of the word "Americanisms" turns up claims that they are swamping, killing and absorbing British English. If the British are not careful, so the argument goes, the homeland will soon be the 51st State as workers tell customers to "have a nice day" while "colour" will be spelt without a "u" and "pavements" will become "sidewalks." My research examined how both varieties of the language have been changing between the 1930s and the 2000s and the extent to which they are growing closer together or further apart. So do Brits have cause for concern? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, most of the easily noticeable features of British language are holding up. Take spelling, for example -- towards the 1960s it looked like the UK was going in the direction of abandoning the "u" in "colour" and writing "centre" as "center." But since then, the British have become more confident in some of their own spellings. In the 2000s, the UK used an American spelling choice about 11% of the time while Americans use a British one about 10% of the time, so it kind of evens out. Automatic spell-checkers which can be set to different national varieties are likely to play a part in keeping the two varieties fairly distinct. [...] But when we start thinking of language more in terms of style than vocabulary or spelling, a different picture emerges. Some of the bigger trends in American English are moving towards a more compact and informal use of language. American sentences are on average one word shorter in 2006 than they were in 1931. Americans also use a lot more apostrophes in their writing than they used to, which has the effect of turning the two words "do not" into the single "don't." They're getting rid of certain possessive structures, too -- so "the hand of the king" becomes the shorter "the king's hand." Another trend is to avoid passive structures such as "a paper was written," instead using the more active form, "I wrote a paper."
Didn't It?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Fuck you merkins!
> Brits can get rather sniffy about the English language -- after all, they originated it.
Old British english sounded closer to American english than modern British english.
This is similar to the reason that Quebec is closer to old French than Parisian French.
>> American English Going To Take Over British English Completely?
Doubt it. Whatever's spoken in India will probably be the winner, and that's a mismash of British education, American use and Indian application (e.g., "do the needful").
eh wot?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Where words have more specificity, use those that are more specific.
For the summary's example of pavement versus sidewalk, pavement is less specific than sidewalk. Pavement refers to an improved surface and just as easily could mean a roadway, while sidewalk pretty specifically indicates an improved surface that is meant for pedestrians rather than vehicles.
America still has regionalities itself though, it's not like it's one homogeneous language region. It'd be wicked pissah to spill your Moxie on the hottop when opening the cah doah and you'd be bull if you did.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Don't be daft. This is clickbait. For a start, it asks a question and we all know what a monkey New Scientist made out of that approach.
Right, like there isn't "French", "Spanish", "Portuguese", or "Italian", etc. There is Latin, and incorrect, bastardized versions of Latin.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
or an Airport English, is the future.
But why not return to the roots - the Latin language, Lingua Latina.
Who bloody cares?
I haven't done it often but sometimes I type "defence" or insert unnecessary 'u's. Usually people don't even take the bait.
I don't think they should really worry too much about the evolution of language though. Can we still understand each other? Are people saying or writing what comes naturally?
Then I don't see a problem.
American English is the same English that was spoken in England in the 1700s. Modern UK English is the English that changed. They need to get over it and get back to their roots. ;)
https://www.becomeenglishteachers.com/what-english-is-the-original-english-british-or-american/
Culture is always evolving, and with the web and social media it's doing so faster than ever, and in an online melting pot. I find it odd that the summary is using the word "careful" as if this is a precarious situation. There isn't any real danger here. Sounds like an old man yelling at a cloud. I'm happy people are finding things in common and sharing from afar. We're all learning a lot from each other and trying things we never tried before. And it's ok.
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I've found the language more-pleasant as I cease to end sentences in prepositions. Indeed, ending a sentence in a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
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No, we call them Imperial units typically. Sometimes you will hear (US) customary units. The latter being more accurate term, of course.
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Maybe this is a grey area for some people, and colour me ignorant about what spelling they favour in the UK, but here in Canada, it'd take a lot more than US influence to get me to draft up my documents the lazy way. Is there a draught in here? Well... gotta keep ploughing away here at the data centre.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
It's spelt "colour".
Shouldn't you avoid the slang, "put up," entirely in this case? Even though there's a space in, "put up," it's essentially two words for one meaning. Splitting them in a sentence breaks the meaning.
"Indeed, ending a sentence in a preposition is something I will not tolerate," makes more sense.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Korben Dallas: Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English.
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English rules the world at present, but not any particular flavour (I speak Canadian English which to me usually sounds poorly enunciated, which is why I love the Standard English of the UK... anybody who speaks English should be able to hear the words even if they haven't learned their meaning).
I personally will argue with people over the pronunciation of 'z' (where I live, it's supposed to be zed, not zee), but that's more or less habit... language is living and what is 'correct' is whatever people are using to communicate.
HOWEVER, I always have and always will resist slang. It's deliberate misuse of the language whose utility is usually in isolating your group (usually cultural) from the larger population, and that's just stupid.
Another trend is to avoid passive structures such as "a paper was written," instead using the more active form, "I wrote a paper."
Hillary is very fond of saying "Mistakes were made" but she has never once said "I made a mistake."
Ugh mah ogh tok, mok tok ogh eek ta loma akta.
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The first time I heard someone from Belgique speak I thought most of it sounded more similar to Québécois than Parisian french.
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With the amount of US TV programmes aired on this side of the Atlantic, it's getting harder and harder to differentiate between the too, mainly because of the amount of American English that has crept in to daily use. And, of course, the ubiquitous use of the Internet, where everything blends.
