Maybe eventually the Britishisation will extend to returning the 'u' to colour so I make far, far fewer typos.
Although it's interesting see the cross-pollenisation that seems to be happening linguistically thanks to media shifting both ways across the pond. Often used to be American imported media flowing into Britain with very few things leaving, but it seems like there's more American Doctor Who fans than British ones now.
I still think it's funny that for a culture that was so at odds with the French that their slang for toilet is named after a line of French kings, they still spell things like the French ("colour" being one example, "theatre" another).
As to Doctor Who, well, it's more soap opera than science fiction these days (and has been for a while), so it's no surprise that it's wildly popular in the states.
> I still think it's funny that for a culture that was so at odds with the French ... they still spell things like the French ("colour" being one example, "theatre" another).
But the word descends directly from the French language; 30% of English is from the French, it's largest influence (another 30% is from latin, 30% from Germanic, and the rest from other sources). So it's not that we are choosing to 'spell things like the French': the word IS French, as are countless other words. It's our biggest source of vocab.
The reason nearly a third of English words derive from French (the same proportion as directly from Latin, which the romantic languages, e.g. French, derive from) is because the British Isles were largely conquered by William the Conqueror (to the Brits) in the 11th century.
"Typo" would be another one, I'd always say "Spelling mistake" instead. I had no experience of the word "typo" until i started noticing it in American TV.
For those who first encounter the word "typo" indirectly as TamDenholm did, it's worth noting that a typo is not just any spelling mistake; it is a mis-spelling rendered in a type-set text and arising not through the author's ignorance of spelling but rather through a mis-operation of the typing apparatus (often arising through hasty typing). For elaboration, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_error.
If one believed (erroneously) that "spelling" were correctly rendered "speling", that would not be a typo but a spelling mistake. On the other hand, if one rendered it "speling" because of a finger slip on the second press of the "l" key then it would be a typo.
Cute. Their sidebar isn't all that accurate, though. "Called Joe" a Britishism? 'Fraid not, chaps. Booking a flight? Also not that British. And "an American would say" is more than a little offensive, although surely not intentionally.
Also they missed "wanker" - which has been used a lot lately. It's a good word.
Whilst teaching someone programming the other day I realised that the overloaded word "call" causes great problems. I had to correct "a function called main" to "a function named main", in order to make sense of "calling a function".
Before then I had been unaware that I use the word for different meanings.
Non-American here, and I failed to see how "an American would say" is offensive. It seems to me that it's just pointing out the differences, which doesn't ring as offensive at all. Would you care to explain? (I am genuinely asking this question out of curiosity, not criticizing)
Sorry - in politics, the worst possible thing one American can do to another is to imply that they're not really American. I'm a liberal from Indiana - that may or may not mean anything to you - but somebody identifying me as a not-quite-American based on something I say that maybe sounds too posh really raises my hackles, even as I realize, full well, that it's a really stupid reaction.
Even then, I didn't really notice it until I'd read three things I say that an American wouldn't. Dammit. It's like the time that chick in Germany tried to tell me I don't speak English, just American. I may not know everything, but by God and St. George I am the utter master of my dialect and precisely how and when it differs from whatever we Anglophones deem "standard".
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were implying that BEING called an American was offensive, instead of the other way around. I understand now.
I also didn't see the implication of being "not really American" if you don't say it that way, but I see what you mean.
Sell-by date - Also common in the US. It has different connotations than "expiration date", which is why a lot of grocery stores have started using it. Sometimes packages will even have separate "sell by" and "expiration" (also "use or freeze by") dates.
Metrosexual, Gastropub - These are not Britishisms. They're just recent words that happen to have originated in Britain. That's not at all the same thing. Britishism implies that the word is (or at least was) stereotypically British.
I think in British English it is more common to say 'best before date' rather than 'sell-by date'.
One 'Britishisation' I wish the US would get is 'I couldn't care less', meaning I care about some thing as little as possible, yet in the US they insist on say 'I could care less' which makes no sense.
Yes but in general conversation people would normally just refer to the 'best before' date. Also, not everything has a 'display until' or 'sell-by' date.
I don't think that's British vs American, that's more proper grammar vs improper grammar. You wouldn't hear anyone of any stature seriously trying to suggest that "could care less" is American English. My opinion is that it's one of those things people hear spoken more than they see written and the tendency to say "could'n care less" (without the hard stop on the 't'). Kind of like something I see on HN quite often, "kind've".
As someone resident in the UK, I am quite sure that it is in fact a UK vs US-ism. I wouldn't know if everyone in the US uses the phrase "I could care less" but I am sure that no-one over here does. Which makes it an American turn of phrase since it is found no-where else.
