50 americanisms in the uk

well looky here, yall might find this a miiiiiiiiiighty ineressin...

from here.

1. When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me. It's not New York. It's not the 90s. You're not in Central Perk with the rest of the Friends. Really." Steve, Rossendale, Lancashire

2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall

3. The phrase I've watched seep into the language (especially with broadcasters) is "two-time" and "three-time". Have the words double, triple etc, been totally lost? Grammatically it makes no sense, and is even worse when spoken. My pulse rises every time I hear or see it. Which is not healthy as it's almost every day now. Argh! D Rochelle, Bath

4. Using 24/7 rather than "24 hours, 7 days a week" or even just plain "all day, every day". Simon Ball, Worcester

5. The one I can't stand is "deplane", meaning to disembark an aircraft, used in the phrase "you will be able to deplane momentarily". TykeIntheHague, Den Haag, Holland

6. To "wait on" instead of "wait for" when you're not a waiter - once read a friend's comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive - I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board. T Balinski, Raglan, New Zealand

Continue reading the main story

A US reader writes...

JP Spore believes there is nothing wrong with English evolving

Languages are, by their very nature, shifting, malleable things that morph according to the needs and desires of those who speak them.

Mr Engel suggests that British English should be preserved, but it seems to me this both lacks a historical perspective of the language, as well as an ignorance of why it is happening.

English itself is a rather complicated, interesting blend of Germanic, French and Latin (among other things). It has arrived at this point through the long and torturous process of assimilation and modification. The story of the English language is the story of an unstoppable train of consecutive changes - and for someone to put their hand up and say "wait - the train stops here and should go no further" is not only futile, but ludicrously arbitrary.

Why here? Why not stop it 20 years ago? Or 20 years hence? If we're going to just set an arbitrary limit on language change, why not choose the year 1066 AD? The Saxons had some cool words, right?

Mr Engel - and all language Luddites on both sides of the Atlantic, including more than a few here in the States - really need to get over it when their countrymen find more value in non-native words than in their native lexicon.

I understand the argument about loss of cultural identity, but if so many people are so willing to give up traditional forms and phrases maybe we should consider that they didn't have as much value as we previously imagined.

7. "It is what it is". Pity us. Michael Knapp, Chicago, US

8. Dare I even mention the fanny pack? Lisa, Red Deer, Canada

9. "Touch base" - it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK

10. Is "physicality" a real word? Curtis, US

11. Transportation. What's wrong with transport? Greg Porter, Hercules, CA, US

12. The word I hate to hear is "leverage". Pronounced lev-er-ig rather than lee-ver -ig. It seems to pop up in all aspects of work. And its meaning seems to have changed to "value added". Gareth Wilkins, Leicester

13. Does nobody celebrate a birthday anymore, must we all "turn" 12 or 21 or 40? Even the Duke of Edinburgh was universally described as "turning" 90 last month. When did this begin? I quite like the phrase in itself, but it seems to have obliterated all other ways of speaking about birthdays. Michael McAndrew, Swindon

14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow

15. What kind of word is "gotten"? It makes me shudder. Julie Marrs, Warrington

16. "I'm good" for "I'm well". That'll do for a start. Mike, Bridgend, Wales

17. "Bangs" for a fringe of the hair. Philip Hall, Nottingham

18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester

19. I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner? "That statement was the height of ridiculosity". Bob, Edinburgh

20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon

21. A "heads up". For example, as in a business meeting. Lets do a "heads up" on this issue. I have never been sure of the meaning. R Haworth, Marlborough

22. Train station. My teeth are on edge every time I hear it. Who started it? Have they been punished? Chris Capewell, Queens Park, London

23. To put a list into alphabetical order is to "alphabetize it" - horrid! Chris Fackrell, York

24. People that say "my bad" after a mistake. I don't know how anything could be as annoying or lazy as that. Simon Williamson, Lymington, Hampshire

25. "Normalcy" instead of "normality" really irritates me. Tom Gabbutt, Huddersfield

26. As an expat living in New Orleans, it is a very long list but "burglarize" is currently the word that I most dislike. Simon, New Orleans

Continue reading the main story

A US reader writes...