I sometimes find myself debating with myself what the correct term is for various items. I'm probably one of the few that doesn't talk about 'cupcakes' (preferring Queen cake), or who might only use 'cupcakes' for the variation that has more icing that cake. I find myself using 'throttle' instead of 'accelerator', although I never use 'gas pedal'. By others, 'Sidewalk' (over pavement or path) is become more and more used, and I'd suggest that Kelly Clarkson has something to do with this (Because of You).
Spelling gets harder too. Some words, like colour and centre (and the other -our and -re words), are fine, probably because we are more aware of these being 'wrong' on your side of the Atlantic. :P But words ending in -ize or -ise can start to get confusing. Spelling-wise, these would be the spellings I debate with myself more. Spell checkers don't always help unless you can be assured that you have the correct version of English installed -- some apps don't have British English, opting for only American English. So when you see something underlined in red, you tend to stop and think to yourself "I'm I wrong or is the computer?", and more often than it should be, it's the computer.
And looking up words online generally means finding the US English version of the word.
So, yeah, they are blending a lot, and there isn't much can be done about it. Thankfully kids here still say "zed" at the end of the alphabet, but I fear that'll change in the near future. "Trick or Treat" has also become prevalent here with kids going door to door for Hallowe'en - that's only in the last 20 years or so.
True, technically. Old English = Anglo Saxon; during the time of Chaucer there was briefly a "Middle English"; by Shakespear's time we had Modern English, even if a lot stiffer than the language is today. I think he meant "Old" English as spoken during colonial times, i.e. "ye olde days".
In that sense, the AC was not really wrong; over the past 200 hundred years, British English has changed.
However, as something of an American Anglophile, I hope it stays the way it is now, I love it. I'd hate to see that dissolve already. I think Harry Potter actually did a lot to bring British culture and language more popularity, so I'd be a little surprised if this was really the case.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The future of English will probably be more different from current forms than American and British English are from each other today. Language change is as inevitable as the tide.
What *is* irritating when people accuse others of using Americanisms when they're actually UK dialectal terms that just happen to be the same as the standard American usage. E.g. "pants" for trousers in Lancashire, "mom" instead of "mum" in Birmingham/West Midlands.
That's silly. Even in Great Britain, there are several very different dialects, from Received Pronunciation to Cockney.
https://englishlive.ef.com/blo...
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Here, "pavement" means the path for pedestrians at the side of the road. "Pavement" is never used for a road surface. So, here, there is no ambiguity, and "pavement" is equally as specific as "sidewalk".
Not since they lost the war with Oceania.
Just junk food for thought...
In what way? The only obvious candidates are rhoticity and not having the TRAP-BATH split. But in other ways American english has changed a lot where British English hasn't.
Many vowel mergers (father-bother, cot-caught, mary-marry-merry, Sirius-serious)
T-flapping (better -> bedder)
Yod dropping (news -> nooz)
Both forms have changed significantly, as language does.
Bzzz, wrong.
There are many dialects of English, even within the United States. Boston English is very different from New Orleans English, or California English. And Canadian English is very different from US English and British English.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Globally, English in general is dominant because of previous colonial activities by the British Empire and the prevalence of American entertainment and Internet properties. Having most of the Internet Anglo-centric is a big driver...most online discussions are in English unless it's very region-specific. Software development is a kind-of-English activity for the most part...even if someone isn't a native speaker, they're usually communicating with colleagues in English.
What remains to be seen is whether the US will continue dominating global politics, culture and the Internet. China and India have over a billion people. I do think that as these societies mature, they present a pretty big challenge to English as the dominant language. India has an official language of English but that doesn't mean most of the population speaks it natively or is even bilingual. I think that a combination of the US and UK becoming more insular and the rise of China as a world power will shift the balance...not right away but slowly. One thing China has that the US/UK doesn't, for better or worse, is a semi-authoritarian government. They can basically make whatever they need to happen, happen -- look at how much money they threw into infrastructure to blunt the force of the 2008 financial crisis. Their current plan seems to be reaching out to developing countries in sort of a soft colonialism, doing infrastructure projects and other activities to gain influence. If these activities bring the language along with them, then I could definitely see the balance tipping away from English somewhat.
Why would anyone care if a word is spelt with or without a "u" and in what order "r" and "e" are in? I'm an American and I couldn't care less if everyone started writing "colour" and "centre". I'm positive I'd feel the same way if I were British and everyone started writing "color" and "center". Are people actually getting paid real money to research this crap? Where do I sign up?
.
So perhaps the question should be - is Business English taking over American English and British English? With the corollary - is Business English closer to British English or American English?
But the more educated of the Indian immigrants were brought up on a steady diet of Wren and Martin, which even the Brits will recoil in horror when the see it.
Suppose if these Wren and Martin crowd gets going, English willl go back to 1900s.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Go to any of the regions and tha'll be in doubt that nowt threatens English. Even if we wears 'as pants instead of troiusers.
And in the United States, basically any outdoor improved surface could be considered pavement. It is most commonly used for an asphalt-slurry mix road or street, but it can refer to a concrete sidewalk alongside a road or street, a concrete walking path not associated with a vehicle thoroughfare, an asphalt-slurry walking path irrespective of a roadway, an improved-surface parking lot of any kind, and even special-purpose improved surfaces like basketball courts or tennis courts in municipal parks where the courts are paved in asphalt or concrete.