If you think of "I could care less" as sarcasm, it makes more sense, i.e., the speaker couldn't really care less. (If I recall, this was the typical usage when I first started hearing this phrase decades ago.)
I agree this is just a question of improper grammar. However , it's fast becoming an Americanism. I think it's probably more common without the "n't" (or even just "n'") at this point.
> Kind of like something I see on HN quite often, "kind've".
I'm convinced that British people never say "I could care less" when they mean that they don't care, but that some American people do. British people say instead "I couldn't care less", which is a more accurate statement.
How does that differ from "I could care less" being a characteristically American turn of phrase?
What he means is that even Americans would identify this an improper grammar. I'm not sure if that's accurate or not, though. I daresay that the more grammatically-inclined among us would call it wrong, but the typical American likely would not. (See also: literally, used as a general intensifier)
Well, they can claim whatever they want. :) At the end of the day, calling something "right" or "wrong" comes down to a subjective call, though. If 99% of people use some construction, then even the most prescriptive of linguists will probably consider it correct. But what about 40%? 20%? Even for a descriptive linguist, the question of "do people say X" is fuzzy. Some people say "X" for almost any "X". Some people say "aks" instead of "ask", but the vast majority of people would agree that's wrong.
> At the end of the day, calling something "right" or "wrong" comes down to a subjective call
But the idea is to not make that call at all. That would be prescriptive.
> Some people say "aks" instead of "ask", but the vast majority of people would agree that's wrong.
I'm told that's a regional variation. In other words, in some places, people speak like that. That's descriptive. so is "most people speak like that in region A and don't have a problem with it, and most don't in regions B,C,D,E".
> But the idea is to not make that call at all. That would be prescriptive.
To me, that's not the line between prescriptive and descriptive linguists. I think both say what's right and wrong, but there's different connotations to their answers. Prescriptive linguists see the language as more static and more rooted in the past. Descriptive linguists see the language as more dynamic and based in the present. I think a prescriptive linguist would basically say that "aks" is wrong "because it's wrong", and that a big chunk of the population using it wouldn't make it right. A descriptive linguist would say it's wrong because if you use it you'll sound stupid to most of the population. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the word, though, and if enough people start using it, it will become "right".
Obviously, this division is very fuzzy and is really a question of degree.
> I'm told that's a regional variation. In other words, in some places, people speak like that.
I'm not aware of any regions where this is actually used by the majority of the population, unless we define regions to be arbitrarily small, in which case we've just gone back to "someone says X".
> That's descriptive. so is "most people speak like that in region A and don't have a problem with it, and most don't in regions B,C,D,E".
This kind of description can be useful, but there's still a judgement call. I might go ask a descriptive linguist about the term "aks", and they might explain that it's common in certain neighborhoods around major cities but that educated urban types don't use it, that in the south rural residents don't use it but some suburban residents around the hub cities do, etc. And that's all great and educational, but then I'm going to ask "Is it American English?" I'm either going to get a hand-wavy "it depends" answer that involves repeating the descriptions above and telling me nothing useful, or a straight answer that is effectively prescriptive.
The questions are not just "does anyone say X?", but also "should I say X?". If descriptive means being unable to answer the latter at all, then descriptive means being nearly useless.
But "does anyone say X?" does go a long way to answering "should I say X?".
I'll leave your pet example of "aks" which I really know nothing about so if you say it's widespread yet is nobody's dialect, then all right.
If you know that that English people almost use the word "pants" to mean "underwear" then it's clear that "does anyone in London say pants meaning trousers?" is "no" and when wanting to purchase trousers the answer to "should I say pants?" is also "no".
The only American dialects that I know anything about is from recently watching "The Wire". "does anyone talk like that?" Apparently so. it's not right or wrong, it's a way of talking. "Should I talk like that?" depends on whether I'm talking to inner-city Baltimore gangsters.
> But "does anyone say X?" does go a long way to answering "should I say X?".
Agreed, though I think part of the issue is with regional divisions. There is no true "American English" that spans the country. So "does anyone say X" may not be sufficient. If I want to be a newscaster and fit my language to the country as a whole, neither Boston pronunciation not Southern slang is likely my target. I'm looking for the subset that's acceptable to the majority of Americans. How big that majority needs to be is a judgment call. How widespread a certain term/construct/etc actually is also seems like a judgment call, as the info probably isn't gathered via scientific polls.
> I'll leave your pet example of "aks" which I really know nothing about so if you say it's widespread yet is nobody's dialect, then all right.