Melanie Johnson - MA student in Applied Linguistics, now in the UK

The idea that there once existed a "pure" form of English is simply untrue. The English spoken in the UK today has been influenced by a number of languages, including Dutch, French and German. Speakers from the time of William the Conqueror would not recognise what we speak in Britain as English. This is because language variation shifts are constantly changing.

Five years ago you might have found it odd if someone asked you to "friend" them, but today many of us know this means to add them on Facebook. The increased use of technology, in combination with the rise of a globalised society, means language changes are happening faster than ever, especially in places with highly diverse populations like London. Young people are usually at the vanguard of this, so it's no surprise to find London teenagers increasingly speaking what's been termed "multicultural ethnic English".

Changes in word use are normal and not unique to any language. But English does enjoy a privileged status as the world's lingua franca. That began with the British, but has been maintained by the Americans. It's difficult to predict how English will next evolve, but the one certainty is it will.

27. "Oftentimes" just makes me shiver with annoyance. Fortunately I've not noticed it over here yet. John, London

28. Eaterie. To use a prevalent phrase, oh my gaad! Alastair, Maidstone (now in Athens, Ohio)

29. I'm a Brit living in New York. The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when fortnightly would suffice just fine. Ami Grewal, New York

30. I hate "alternate" for "alternative". I don't like this as they are two distinct words, both have distinct meanings and it's useful to have both. Using alternate for alternative deprives us of a word. Catherine, London

31. "Hike" a price. Does that mean people who do that are hikers? No, hikers are ramblers! M Holloway, Accrington

32. Going forward? If I do I shall collide with my keyboard. Ric Allen, Matlock

33. I hate the word "deliverable". Used by management consultants for something that they will "deliver" instead of a report. Joseph Wall, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire

34. The most annoying Americanism is "a million and a half" when it is clearly one and a half million! A million and a half is 1,000,000.5 where one and a half million is 1,500,000. Gordon Brown, Coventry

35. "Reach out to" when the correct word is "ask". For example: "I will reach out to Kevin and let you know if that timing is convenient". Reach out? Is Kevin stuck in quicksand? Is he teetering on the edge of a cliff? Can't we just ask him? Nerina, London

36. Surely the most irritating is: "You do the Math." Math? It's MATHS. Michael Zealey, London

37. I hate the fact I now have to order a "regular Americano". What ever happened to a medium sized coffee? Marcus Edwards, Hurst Green

38. My worst horror is expiration, as in "expiration date". Whatever happened to expiry? Christina Vakomies, London

39. My favourite one was where Americans claimed their family were "Scotch-Irish". This of course it totally inaccurate, as even if it were possible, it would be "Scots" not "Scotch", which as I pointed out is a drink. James, Somerset

40.I am increasingly hearing the phrase "that'll learn you" - when the English (and more correct) version was always "that'll teach you". What a ridiculous phrase! Tabitha, London

41. I really hate the phrase: "Where's it at?" This is not more efficient or informative than "where is it?" It just sounds grotesque and is immensely irritating. Adam, London

42. Period instead of full stop. Stuart Oliver, Sunderland

43. My pet hate is "winningest", used in the context "Michael Schumacher is the winningest driver of all time". I can feel the rage rising even using it here. Gayle, Nottingham

44. My brother now uses the term "season" for a TV series. Hideous. D Henderson, Edinburgh

45. Having an "issue" instead of a "problem". John, Leicester

46. I hear more and more people pronouncing the letter Z as "zee". Not happy about it! Ross, London

47. To "medal" instead of to win a medal. Sets my teeth on edge with a vengeance. Helen, Martock, Somerset

48. "I got it for free" is a pet hate. You got it "free" not "for free". You don't get something cheap and say you got it "for cheap" do you? Mark Jones, Plymouth