The result of anything where the verb to pave applies for how the surface is improved is pavement.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
American English is the same English that was spoken in England in the 1700s. Modern UK English is the English that changed. They need to get over it and get back to their roots. ;)
https://www.becomeenglishteachers.com/what-english-is-the-original-english-british-or-american/
Rubbish, both have diverged. from what I have read Shakespeare's accent would have been something like a mix of lowland Scots and Appalachian American.
So no Klingon either, I'm disappointed.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
And I’ve lived in the US for 37 years and have heard Imperial Units used on numerous occasions.
Different regions within countries speak quite differently. Homogenization comes from the cities, particularly as people move around, or one city interacts with another. This can happen across an ocean, but it won't be fast. Hearing different accents isn't enough -- if it was, Hollywood movies would have given everyone an American accent by now. People have to move from one place to another, and children have to be raised in areas where both dialects are common enough that they pick up some of each.
Canada also traditionally uses British English as well; I'm almost 30yrs out of elementary school, are they still spelling colour with a 'u' in Canadian schools?
When I first moved to the USA, there were a number of British English words that were largely unknown in the USA. Now, they appear to be understood, if not in common use. For example: "loo".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Bollocks to you bloody bell-ends across the pond with your minging dialect! I wouldn't adam and eve'd it if I hadn't heard it!
English units are the units used in England back when the US were still colonies. The US still uses them. The British moved to the Imperial unit standard later, and the US did not follow suit.
Are out suggesting a similar change to the word aerodynamics?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Here, "pavement" means the path for pedestrians at the side of the road. "Pavement" is never used for a road surface. So, here, there is no ambiguity, and "pavement" is equally as specific as "sidewalk".
Are your streets not paved there?
Actually, linguists say the British accent circa the Elizabethan period would have sounded closes to the American southern accent. In related news, Shakespeare performed using Original Pronunciation is fascinating.
American English may be taking over in the UK, but here in America, we're losing English of any sort out to Spanish.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
One of my favorite counters to references of the 'correctness' of the English language:
'The English Language is the product of Saxon sailors attempting to make time with Anglican bar-maids and is no more legitimate than any other issue of those unions.'
Another is:
'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.' -James Nicoll
Perhaps one of the reasons that English is so popular as a language is that if you abuse whatever language you grew up speaking until it is no longer recognizable as the original language, you could easily claim that it is a dialect of English and it would be hard to dispute the claim...
IMPERIAL PINT!
More beer in the glass!
For the summary's example of pavement versus sidewalk, pavement is less specific than sidewalk. Pavement refers to an improved surface and just as easily could mean a roadway, while sidewalk pretty specifically indicates an improved surface that is meant for pedestrians rather than vehicles.
You fell into a classic language trap.
"Pavement" only describes a surface in American English.
In British English "Pavement" is always a paved or otherwise surfaced and prepared path (as distinct from just dirt) specifically separate for the road and specifically for the use of a pedestrian.
You just assumed that there's different specificity because you assumed both words had the same meaning in both languages. That's still a fairly innocent mistake. Just don't forget that wearing thongs in public is perfectly acceptable but men should never be seen wearing suspenders, at least not unless you're the cast of Rocky Horror.
It's a Winston Churchill quote, allegedly.
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Are your streets not paved there?
Why the assumption that pavement has something to do with being paved?
Roads in the UK are paved and not called pavement.
Pavements in the UK do not need to be paved, they can be asphalted or otherwise prepared.
Bollocks!
Have gnu, will travel.
If English is to stand a chance of remaining a useful language it has to change so we shouldn't be too bothered about it. When I hear my children speak they have a UK accent but what they say and how they say it sounds American.
Generally I'm ok with it but I still struggle with what I perceive to be the loss of the adverb in favour of the adjective; I hear "that was real hard" instead of "that was really hard" and "do it quick" instead of "do it quickly".
Other things jarring to my UK ears are saying "momentarily" instead of "in a moment" which have two different meanings and the word "irregardless" when "regardless" is what is meant.
We have a lot of technical reports at work and I see many abuses of the English language by native speakers, the most common are not knowing how to use apostrophes (or should I say apostrophe's) and a liberal use of capital letters to begin words that are not at the beginning of a sentence and not a proper noun but are just plain old common-or-garden nouns.
Heeeey, I remember James Nicoll from like 20 years ago on Usenet.
Ever try to understand Scottish English?
Why are the British even complaining about Americanizations compared to that level of "creative interpretation"?
and I read a lot of British origin books, or American books that were well over 100 years old and still retained some of the across the pond ways of doing things. Then as I got older and the Internet became a thing I wound up on a lot of websites either from the U.K. or at least heavily frequented by residents. I may speak with a bit of a Texas drawl, but I often catch myself writing "grey" almost as default and occasionally "centre" on rare occasion I'll insert a u, but that's a rare one for me. The fact the spell checkers in Firefox in my Debian derivative Linux distros seems to default to British English and swaps back even after being corrected on occasion doesn't exactly keep me in American spelling land. I've never gotten into the different ways of describing car types and their parts, nor words like nappy instead of diaper, but whatever got embedded in my head from reading every single Sherlock Holmes story in the sixth grade, the Bastard Operator from Hell in the early 2000's, and countless other bits of literature are rather well cemented.