I think "aks" has fallen in usage. For a time, it was popular among certain groups, but I haven't actually heard anyone say the word in a long time (though that could also be indicative of my social circles changing rather than the actual usage overall). It's just a convenient example, but not to my knowledge a very realistic one anymore.
> If you know that that English people almost use the word "pants" to mean "underwear" then it's clear that "does anyone in London say pants meaning trousers?" is "no" and when wanting to purchase trousers the answer to "should I say pants?" is also "no".
The only American dialects that I know anything about is from recently watching "The Wire". "does anyone talk like that?" Apparently so. it's not right or wrong, it's a way of talking. "Should I talk like that?" depends on whether I'm talking to inner-city Baltimore gangsters.
Fair enough. And maybe in that case it's just about framing. If you specifically ask about language general enough to span the US, maybe purely descriptive linguists can give you a useful answer.
> There is no true "American English" that spans the country
Of course. You should hear the way they speak in the North of England ;)
But if I say "the blue-winged teal is an American bird" I do not mean that every bird in North America is a blue-winged teal. I mean that the blue-winged teal is found only in North America.
By stature I mean anyone in position to talk about proper grammar vs improper. As in an English teacher/professor, an editor, etc vs someone off the street. Obviously English is a living language and meanings change over time, but there are authority figures who try to keep the language intelligible across a common group.
I say it's not an Americanism but rather merely incorrect use of language for the same reason I don't consider "libary" or "old-timer's disease" to be proper. It's not necessarily an evolution of the language as much as it is poor education. This may change over time if these words/phrases become generally accepted, but today they are not. You will lose credit for these uses. You might say these fall into "vulgar" English.
>Scoolteachers but not linguists is a very particular use of the word "stature".
I believe I implied linguists twice, once falling under the "etc" banner and once again in "authority figures". If you choose not to read that, I can't take the blame.
So... did you just bring up the subject of linguists simply so you could argue with me about what linguists do? I spoke about authorities on language. I believe this includes linguists amongst many others. English teachers are at the forefront of this as they will be the ones enforcing proper English usage, and as such they were the ones I spoke about by name. If you use the language wrong in school, you get marked down to reinforce the correct usage.
You happened to call out linguists as well, so I agreed with you that while I didn't mention them specifically, I was including them in the category of authority under the "etc" label. You then proceed to tell me I'm wrong because linguists don't work that way. Seems to me like you wanted to bait me into a trap. I don't think I fell for it in quite the way you were hoping.
Preofessional students of language would seem to be authorities on use of language, which is why I queried your use of the word "stature". It's an odd word to use about authorities on language, and it took a while to get to what you mean since you seemed to be assuming that I already knew what you meant.
"By stature I mean anyone in position to talk about proper grammar vs improper. As in an English teacher/professor, an editor, etc vs someone off the street."
"Importance or reputation gained by ability or achievement: 'an architect of international stature'"
A person of stature in the English language would be, by my consideration, someone who is notable for upholding the generally accepted usage of the English language. An English teacher has been professionally trained in proper English. An editor is tasked with enforcing proper English. Students being professionally (and specifically) trained in the English language would be suitable for being authorities, but they not necessarily of stature.
I didn't think I had worded it ambiguously, but here it is reworded: I don't think anyone who has a reputation gained from achievement in the subject of proper American English would argue that "could care less" is a good substitute for "couldn't care less".
It's got nothing to do with grammar. "I could care less" is a perfectly grammatical sentence - it follows all the rules of English sentence construction. Similarly, "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is also perfectly grammatical, it just doesn't make any semantic sense.
But "I could care less" is a perfectly grammatical sentence, which has a semantic meaning, which, as David Mitchell explains at comic length, is the opposite of what the speaker means to say.
Thus is the nature of a living language. Everyone has their own interpretation of how the language should be used, and it's up to everyone to find common ground in order to be understood. Debates, even inconsequential debates, are an integral part of understanding the words we assign arbitrary meaning to.
I was poking fun, but complaining about the use of the word "grammar" here is quite pedantic. Swapping the word "grammar" for something more strictly correct would have yielded no improvement to the conversation.
> would have yielded no improvement to the conversation
thats true freehunter didnt need to use the most best word in order to get acrost the course grain jyst of his thaughts but at sum point the lak of exact language use does become a hinderance to smoothe discorse and i guess id rather air on the side of accurasy and preciseness and ask the same of others even if that meens i risk being thaught a pedant
Yes, that's exactly what the conversation looked like when he said "grammar" instead of "semantics". I'm glad you've saved us from such dereliction of discourse.