49. "Turn that off already". Oh dear. Darren, Munich

50. "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less" has to be the worst. Opposite meaning of what they're trying to say. Jonathan, Birmingham

i have a friend who's a linguist and he had this to say about that article:

  Quote

Recently BBC published an article on so-called Americanisms, words that seem to have entered the pure, never-changing and amazing language that is Queen’s English, and in order to make fun of those silly Yanks on the other side of the big pond, the British Broadcasting Company invited its readers to send in their most hated Americanisms, seeing as language change is much more upsetting than wars, droughts and rapes.

 

And the Britons did send in words and expressions, oh yes they did.

 

Enter the diachronic linguist. Enter the pissed-off diachronic linguist with a need to kick every prescriptivist wanker’s arse from this side of Scotland to the dark side of the moon.

 

As linguists we subscribe to one basic idea about communication; a language is not static, while a synchronic study of language is possible, a language in itself is inherently eternally diachronic, and the same goes for English. The language of gods and infighting, or was that Gaelic?

 

Anyway, the first thing we need to deal with is the idea of a proper way of speaking English, i.e. Queen’s English; not even the Queen speaks said language anymore, the polished dialect school children are taught in ESOL and EFL classrooms around the world is an obsolete dialect in that the Queen herself, in an attempt to approach her citizens have acquired a polished version of Estuary English.

 

In other words, the Queen speaks David Beckham English.

 

Secondly we need to realise that English functions mainly as a medium of global communication today. In other words, while English originates from England, it would be foolish to believe that England still functions as the main catalyst of new words and expressions, or to use a fancy word, additions to the Anglophone vocabulary. Not even America holds that position, but rather Globish, i.e. the amalgamation of different learners’ Englishes, and while the States still hold an important place in the linguistic game that is English, it is both childish, and uneducated to blame American English for the ‘decay of our native tongue’.

 

English is a pidgin gone Creole gone language; as such it functions mainly because it realises the importance in allowing change. The relative easy grammar of English is a direct effect of a neverending exchange with other languages; the arguments about gotten are as founded on a real need to complain, as would an article about the change from Anglo-Saxon to Old Norse personal pronouns have been back in 900 AD.

 

What about English then? Within the UK? Trust me, it is as ever-changing as it has always been. From the day Shakespeare decided to say wherefore, thereby borrowing an Old Norse word back into English, to the creation of muggles, English has always changed and acquired new words and expressions.

 

If we wanted to, we could perhaps divide the world of Englishes into two fields, kitchen table languages, and OED languages - where the former constitutes the real language, the diachronic result of communication, the latter is a stale version of the former, representing a synchronic and already outdated version of what was never truly meant to be anything but a means of communication.

 

Ask yourself this, is there a word your family uses that nobody else would understand? Trust me, there’s at least one word in your vocabulary which does not exist in the OED. My students invented the verb to shant earlier this summer, some 94 students now use this verb as a way to express the complicated in leaving a place one does not know if one is ever going to see again. Is this word an English word? You tell me. And then ask your self what you call a thingamajammie, a bitsamabobs or a whatchamacallit.

 

English.

 

Always changing.

 

What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice …

 

A couple of years ago, you would have looked at me as if I was crazy if I’d asked you to disapparate, and if I asked if I could tweet you something, or friend you, you’d called the police, today these are parts of everyday usage - English changes, and while differences exist between American and English English, these differences should be seen as opportunities, rather than obstacles to overcome.

 

As a lingua franca, English has lost all it’s rights to be prescriptivist; and it is time the world finally realised this.

Ha, UK-ers are so lame. All of the after comments are so dorky. I dislike a lot of these Americanisms, probably because I've never even heard half of them. Who the hell says winningest, or Normalcy, or Eaterie here?