Add in the touch of autism that I have that prevented me from realizing that having a larger than average vocabulary from where I grew up was why I got into so many fist fights - and it took one of the guys who was covered in bruises afterwards telling me why he started the fight for me to realize it - and I've had to commit myself to a mental game where I shut down my vocabulary with most company and only open up with a select group of geeks. I have found it's important not to let slip with British terms even when they're one of the few that I find I like better than our own in person. The Internet on the other hand doesn't seem to care with the exception of the occasional spelling or grammar Nazi, that deserves and gets ridicule in return.
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"American" units, thank you very much.
... the letter "u" is sad that it will be used so much less now that it can properly be removed from words such as labor and humor among many others....
The result of anything where the verb to pave applies for how the surface is improved is pavement.
This forms the basis of a lot of Americanisms. The language based on Americanisms is less rich and relies more on words that sound like other words or words that describe distinct things by appearance or function. Take for example a "movie" as a way to describe moving pictures which in British English has the historically distinct word a "film". While you go to the "movies" to watch a "movie" in the UK you would watch a "film" in a "cinema".
A "caravan" in America is called a "trailer", which is indistinct from other "trailers". Also not just "car trailers", but also a "trailer truck" which would be called an "articulated lorry".
There's also no requirement in for a verb and noun to have the same spelling in the UK which leads to differences such as your "driver's license" and the UK's "driver's licence". The difference is that the government will "license" you by giving you a "licence", something that has no distinction in American English.
In a way American English is simpler to understand.
In that case stop filling your cars with gas.
New York City English is the best English.
Why the assumption that pavement has something to do with being paved?
Oh, no reason ...
Like how we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Says the man literally ending a sentence in "preposition".
Can be answered with a "NO". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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It struck me that Americans speak English as if it were their second language. Of course, it is their only language, but their fluency, vocabulary, cultural references, idioms and figures of speech are those of a non-native speaker.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
American southern accent
But that's full of French and Spanish influence. Northern American has more German and Norwegian influence.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not really. It's just as much a variety of English as American English or Australian English.
Actually it is much more of a variety of English than those example. It is for one some 20 varieties that are all mutually more distinct than those two colonial ascents.
When I first moved to the USA, there were a number of British English words that were largely unknown in the USA. Now, they appear to be understood, if not in common use. For example: "loo".
Well during the Nice attack I head a reporter on CNN say that a "lorry" had run down several pedestrian, but that there were no information as of now of whether the "so-called lorry" was a car or a truck.
So there are some words that are still secret ;)
Airplane is one of the uggliest words in American English. It makes the speaker sound like a child who has just rammed two words together, because there's absolutely no way to make the r and p sounds flow together.
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I don't think this is slang. Phrasal verbs is the posh term. In this case, the two-word phrasal verb "put up" (accommodate) is different from the three-word "put up with" (tolerate). One question is whether the the final word is really a preposition or an adverb. If you can separate the main verb from the other bit (We put my mother-in-law up in the attic.) suggests it is an adverb. If separating the words sounds weird (We couldn't put up with my mother-in-law's moaning.), it's probably a preposition.
Therefore, saying, "We could put Churchill up." is fine.
Automatic spell-checkers which can be set to different national varieties are likely to play a part in keeping the two varieties fairly distinct.
In the defense of writers they should just avoid the pretence of localized spellings and simply accept both spellings as valid for those cases where there's a British spelling; both flavours are legit, and they're both English.
This is just a case where automatic spell-checkers are harmful.
They're called American units now - but throughout most of my life it was called "The Imperial System."
Indeed. If one wishes to use the term 'gasoline' that's fine - but it is a petroleum product, so 'petrol' seems reasonable. And I'm a Yank.
Was recently trying to explain to a friend what a Lancashire accent was and found this video giving a snippet of all 30 dialects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No, that would be Klingon.
I prefer to call them Freedom Units, thank you very much.
Right after you stop filling yours with every chemical from tar to methane.
I know! It's almost like English is a Germanic language.
The terms film and cinema are used in the United States. The term movie is a shortened form of moving picture. The term film is less specific than movie as film is the medium on which still images, moving images, and condensed records (microform/microfilm/microfiche) is stored. the term cinema originates in French.
Part of the reason for the generic trailer as the American equivalent of caravan is that when the term fell into wide use, that was by-far the most popular kind of trailer for people not using a trailer for any type of commerce to own dating to the postwar era when the popularity of driving around the United States really took off. If one personally owned a trailer, it was most likely a travel-trailer to be used as temporary habitation while on road trips. Boat-trailers and car-haulers existed, but one could refer to using the former as, "towing the boat," and towing cars on car-haulers was not especially common compared to using travel-trailers and generally limited to car or racing enthusiasts. Basically all other forms of trailer are for commerce, like flatbed trailers and vans towed behind heavy trucks (semi-truck or tractor-trailer as the equivalent of articulated lorry and simple truck for a medium-duty or heavy-duty truck for an open flatbed non-articulating truck equivalent to lorry, or a box-truck for those with a van-body behind the cab). The term caravan tends to stick closer to its roots, of a group of vehicles traveling together, as derived from the group of pack-animals traveling together. It probably helps that Duke Ellington's instrumental version of the song of the same name dating to the 1930s added a bit of intrigue to the term caravan, which might have helped it avoid becoming the term for a travel-trailer.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There's also no requirement in for a verb and noun to have the same spelling in the UK which leads to differences such as your "driver's license" and the UK's "driver's licence". The difference is that the government will "license" you by giving you a "licence", something that has no distinction in American English.
I don't currently live there, but I believe it's still a "driving license".
(Using the gerund, I think it is.)
Commonly, our town centre pavements are paved using paving slabs. Out of the town centre, tarmac or concrete is also common.