To my American ears couldn't and less are a double negative. Like here is my level of concern and I can't go below that. OTOH, "could care less", means my level of disregard can approach -∞
"I couldn't care less" means "I am incapable of caring any less" aka "I care as little as possible". "I could care less" means "I do not care as little as possible" aka "I care a little".
If your level of concern is not zero, then I suppose you "could care less", but that means you do care, which is not the sentiment normally intended by the phrase.
Also, 'a way to go' & 'anyway' versus 'a ways to go' & 'anyways'; 'take it with a pinch of salt' versus 'take it with a grain of salt' (miserly Americans!).
On the other hand, I generally prefer the American -ization versus -isation.
It definitely doesn't make sense, but I think it's probably a result of a few folks eliding the "n't" on "couldn't" when speaking, then the phrase getting interpreted by the listener as a single phonic unit "could care less", which carries the semantic definition "couldn't care less".
It's just that the listener's brain understands the speaker based on the context without needing to deconstruct the clause and notice the elision, and so the gestalt phrase is what's remembered, and, later, recalled.
"that sort of London glottal stop", dropping the T in words like "important" or "Manhattan".
So I agree with the premise of this article, but the glottal stop is found in many regional American accents.
The internet removes language barriers from lines drawn on the ground, and this small difference has sped up a still very, very slow process started by television. Language is evolving towards a single shared language, right now we can see the regional differences falling away between nations. TV has dissolved much of the regional differences within the US. The difference is still there, and probably always will be, but its a lot weaker than it was a few decades ago.
The use of the glottal stop for the /t/ in "Manhattan" is how New York City natives born throughout the 20th century generally pronounced it, other than possibly elite class speakers. And you're correct that such glottalization occurs in other contexts in many regional US accents. The suggestion that this might be a result of recent British English influence is absurd.
It's actually more likely to be a holdover from very old British English influence - the Irish and Scots press-ganged white slaves who fled into the hills of Virginia and became the rednecks of coal country. I know that's where I get most of my dialect, even though I grew up in Indiana (so I also get a Blues-Brothersish Chicagoan avoidance of theta, to end up with that unique Hoosier accent that non-obsessives don't notice).
I grew up in Minnesota and moved to southern California as an adult, and after listening very hard for any trace of an accent out here, the only thing I've noticed is that Caucasians who grew up here and went to AP english classes enunciate their T's very clearly. It's kind of weird because that kind of kid in the upper Midwest is very careful to turn the T into a glottal stop, to fit in with everyone else.
Source? Labov's Atlas of North American Atlas says that changes among dialects in the US are more pronounced now than they were 50 years ago. If we're not even converging among ourselves, how can we all be possibly converging in any meaningful way with people overseas? It's simply not documented in any systematic way.
There are a lot of incorrect details in the article, although the premise is mostly accurate; the use of "spot on", for example, is certainly increasing on this side of the Atlantic, along with other phrases that aren't mentioned, such as "bog standard".
But a lot of the article's examples aren't quite right: "to book" a room or table has always been in use here; it just sounds more colloquial than "reserve", so the latter is what would be more likely printed in hotel brochures and restaurant menus. Conversely, "expiration date" is used in formal or ersatz-formal language, but "sell by" is what's actually usually printed on supermarket labels.
Some of the items ignore subtle distinctions in the way certain phrases are used. For example, there's always been "washing up" in America, but it's invariably done before dinner, not afterwards.
I wonder if there'll be agreement on 'irony'. In British English, the ironic happening must necessarily be unintentional. It doesn't have to be unknown, just go against the intentions of the act (eg: an anticrime bill that the beat police know will raise crime)
In contrast, Americans often use 'irony' in an intentional manner. Selecting an ironic t-shirt to wear. Or the phrase that clued me into this: "The photographer has arranged the model's foot ironically".
I would claim not to mind it, but when I think for a minute I realise that the spelling of various words like "fibre" annoy me, as well as the mm/dd/yy format (and "November 15th" instead of "November the 15th"), and describing football/sports teams as "it" instead of "they" (i.e. "Real Madrid is on an amazing run of form" vs "Real Madrid are on an amazing run of form").
I really wanted to like Limmy's show, I really did, but after 3 episodes I found I'd barely laughed, and even then only at Deedee's overanalysis of what the hardest item in his kitchen was.
Yeah some of the sketches are a bit tough, but overall I like him. His twitter is ridiculous though, worth following for at least a week or so - you'll see what I mean.
There's also the distinct English dialects spoken in the various former colonies. These tend to more closely follow the original English and so, by way of analogy with a certain international institution, people talk about Commonwealth English.