Shopping Trolley? Do you guys really call it that? And Fortnight? You can't expect us to say that. You do the Maths? I think that would be considered incorrect here. Expiry instead of Expiration?

I lol'd at Fanny Pack.

I'm not bothered in the slightest by "Americanisms". To be honest the most irritating colloquialism I've encountered comes from the north of England

"Do you want the milk leaving out?" instead of left out.

  Quote

38. My worst horror is expiration, as in "expiration date". Whatever happened to expiry? Christina Vakomies, London

We say 'Best Before' here in Engerland anyway Miss. Vakomies......

More than a few of those are nitpicky at best, idiotic at worst. Though I do hate the use of 'Americano' as a coffee. It just makes the speaker sound like a douche.

and here's a (rather long) rebuttal from an american linguist:

  Quote

In my last post, I refrained from saying much about the BBC Magazine piece by Matthew Engel on 'Why do some Americanisms annoy people?', pointing readers instead to Mark Liberman/Language Log's analysis of the so-called Americanisms that annoy at least Matthew Engel. Today the BBC website followed up with '50 of your noted Americanisms', and already Geoff Pullum/Language Log, Johnson, Americans Living in London--and others I've yet to hear about, I'm sure--have posted reasoned replies to this offensive piece.

 

Why am I offended by this piece? I'll tell you why. Because I've paid for it.

 

The piece is driving a huge number of people to the BBC News website (as Stan Carey has noted on Twitter). As I type this, it is the 'most shared' piece on the site and the seventh most read (on a very big news day). But it is the journalistic equivalent of (orig. & mostly BrE) piss-poor reality television: let's get people to say things that might be controversial, and then we'll edit it into something that will get people arguing about which words to throw off the island. Two American views are printed as sidebars to the article; both, like the material in the article itself, are from readers who sent in comments. If we can call this journalism, it is completely passive journalism. Perhaps next we can have viewers' thoughts about whether it's going to rain tomorrow, rather than paying all those expensive weather forecasters. (Not to say that viewers' thoughts---or their photos of tornadoes---are never welcome on news program(me)s. That's why we have vox pops and letters to the editor. But putting up a lightly-moderated forum of people's gripes about language does not constitute news or journalism. We get those for free on the web already. We don't need our public broadcaster for that.)

 

One could understand commercial television or newspapers doing such things--the more viewers they recruit, the more their advertisers pay them. But this is the BBC. This is what I pay a television licen{s/c}e fee for.* I want its online publications to live up to the organi{s/z}ation's charter to 'inform, educate and entertain'. And when they say 'entertain', I'd like it not to be throwing Christians to the lions or dwarf bowling or just letting people air their prejudices and ignorance with no (orig. AmE) reality check. As Mark Liberman has demonstrated, many of Engel's pet American peeves were not, in fact, Americanisms. Guess what? Some of the contributors to this piece are not much better at distinguishing things that they don't like and things that are American. Geoff Pullum's piece on Language Log makes the case that this outpouring of anti-Americanismism is also anti-Americanism, and I think that you should read his take on that, since he makes some interesting points from an interesting perspective. But I do want to say something about the title.

 

It's odd, isn't it? Your most noted Americanisms. Does this sound odd to anyone else? It means, according to the introduction to the piece that they are the fifty that were most mentioned in emails to the BBC in reply to Engel's article. Now first, I'd have liked something more than one person's mention of each. Are they presented in order? Most noted Americanisms. Sounds odd, odd, odd. But it does bear a certain phonic resemblance to a phrase that doesn't sound odd. Lo and behold, if one searches "50 most hated Americanisms", one finds that that's how some people, at least, have remembered the title.

 

So, a quick tour of the fifty, starting with the first twenty-five and a (orig. & cheifly AmE) rain check on the rest. Where I've blogged about them, there's a link. (If you want to comment on the previously blogged topics, please could you do it at the original post? They continue to be read and linked to. I'd like for your comment to be where it can do the most good for people who want to know more about that particular expression.)