Our roads are usually tarmacked using tarmac.
Other than some private estates and some roads where there's no clear distinction between the pedestrian and car part of the road, I cannot think of anywhere where there are paved roads. Roads are tarmac or concrete or, less commonly, cobbled. I would guess that paved roads don't stand up to HGVs (now LGVs) particularly well.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Si!
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I cannot think of anywhere where there are paved roads
We clearly have different definitions. In my American English, there are two kinds of roads: paved and dirt. Paved means any kind of hardened surface, including asphalt, concrete, etc.
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Indeed. But in British English:
Pave (verb)
Cover (a piece of ground) with flat stones or bricks; lay paving over.
âthe yard at the front was paved with flagstonesâ(TM)
âa paved areaâ(TM)
There is also the phrase "pave the way" but that refers to enabling something to happen.
We do use the phrase metalled: "A metalled road is covered with small or crushed stones." although this is somewhat technical and relatively rare and I suspect the majority of the population wouldn't know what you were talking about.
Middle English: from Old French metal or Latin metallum, from Greek metallon âmine, quarry, or metalâ(TM).
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Courgette (French) / zucchini (Italian)?
Then there is aubergine (French, again) / eggplant.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Where is "here"? I've rarely, if ever, heard anyone refer to a sidewalk as pavement. (U.S. resident here.) The sidewalk is the sidewalk. "Pavement" means road, sometimes, but if someone means "road", they just say "road". "Pavement" is usually a paved surface like a parking lot, and is usually only said when a distinction needs to be made, like when there's a big, casual parking area with paved and unpaved areas. Eg., "Move your car off of the grass and onto the pavement" or "park in the grass and keep the pavement clear."
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I was trying to reply to fibonacci8, saying the same thing but in cavemen-talk.
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That example doesn't show a change in speech. The "y" in that use is actually a "thorn" and is pronounced like "th".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Ah, memories. I did this as an adult on my first trip to the USA, except, just like the girl in your story, I did not use the word "eraser".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Pronunciation differences are more obvious to me than the spelling and vocabulary differences. It amuses me though that some people don't really understand how they sound. I had one lady argue with me that boot and book have the same vowel sound. But then she said it was ridiculous that I pronounce roof with the short oo (like hook, book or hoof), when she pronounced it to rhyme with aloof (or spoof). Ironically she used "book" as the example of the vowel sound she thought she was making. So crazy.
What I want to know is: when to use a (thorn) and when to use an ð (eth)
Of course you can't actually see the thorn (but you can see the ð, wtf?) because /. is stuck in 1967.
Another is:
'The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.' -James Nicoll
I've seen this before. It's only funny because it is so true. Hell, we'll make up new words and phrases just for the heck of it. We have no pride whatsoever in the language. If we find a word lying around that fits better, and better describes something, it's promptly dragooned into service.
This is an ex-parrot!
Modern British English, in and around Norfolk, including Norwich and Great Yarmouth – where the American Pilgrims that settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts mostly came from – sounded pretty much like Americans to me when I was there.
And most Brits on BBC TV sound less and less "British" than I remember them sounding 40 years ago. But I'd stop short of saying they sound American. But maybe I have a better ear for it now than I did back then.
Well, the question is really how mutually intelligible are they. IIUC Portuguese is almost intelligible as Latin, but the rest have drifted more.
A better comparison might be German and Dutch vs. German and Danish. Dutch is clearly a separate language...though also clearly closely related. Danish, though, could almost be considered a German dialect. And at least one source has told me that there is a continual "mutual intelligibility of neighbors" that runs from Switzerland down to Alps to Denmark and across the sea to Sweden. They may be exaggerating, of course.
OTOH, part of the distinction between British and American English is due to the decision of one person, Noah Webster, who thought the new country needed a separate language, so he wrote a dictionary with several new spellings. So the choices of prominent individuals can shape the way things develop in unpredictable ways.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Or, like I like to put it, these people all speak vulgar Latin.
Don't you mean Latina vulgaris?
That's not a change in speech? People still say "thee" ? Clearly I'm harking back to colonial days.
And if you're going to be that technical, no, it's not thorn, it's y. Print engravers didn't have a thorn typeface so they used y instead.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Edh is the voiced consonant and thorn is the same consonant unvoiced. These are the first two consonants in "the theory."
I could be wrong, but I believe thorn represents an unvoiced, soft "th", as in "thought", or "thorough"; and eth represents a voiced, hard "th" as in "there", "then".
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That's weird.
ð produces ð
þ produces [Nothing]
Þ produces [Nothing]
It's the same with ° which produces [Nothing]
I can sort of understand why slashdot filters unicode, because it's too much work to find a safe subset that doesn't mess the page up, even though I'm sure there's a Perl module to do just that.
But I can't see any reason why it filters some html character entities. Unicode would lead to trolls posting nasty abominations like Zalgo Text or flipping everything so it reads right to left. Html character entities seem like they don't allow for stuff like that.
Still slashdot seems to filter everything but a very narrow whitelist. I've no idea why.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Both languages have expressions that are fustian relative to the same referent in the other language. I can see a future trend toward picking the simpler expression from either language. For example, "elevator" would become "lift" and "central reservation" would become "median."
Ain't that kinda redunderant?
In the sense that a Xerox copier is redunderant.
Even though the exact measures may have evolved over time, we got the units' names from the English, so that's why we call them that.