It's interesting how the entire shape of Australian English was set by the early settlers -- you can still distinct dialects of Strine spoken in different parts of the country. Or the way that the vowel-lotto that New Zealanders play with "Unglush" has a lot to do with the heavy settlement of NZ by Scots.
I guess eventually we'll all speak the same English. It'll give the French something even bigger to hate. Manifique.
I have acquired many of these by means of exchanging email with British customers. It's nothing worth getting anyone's knickers in a twist about, I rather fancy some of the phrases. Cheers.
"Unlike in the UK, there is no anti-ginger prejudice in the US, she says - Americans think of warm, comforting things like gingerbread."
As someone who grew up in America (with not ginger, but slightly reddish hair) I find this to very untrue. There's even a whole South Park episode* making fun of gingers, and there's few things more American than that. Maybe it's a relatively new thing, but I doubt many young Americans think of warm ginger bread.
The gingerbread comment is silly, but I think that any supposed anti-ginger prejudice in the U.S. is firmly tongue-in-cheek. I don't think I've ever heard anyone seriously disparage red-haired people here.
From the article: "She sees this as clearly tied to the publication in the US of the first Harry Potter book. Dozens of words and phrases were changed for the American market, but ginger slipped through, as did snog (meaning 'to kiss amorously') - though that has not proved so popular." I think this is one of the correctly described mechanisms for the spread of British terms into American English. The Harry Potter novels are wildly popular here in the United States, and as I recall the later novels (which were published simultaneously worldwide to prevent pirate editions) were less edited to match United States usage than the earlier United States editions of the novels.
"The use of university, rather than college or school, for example, may well be used by Americans to make sure they are understood outside the country." I definitely consciously use the term "university" (which was the proper name for my undergraduate institution of higher education) when I want to be understood by Canadians, who don't read "college" with the same implication as Americans do
Here in Minnesota, anyone can regularly hear BBC broadcasts by rebroadcasting on Minnesota Public Radio, and there are other parts of the United States where BBC is available over the air, besides much of British broadcasting being available over the Internet.
For college-educated adults, a great way to pick up interesting bits of British usage in English is reading The Economist, one of my favorite sources for new submissions here to HN. For many young people across the United States, one big source of exposure to (regional) British speech is participation in youth soccer programs, which are often coached by British expatriates.
For all that, we would have to describe the expected future path of English to be further koineization, with more simplification of structure and worldwide spread of useful words and phrases, as an astounding variety of mash-ups of second-language speakers use English as an interlanguage all over the world. In other words, sometimes the American way of speaking will join the pattern of world English, and sometimes the British, and no doubt sometimes Caribbean or African or south Asian or southeast Asian varieties of English will join in as well.
The "university" vs. "college" usage in America is also influenced by the increasing trend of local community colleges initiating four-year degree programs and dropping the word "community" from their names.
Despite offering a limited set of bachelor's degrees, these schools are still regarded as somewhat low in prestige, so those who obtained their bachelor's degrees from more traditional institutions have begun to emphasize the difference by saying "university" instead of "college".
IIRC, the distinction in usage arose from the fact that when the first "institutions of higher learning" were founded in America, they were initially quite small, and intended to merge together into larger universities as additional institutions were subsequently founded; instead the individual colleges ended up expanding as independent institutions and ultimately dividing themselves into multiple "departments". It wasn't until the 19th century that the term "university" began to be used by American institutions.
> The same thing might be influencing a trend that Yagoda has spotted for Americans to use the day, month, year format for dates - 26/9/12 rather than 9/26/12.
Is this actually happening? I see YY(YY)/MM/DD sometimes (that's what I use, albeit with hyphens), but I've never seen an American use DD/MM/YY in the US.
My wife always rolls her eyes when I fill out forms with dates in YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601) format. I feel it's my duty to help in this small way to liberate people from crappy date formats. :)
For electronic record keeping, the benefits over the American standard of m/d/yy or the British standard of d/m/yy are plain.
My wife doesn't seem to care too much, though I think she's asked me about it before. The big benefit is that it's nonambiguous. No one is going to see YYYY-MM-DD and be confused about the date (YY-MM-DD is a different story for at least a few more months). Natural sorting in electronic systems is a huge plus, though.
What disappoints me most about this article, though, is that it failed to point out why this is happening. More than any time in history, people using different dialects of English are in regular, day-to-day contact on the Internet. We may not share time zones (especially those crazy Aussies) but it's telling that we turn out to like each other a lot, and trade our favorite words and insults.
So in closing, the authors of the article are a bunch of wankers.