 

1. When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me. It's not New York. It's not the 90s. You're not in Central Perk with the rest of the Friends. Really." Steve, Rossendale, Lancashire

This definitely sounds American to those old enough to remember when it wasn't said in the UK. But this battle is lost--it's pervasive. Back here I did some wondering about why it sounds odd to BrE ears and not to AmE ones.

 

2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall

I liked Guardian columnist (and British expat in Brooklyn) Oliver Burkeman's response to this on Twitter:

oliverburkeman Almost always, Americanisms add nuance. "Least worst option" doesn't = "best option", Mike Ayres of Bodmin Cornwall.

 

3. The phrase I've watched seep into the language (especially with broadcasters) is "two-time" and "three-time". Have the words double, triple etc, been totally lost? Grammatically it makes no sense, and is even worse when spoken. My pulse rises every time I hear or see it. Which is not healthy as it's almost every day now. Argh! D Rochelle, Bath

This is originally AmE, but noted by the OED in the Guardian as early as 1960. But are double and triple really equivalent to two-time and three-time? Couldn't the double Wimbledon champion mean that they won two prizes (say, in singles and doubles) in the same year? Double means 'twice as much'; two-time means 'at two times'. Grammatically it makes perfect sense, as it is identical to one-time champion, which seems to be originally BrE.

 

4. Using 24/7 rather than "24 hours, 7 days a week" or even just plain "all day, every day". Simon Ball, Worcester

I'm sure this one annoys some Americans too. Slang does that. I'm more annoyed that the so-called 24-hour stores here (Asda, the UK arm of Walmart) close late-ish on Saturday, re-open for a few hours on Sunday, close again, then open (on) Monday morning (see example opening times here). Does the phrase 24/7 actually crop up in BrE? (she asked, mischievously).

 

5. The one I can't stand is "deplane", meaning to disembark an aircraft, used in the phrase "you will be able to deplane momentarily". TykeIntheHague, Den Haag, Holland

This is an airlineism. No one says this but flight attendants and pilots, and then only to annoy you. Yes, you.

 

6. To "wait on" instead of "wait for" when you're not a waiter - once read a friend's comment about being in a station waiting on a train. For him, the train had yet to arrive - I would have thought rather that it had got stuck at the station with the friend on board. T Balinski, Raglan, New Zealand

Johnson's covered this one, and says:

Yes, to "wait on" also means to be a waiter, but writers from Chaucer to Milton to George Eliot used "to wait on" in various senses including "to observe", "to lie in wait for", "to await" and more.

 

7. "It is what it is". Pity us. Michael Knapp, Chicago, US

Apparently we're supposed/meant to pity people in Chicago who have to hear American English. Six of the fifty people whose 'noted' Americanisms the BBC has noted are in the US. Another four are in countries other than the UK (two of those are in non-Anglophone countries). One can only imagine that the US ones are expatriates from the UK or elsewhere. Engel and others claim that Americanisms are fine in their place (America), but the problem is when they invade British English. But apparently they're not OK in the US either.

 

8. Dare I even mention the fanny pack? Lisa, Red Deer, Canada

Tisha at Americans Living in London notes (my link added):

Um, fanny doesn't mean the same in the US as it does in the UK. After all this is a country that uses the term faggot to describe a pork dish. A Brit could never get away with saying that in the States!

Not to mention bumming a fag.

 

 

9. "Touch base" - it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK

Yeah, that annoyed a lot of us too. Google "pet peeve" "touch base", if you'd like a show-and-tell. Is it a baseball metaphor? That'll be especially peevable in the UK.

 

 

10. Is "physicality" a real word? Curtis, US

Johnson again (emphasis added for that obnoxious American effect): "Yes, first noted in a book published in London in 1827."