The English still use many of them too, so the name fits. Go to an English pub and ask for a beer; it's going to be a "pint". They express distances in "miles". And they express their body weights in some weird unit called a "stone", whatever the fuck that is (I'm pretty sure it's a whole number of pounds).
Slabs and bricks are still improved surfaces, as opposed to something like loose gravel without a binding agent.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They both moved away from their common roots, but as is common (e.g. with Spanish) provincial speech retained a lot of archaisms as the language changed more rapidly in its ancestral land.
The biggest diverging change in pronunciation for British English was that in the 1800s it became "non-rhotic". An aristocratic schoolboy affectation for dropping the "r" sound except before vowels spread through the population, much to the consternation of contemporary writers who compared the pronunciation of English youth unfavorably to the "pure" English spoken by event the "lowest classes" in America. In parts of the US with greater cultural ties to England non-rhoticity also spread (e.g. New England).
But American English also changed, for example many Americans pronounced "cot" and "caught" as homophones.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Look up any 'English' word in the Oxford English Dictionary and note the word origin. England? Not likely. Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Slobbovian are all more likely. Almost no language has origins where it is today. The French have waged a futile war to keep their language 'pure' -- only the most ignorant (such as government officials) would believe that possible.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I have never come across such a bunch of sore winners before as Trump voters.
Here in the UK we have this little thing called Brexit...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Iâ(TM)ve never heard an American use the term âImperialâ(TM) units, and I lived in Denver for three years. It was always âEnglishâ(TM) units.
I've lived in the US for 39 years (this excludes 2 years in Brazil) and I heard "Imperial units" more than "English units".
What? I'm no expert, but I do speak a little German, and Dutch is much closer to German than Danish. Danish is very similar to Swedish, a Scandinavian language, and also Norwegian. I can make out a lot of Dutch, but not so much Danish.
"Football" means the same thing in every language in the world except in the US.
For the love of GOD, stop pronouncing "aluminum" with an extra syllable, brits. IT ONLY HAS 4!
Only because you guys miss out the second "i"...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The title presumes that convergence will occur. The history of language is divergence and mixing. I expect more of that. There will not likely be a "winner" of English. Increased connectivity has reduced divergence, but hasn't created convergence. American English isn't even all one thing. We have yinz and y'all, soda and pop, etc.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You are correct.
If that made sense, then we'd have to use the word "petrol" for diesel, kerosene, and even paraffin.
Gasoline is a specific fraction distilled from crude oil, so it makes sense to use that term, or to shorten it.
If you're going to make the argument that gasoline is much more popular than other petroleum products, that doesn't make sense either: it's only true in America. Over in Europe (and UK), diesel is used a lot more by passenger cars than it is here in the US.
I spent my formative years in Hawaii where Hawaiian Creole English (commonly called Pidgin by us locals) was taught in school as "English". However, my grandmother taught American English on the mainland and tried to ensure we could speak and understand "proper" English. This background could mean my experience does not match most Americans.
Where words have more specificity, use those that are more specific.
For the summary's example of pavement versus sidewalk, pavement is less specific than sidewalk. Pavement refers to an improved surface and just as easily could mean a roadway, while sidewalk pretty specifically indicates an improved surface that is meant for pedestrians rather than vehicles.
I always thought of pavement as the material used to pave a pathway. "Stay on the pavement" means to stay on the part of the road which is paved, etc. I hear "road" or "street" more than "roadway". I've heard of paved sidewalks (as opposed to cobblestone or dirt), but haven't heard of sidewalks called pavement.
America still has regionalities itself though, it's not like it's one homogeneous language region. It'd be wicked pissah to spill your Moxie on the hottop when opening the cah doah and you'd be bull if you did.
My dad used to be able to distinguish pronunciation and vocab from 20 regions in the state of Utah. Utahns love poking fun at Spanish Fork where they pronounce "Fork" as "Fark".
I cannot think of anywhere where there are paved roads
We clearly have different definitions. In my American English, there are two kinds of roads: paved and dirt. Paved means any kind of hardened surface, including asphalt, concrete, etc.
You forgot gravel roads and the rare cobblestone.
People even talk about dressing-up for Halloween (trick-or-treating).
Good, it's a great tradition and holiday. It's the only time of the year when adult women can dress up in sexy, slutty outfits and not be ridiculed for it, and men don't get in trouble for ogling them. We need more holidays like that, and it's about time other countries adopted this tradition.
there is a sinister side: The right-wing party has been anti-welfare for a long time and it resulted in a not-so-young politician demanding Reagan-esque policies of welfare-bashing and gifts to the rich. ... I dread the thought of my country becoming a corporate-driven plutocracy.
I'm no expert on British politics, but I don't think this is anything new. Wasn't Margaret Thatcher basically a female version of Reagan?
Ok, but will a sleeping policeman ever become a speed bump.
Or, like I like to put it, these people all speak vulgar Latin.
I thought that was what the Romans used when they told fart jokes.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
And Australia. And New Zealand. And probably South Africa. Any Canadians want to chip in too?
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
14 pounds mate
Only when measuring fries.
The English called the sport "soccer" up through World War II. Soccer is an Oxford "er" word, a shortening of Association Football. Only the English shorten words and add "er", like calling the Five Pound note a "fiver". This is where the US, Canada, Australia and such got the word soccer. When the English introduced the rules for Association Football to these other countries, they called it soccer. Suddenly, after WWII, they dropped the word and went with just football.