83 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadAlthough it's interesting see the cross-pollenisation that seems to be happening linguistically thanks to media shifting both ways across the pond. Often used to be American imported media flowing into Britain with very few things leaving, but it seems like there's more American Doctor Who fans than British ones now.
As to Doctor Who, well, it's more soap opera than science fiction these days (and has been for a while), so it's no surprise that it's wildly popular in the states.
But the word descends directly from the French language; 30% of English is from the French, it's largest influence (another 30% is from latin, 30% from Germanic, and the rest from other sources). So it's not that we are choosing to 'spell things like the French': the word IS French, as are countless other words. It's our biggest source of vocab.
For those who first encounter the word "typo" indirectly as TamDenholm did, it's worth noting that a typo is not just any spelling mistake; it is a mis-spelling rendered in a type-set text and arising not through the author's ignorance of spelling but rather through a mis-operation of the typing apparatus (often arising through hasty typing). For elaboration, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_error.
If one believed (erroneously) that "spelling" were correctly rendered "speling", that would not be a typo but a spelling mistake. On the other hand, if one rendered it "speling" because of a finger slip on the second press of the "l" key then it would be a typo.
</pedantic clarification>
Also they missed "wanker" - which has been used a lot lately. It's a good word.
Before then I had been unaware that I use the word for different meanings.
Wait, what? What's offensive about that?
Internationalized for the Limeys.
Also, +1 on "wanker". It is indeed a good word.
Even then, I didn't really notice it until I'd read three things I say that an American wouldn't. Dammit. It's like the time that chick in Germany tried to tell me I don't speak English, just American. I may not know everything, but by God and St. George I am the utter master of my dialect and precisely how and when it differs from whatever we Anglophones deem "standard".
I also didn't see the implication of being "not really American" if you don't say it that way, but I see what you mean.
Funny story about the girl in Germany, though. :P
Bit - Not at all uncommon in the US
Sell-by date - Also common in the US. It has different connotations than "expiration date", which is why a lot of grocery stores have started using it. Sometimes packages will even have separate "sell by" and "expiration" (also "use or freeze by") dates.
Metrosexual, Gastropub - These are not Britishisms. They're just recent words that happen to have originated in Britain. That's not at all the same thing. Britishism implies that the word is (or at least was) stereotypically British.
One 'Britishisation' I wish the US would get is 'I couldn't care less', meaning I care about some thing as little as possible, yet in the US they insist on say 'I could care less' which makes no sense.
e.g. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01420/date_14201...
> Kind of like something I see on HN quite often, "kind've".
Ew
I'm convinced that British people never say "I could care less" when they mean that they don't care, but that some American people do. British people say instead "I couldn't care less", which is a more accurate statement.
How does that differ from "I could care less" being a characteristically American turn of phrase?
And yet those who study living languages for a living linguists of stature, if you will) insist that what they do is descriptive, not prescriptive. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/prescription.html
i.e. if a large group of people say it in a particular way, they are doing what they do, not doing something else incorrectly.
But the idea is to not make that call at all. That would be prescriptive.
> Some people say "aks" instead of "ask", but the vast majority of people would agree that's wrong.
I'm told that's a regional variation. In other words, in some places, people speak like that. That's descriptive. so is "most people speak like that in region A and don't have a problem with it, and most don't in regions B,C,D,E".
To me, that's not the line between prescriptive and descriptive linguists. I think both say what's right and wrong, but there's different connotations to their answers. Prescriptive linguists see the language as more static and more rooted in the past. Descriptive linguists see the language as more dynamic and based in the present. I think a prescriptive linguist would basically say that "aks" is wrong "because it's wrong", and that a big chunk of the population using it wouldn't make it right. A descriptive linguist would say it's wrong because if you use it you'll sound stupid to most of the population. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the word, though, and if enough people start using it, it will become "right".
Obviously, this division is very fuzzy and is really a question of degree.
> I'm told that's a regional variation. In other words, in some places, people speak like that.
I'm not aware of any regions where this is actually used by the majority of the population, unless we define regions to be arbitrarily small, in which case we've just gone back to "someone says X".
> That's descriptive. so is "most people speak like that in region A and don't have a problem with it, and most don't in regions B,C,D,E".
This kind of description can be useful, but there's still a judgement call. I might go ask a descriptive linguist about the term "aks", and they might explain that it's common in certain neighborhoods around major cities but that educated urban types don't use it, that in the south rural residents don't use it but some suburban residents around the hub cities do, etc. And that's all great and educational, but then I'm going to ask "Is it American English?" I'm either going to get a hand-wavy "it depends" answer that involves repeating the descriptions above and telling me nothing useful, or a straight answer that is effectively prescriptive.
The questions are not just "does anyone say X?", but also "should I say X?". If descriptive means being unable to answer the latter at all, then descriptive means being nearly useless.
But "does anyone say X?" does go a long way to answering "should I say X?".
I'll leave your pet example of "aks" which I really know nothing about so if you say it's widespread yet is nobody's dialect, then all right.
If you know that that English people almost use the word "pants" to mean "underwear" then it's clear that "does anyone in London say pants meaning trousers?" is "no" and when wanting to purchase trousers the answer to "should I say pants?" is also "no".
The only American dialects that I know anything about is from recently watching "The Wire". "does anyone talk like that?" Apparently so. it's not right or wrong, it's a way of talking. "Should I talk like that?" depends on whether I'm talking to inner-city Baltimore gangsters.
Agreed, though I think part of the issue is with regional divisions. There is no true "American English" that spans the country. So "does anyone say X" may not be sufficient. If I want to be a newscaster and fit my language to the country as a whole, neither Boston pronunciation not Southern slang is likely my target. I'm looking for the subset that's acceptable to the majority of Americans. How big that majority needs to be is a judgment call. How widespread a certain term/construct/etc actually is also seems like a judgment call, as the info probably isn't gathered via scientific polls.
> I'll leave your pet example of "aks" which I really know nothing about so if you say it's widespread yet is nobody's dialect, then all right.
I think "aks" has fallen in usage. For a time, it was popular among certain groups, but I haven't actually heard anyone say the word in a long time (though that could also be indicative of my social circles changing rather than the actual usage overall). It's just a convenient example, but not to my knowledge a very realistic one anymore.
> If you know that that English people almost use the word "pants" to mean "underwear" then it's clear that "does anyone in London say pants meaning trousers?" is "no" and when wanting to purchase trousers the answer to "should I say pants?" is also "no". The only American dialects that I know anything about is from recently watching "The Wire". "does anyone talk like that?" Apparently so. it's not right or wrong, it's a way of talking. "Should I talk like that?" depends on whether I'm talking to inner-city Baltimore gangsters.
Fair enough. And maybe in that case it's just about framing. If you specifically ask about language general enough to span the US, maybe purely descriptive linguists can give you a useful answer.
Of course. You should hear the way they speak in the North of England ;)
But if I say "the blue-winged teal is an American bird" I do not mean that every bird in North America is a blue-winged teal. I mean that the blue-winged teal is found only in North America.
As is the phrase "I could care less".
I say it's not an Americanism but rather merely incorrect use of language for the same reason I don't consider "libary" or "old-timer's disease" to be proper. It's not necessarily an evolution of the language as much as it is poor education. This may change over time if these words/phrases become generally accepted, but today they are not. You will lose credit for these uses. You might say these fall into "vulgar" English.
Scoolteachers but not linguists is a very particular use of the word "stature".
> I say it's not an Americanism but rather merely incorrect use of language
Which only occurs in America.
I believe I implied linguists twice, once falling under the "etc" banner and once again in "authority figures". If you choose not to read that, I can't take the blame.
Tenuous. But we clearly disagree about what it is that linguists do. I go by this description:
> "Does linguistics tell people how to speak or write properly?
> No. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/prescription.html
which to my mind means that they do not "talk about proper grammar vs improper".
You happened to call out linguists as well, so I agreed with you that while I didn't mention them specifically, I was including them in the category of authority under the "etc" label. You then proceed to tell me I'm wrong because linguists don't work that way. Seems to me like you wanted to bait me into a trap. I don't think I fell for it in quite the way you were hoping.
"Importance or reputation gained by ability or achievement: 'an architect of international stature'"
A person of stature in the English language would be, by my consideration, someone who is notable for upholding the generally accepted usage of the English language. An English teacher has been professionally trained in proper English. An editor is tasked with enforcing proper English. Students being professionally (and specifically) trained in the English language would be suitable for being authorities, but they not necessarily of stature.
I didn't think I had worded it ambiguously, but here it is reworded: I don't think anyone who has a reputation gained from achievement in the subject of proper American English would argue that "could care less" is a good substitute for "couldn't care less".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
thats true freehunter didnt need to use the most best word in order to get acrost the course grain jyst of his thaughts but at sum point the lak of exact language use does become a hinderance to smoothe discorse and i guess id rather air on the side of accurasy and preciseness and ask the same of others even if that meens i risk being thaught a pedant
"I couldn't care less" means "I am incapable of caring any less" aka "I care as little as possible". "I could care less" means "I do not care as little as possible" aka "I care a little".