Longer Answer: what is going to dominate internationally is something a lot of my German colleagues refer to as "international English." This, I'm given to conclude, really means "American English as spoken in Hollywood mass media, learned as a second language by watching television/movies, and presumed in Dunning-Kruger style to be correct despite having a 5th-grade level of skill/vocabulary and looking like something spit out by Google Translate."
And aside from that, to which American English are you referring? There's easily a dozen different dialects in the US, some mutually incomprehensible (or nearly so; have a look at the language of the Gullah-geechee on the Carolina shore, or the High Tiders in Eastern Virginia), and I'd suggest that none of them have any wide circulation internationally. What I think the author is imagining as "American" English is not really any dialect as spoken by even moderately competent native speakers, but rather some mass-market doggerel.
Signed, a snoot.
In America whenever I see something named "Centre" I avoid it like the plague. That word just absolutely reeks of pomposity.
/.'s quote of the day, "Gort, klaatu nikto barada" is WRONG! It should be "Gort, klaatu barada nikto!" Who edits this stuff?
If that's not bad enough,
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Just to be clear, are you speaking Southern-English-English (aka Cockney, Home Counties/London, RP, Queen's, etc), Midlands-English-English (East or West), or one of those obscure West-Country-English-English or East-Anglian-English-English dialects... Or are you not really a speaker of English-English, but maybe some bastardized non-English-English like Welsh-English, or Scottish-English...
Not sure which one it is, but can we please lose the dialect that doesn't have a th? I'm not normally violent, but it makes me want to punch its speakers in the "mouf."
There appear to be 160K arabic speakers in the UK. That is only 5% and there are certainly fewer in Northern Ireland and Scotland!
Take off every 'sig' !!
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Take off every 'sig' !!
In NZ they don't play football of any kind. They play rugby.
The term movie is a shortened form of moving picture. [...] the term cinema originates in French.
And is, interestingly, short for "cinematograph", which means... "moving picture". "Movie" is about the most direct and literal French-to-English translation of "cinema" that you can do.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
At the time of the Revolution, both had about the same accent. We didn't change, the British did. Look it up. It's true. Blame it on the "common" people becoming wealthy.
And can we PLEASE use collective nouns as singular?
Not: The team are playing better now.
Rather: The team is playing better now.
That is not a case of ending a sentence in a preposition;really, it is a case of ending a sentence in a separable prefix of a verb. It is a hold out from the older days of the English language, reinforced with the linguistic tendencies of Germanic-language immigrants (where verbs with separable prefixes are common) to North America.
Well, I'm no expert either, I was merely (as I said) repeating what someone had told me. But your statement is the first I've ever heard that called it into question.
It would be nice if a German or Dane could speak to this point.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
an asphalt-slurry mix road or street
Known to some as "tar macadam", hence the word "tarmac". (macadam refers to the gravel part) Which is normally only used in the US in an aviation context, to refer to airport landing strips and taxiways, even when they might be made entirely of concrete. (Though I will admit that it can be a nice coating for concrete. Here in Texas, within the past decade I have seen new roads built both with asphalt over concrete, and concrete over asphalt.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
And sometimes brick. Both brick and cobblestone would apparently fit the classic definition of "paving". But brick lost favor once automobiles could go fast enough for the average brick surface to be too rough. Now brick is mostly only used for crosswalks, when bumpy safety tiles aren't used. Also, laying asphalt and concrete in continuous strips is much cheaper and faster to build, and more durable than brick.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
This is where (without clicking to find out) I'm wondering if the video includes thirty different dialects from across Lancashire.
Sounds too many. Thirty different accents, definitely, but not dialects.
We have no pride whatsoever in the language.
Umm. I do. I love that it's so flexible and that you can use, misuse and abuse it without losing any communicability.
I think it's awesome that Carroll made up a word to describe making up words and everybody now uses it to describe the words they're making up. That's the basic essence of the language; it's bloody useful.
Well ... watch it. Accents/dialects? It's a good video.
Gas means LPG. A gaseous product often used to power cars.
It's also short for "gasoline", a fraction of petroleum used to power cars. (And a different fraction of petroleum than diesel, also used to power cars and trucks, and again different from kerosene and the closely-related jet fuel.)
Americans appear to be incapable of making diesel engines that are any good, so its not surprising they don't use them much.
Bzzzt, wrong. Rednecks love diesel pickup trucks, and those American-made engines are quite reliable (a lot more so than the rest of the truck).
And it's a good thing that Americans don't use diesel nearly as much as Europeans in passenger cars, or else we'd have all the nasty smog problems that European cities have. Our air these days is much cleaner despite us driving many more miles per person. Diesel engines have a huge problem with NOx emissions that gas engines don't have.
Also, you seem to forget, it was the Europeans who fraudulently and criminally made diesel emissions that cheated on the emissions tests. Where are those "good" diesel engines you speak of? All I see is shitty ones from Europe that were made by liars and swindlers.
L'anglais n'est que du francais mal prononce (can't spell it properly on /.)
- Alexandre Dumas
English is only French badly pronounced
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
There is no such thing as "American English", "British English", "Indian English" etc.
There is English, and incorrect, bastardised versions of English.
Then meet it would be, if thou didest use it.
Alas, poor William S., Ben Jonson, and James the King(s), we hardly knew ye.
Nowadays, you cannot see a film, as all the movies are sent out on disk or electronically.
And I would ask you English caravan types how many outriders you use per ten wagons, when you go on the Silk Road?
I suspect the energetic defence of 'British English' was to ensure our new EU friends used British spellings, not the US ones (with mixed success - I think overall we are losing / have lost on 'centers'). What price Brexit?
I know the truth and I know what you're thinking
Most people that speak English do so as a second language.
And the English they learn to speak is British.
American English really only exists in North America, maybe a bit in East Asia, where relatively few people speak English at all.
"here" in this case is Ireland, although what I said follows for the UK also.
"Sidewalk" is really only used here when singing "Because of You" by Kelly Clarkson.
(Incidentally, "footpath" is used here more than "pavement" to refer to where pedestrians walk beside a road. I intentionally didn't mention that before as the discussion was around the usage of the word "pavement" in both versions of the language.)
"speed ramp" here. :P
well, concrete is just one really large brick that was formed in place...
in midwest US the word "Footpath" may be used occasionally but if it were it would likely refer to a path that is not associated with a road. such as a path between two buildings that is not beside a road.
Actually, linguists say the British accent circa the Elizabethan period would have sounded closes to the American southern accent..
Sorry to break it to you but Lowland Scots is a rhotic accent (as are many regional British accents). The link above seems to assume that because English was rhotic it is more like All American accents than all British accents, which is an invalid assumption. -- ~~~~
Ever notice how we tend to drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
-- Stephen Wright
Why do the Brits call it a carriageway? Does any of that make sense?
The South West of England is NOT obscure, nor is our English. Twerp!
I'm fairly sure saying the British 'originated' English is a bit of an oversimplification, considering a large part of the language consists of loan words from other parts of the world. Language is an ever evolving thing, so we should appreciate change and give all languages respect, while seeking to improve our knowledge of all of them as much as possible.
Media English is taking over. It isn't "American English" or the "Queen's English" it is that commonly used screen and video language patterns are becoming the norm and dialects are becoming a thing of the past or at least only used by the "ignorant fly over country".
You don't hear a lot of colloquialisms anymore unless you consider "leetspeak" and "textish" to be dialects.
NRRPT/RCT
When I first moved to the USA, there were a number of British English words that were largely unknown in the USA. Now, they appear to be understood, if not in common use. For example: "loo".
I give credit to BBC and their fine TV shows such as Dr. Who; perhaps Danger Mouse.
There are two types of countries: those that use the metric system in everyday life and those that landed men on the moon.
MacAdam was the Scot who invented the mixture of aggregate (crushed stone) and asphalt.
When originally introduced, the product considerably increased the demand for crushed stone, and so for a considerable part of the Victorian period, a routine hard labour task for prisoners and the poor in the workhouse was crushing stone by hand. The ideal size of stone for making pavement was described by MacAdam as being "small enough to fit into a child's mouth". So that's some of what the children in the hard labour yard of the workhouse were doing.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It's not particularly about surface roughness, but about toughness and resilience. Brick (and also flagstones, as mentioned upthread) is brittle and inflexible, and the rate of change of stress resulting from the loading and unloading of the brick/ stone by the wheel driving onto it and off it results in the brick/ stone fracturing very rapidly when traversed by a fast-moving vehicle. After which, the road rapidly starts to break up, and needs to be re-laid at considerable expense and inconvenience.
The asphalt in tarmacadam allows the load-bearing aggregate stones to flex slightly, accommodating such flexure and maintaining a smoother surface for longer.
Cobbles accommodate the flexure by setting each cobblestone ("sett") in about a cm-thickness of sand.
Road surfaces are much more complicated things than most people think. Choosing the correct rock types to provide the appropriate properties of strength, toughness and dry- and wet- friction is a big part of economic geology. And then there are the requirements for aggregate to go into concrete.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
If you're on a right of way, on foot, no one can deny you use of the footpath. But if you're on a footpath on horseback you can be ordered off the footpath and told to go onto a bridleway. Similarly if you're using your carriage on a bridleway you can be ordered off it to take your carriage onto a carriageway.
The usage was established a century or so before those terrorists in the American colonies started to demand seats in Parliament.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The Dutch just love to be referred to as 'swamp Germans'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're a moron or a liar, or both.
Most European cities don't have any smog problems and those that have them aren't caused by diesel engines.
Wrong. Diesel engines produce high NOx emissions, which lead to smog.
Diesel engines may produce a little more smog than petrol engines, but they produces far less volatile organic compounds and fewer particulates, both of which are much more important to smog formation than NOx.
You're a liar. Gas engines don't produce significant particulates. Any idiot who's been around a diesel bus as it pulls away from a stop knows that diesel engines produce high particulates. Fuck you and your lying. Why are you lying?
Ah, yes, European companies like Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Nissan, Suzuki and Mazda....
You don't know about VW's dieselgate scandal?? Again, fuck you and your lying.
Since most American truck makers are owned by European companies, there are probably quite a few in trucks near you, too.
Why are you lying so much? Cummins is not a European company, and Ford makes their Powerstroke diesels here in the US.
The ideal size of stone for making pavement was described by MacAdam as being "small enough to fit into a child's mouth". So that's some of what the children in the hard labour yard of the workhouse were doing.
Victorian-era quality control!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Not to mention one of the huge producers of truck/lorry tractors is ... Volvo.
You forgot gravel roads and the rare cobblestone.
I've generally considered the term dirt road to include gravel.... but I suppose if you wanted to be more accurate, one could use the terms paved and unpaved roads.
Cobblestone is a form of paving.
Americans are absolutely BUTCHERING the english language!