If your level of concern is not zero, then I suppose you "could care less", but that means you do care, which is not the sentiment normally intended by the phrase.
On the other hand, I generally prefer the American -ization versus -isation.
It's just that the listener's brain understands the speaker based on the context without needing to deconstruct the clause and notice the elision, and so the gestalt phrase is what's remembered, and, later, recalled.
So I agree with the premise of this article, but the glottal stop is found in many regional American accents.
The internet removes language barriers from lines drawn on the ground, and this small difference has sped up a still very, very slow process started by television. Language is evolving towards a single shared language, right now we can see the regional differences falling away between nations. TV has dissolved much of the regional differences within the US. The difference is still there, and probably always will be, but its a lot weaker than it was a few decades ago.
London doesn't have a monopoly on glottal stops.
But a lot of the article's examples aren't quite right: "to book" a room or table has always been in use here; it just sounds more colloquial than "reserve", so the latter is what would be more likely printed in hotel brochures and restaurant menus. Conversely, "expiration date" is used in formal or ersatz-formal language, but "sell by" is what's actually usually printed on supermarket labels.
Some of the items ignore subtle distinctions in the way certain phrases are used. For example, there's always been "washing up" in America, but it's invariably done before dinner, not afterwards.
In contrast, Americans often use 'irony' in an intentional manner. Selecting an ironic t-shirt to wear. Or the phrase that clued me into this: "The photographer has arranged the model's foot ironically".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnGPgCVJUsI
I would claim not to mind it, but when I think for a minute I realise that the spelling of various words like "fibre" annoy me, as well as the mm/dd/yy format (and "November 15th" instead of "November the 15th"), and describing football/sports teams as "it" instead of "they" (i.e. "Real Madrid is on an amazing run of form" vs "Real Madrid are on an amazing run of form").
It's interesting how the entire shape of Australian English was set by the early settlers -- you can still distinct dialects of Strine spoken in different parts of the country. Or the way that the vowel-lotto that New Zealanders play with "Unglush" has a lot to do with the heavy settlement of NZ by Scots.
I guess eventually we'll all speak the same English. It'll give the French something even bigger to hate. Manifique.
It is "magnifique".
(I know I am)
As someone who grew up in America (with not ginger, but slightly reddish hair) I find this to very untrue. There's even a whole South Park episode* making fun of gingers, and there's few things more American than that. Maybe it's a relatively new thing, but I doubt many young Americans think of warm ginger bread.
* http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e11-ginger-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair
[Scots are often rather pugnaciously proud of their red hair.]
"The use of university, rather than college or school, for example, may well be used by Americans to make sure they are understood outside the country." I definitely consciously use the term "university" (which was the proper name for my undergraduate institution of higher education) when I want to be understood by Canadians, who don't read "college" with the same implication as Americans do
Here in Minnesota, anyone can regularly hear BBC broadcasts by rebroadcasting on Minnesota Public Radio, and there are other parts of the United States where BBC is available over the air, besides much of British broadcasting being available over the Internet.
For college-educated adults, a great way to pick up interesting bits of British usage in English is reading The Economist, one of my favorite sources for new submissions here to HN. For many young people across the United States, one big source of exposure to (regional) British speech is participation in youth soccer programs, which are often coached by British expatriates.
For all that, we would have to describe the expected future path of English to be further koineization, with more simplification of structure and worldwide spread of useful words and phrases, as an astounding variety of mash-ups of second-language speakers use English as an interlanguage all over the world. In other words, sometimes the American way of speaking will join the pattern of world English, and sometimes the British, and no doubt sometimes Caribbean or African or south Asian or southeast Asian varieties of English will join in as well.
Despite offering a limited set of bachelor's degrees, these schools are still regarded as somewhat low in prestige, so those who obtained their bachelor's degrees from more traditional institutions have begun to emphasize the difference by saying "university" instead of "college".
IIRC, the distinction in usage arose from the fact that when the first "institutions of higher learning" were founded in America, they were initially quite small, and intended to merge together into larger universities as additional institutions were subsequently founded; instead the individual colleges ended up expanding as independent institutions and ultimately dividing themselves into multiple "departments". It wasn't until the 19th century that the term "university" began to be used by American institutions.
Is this actually happening? I see YY(YY)/MM/DD sometimes (that's what I use, albeit with hyphens), but I've never seen an American use DD/MM/YY in the US.
For electronic record keeping, the benefits over the American standard of m/d/yy or the British standard of d/m/yy are plain.
So in closing, the authors of the article are a bunch of wankers.
Sodders!