 

 

11. Transportation. What's wrong with transport? Greg Porter, Hercules, CA, US

What's wrong with transport in California is that it would be a foreign word. And a newfangled Briticism at that. To quote the OED, transportation was "Much used in 17th c. down to c1660; afterwards gradually given up for transport, prob. to avoid association with penal transportation".

 

 

12. The word I hate to hear is "leverage". Pronounced lev-er-ig rather than lee-ver -ig. It seems to pop up in all aspects of work. And its meaning seems to have changed to "value added". Gareth Wilkins, Leicester

The pronunciation difference, with BrE preferring 'ee' where AmE prefers the "short vowel" is found in a range of words, including evolution. I haven't noticed the meaning change Mr Wilkins claims (though value added might need translation for AmE readers: 'something extra included in the price'). It is used a lot in business jargon, and 90% of any country's population hates business jargon. [Need a made-up statistic? I got'em right here!]

 

13. Does nobody celebrate a birthday anymore, must we all "turn" 12 or 21 or 40? Even the Duke of Edinburgh was universally described as "turning" 90 last month. When did this begin? I quite like the phrase in itself, but it seems to have obliterated all other ways of speaking about birthdays. Michael McAndrew, Swindon

Really, obliterated? It means something different from celebrate, certainly. Glad you like it.

 

14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow

Hey, give our word back!! (Here's my cart/trolley post.)

 

15. What kind of word is "gotten"? It makes me shudder. Julie Marrs, Warrington

It's the kind of word that's been in English probably as long as it's been English. (First OED citation, ca. 1380.) Here's an old post. As I've been heard to say before, if you object to gotten, then it's your duty to object to forgotten, misbegotten and ill-gotten too.

 

16. "I'm good" for "I'm well". That'll do for a start. Mike, Bridgend, Wales

I used to take this as an ironic misuse--i.e. being 'incorrect' to give your response a down-home flavo(u)r. If you ever hear me say it, it's ironic. But it's general informal AmE now. (Emphasis on the informal.) An old post on adjectives-as-adverbs.

 

17. "Bangs" for a fringe of the hair. Philip Hall, Nottingham

Here's an old post. In AmE bangs and fringe would be somewhat different styles. (Nuance!)

 

18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester

Are the Scots still allowed to say carry-out? Old post--the comments are very informative about the regional variations.

 

19. I enjoy Americanisms. I suspect even some Americans use them in a tongue-in-cheek manner? "That statement was the height of ridiculosity". Bob, Edinburgh

Oh, Bob! Thank you, Bob! This takes us back to a post called "Language play -- not getting it".

 

20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon

The OED has citations back to 1420. Needless to say, they're not American.

 

21. A "heads up". For example, as in a business meeting. Lets do a "heads up" on this issue. I have never been sure of the meaning. R Haworth, Marlborough

Neither am I, in the way Haworth has related it. To give someone a heads up is to give them a warning. It's informal, figurative. Looking at do a heads up on the web, there's a lot of do a heads up tournament. No idea what that means either. Jargon, or is my AmE too out-of-date?

 

22. Train station. My teeth are on edge every time I hear it. Who started it? Have they been punished? Chris Capewell, Queens Park, London

A number of BrE speakers commented at an earlier post that they find train station very natural in their dialects. This battle is lost, and one can see why--since BrE has coach station (≈AmE (long-distance only) bus station--e.g. a Greyhound station) and train station (but not railway station) works on analogy with it.

 

23. To put a list into alphabetical order is to "alphabetize it" - horrid! Chris Fackrell, York

Do you care to explain this, C Fackrell? This seems similar to Engel's complaint about 'hospitalize', in that there is some general opposition to using one of English's lovely productive derivational suffixes. Why is this one so bad? And if it's so bad, why do BrE speakers pressuri{z/s}e people to do things where AmE speakers would pressure them?

 

24. People that say "my bad" after a mistake. I don't know how anything could be as annoying or lazy as that. Simon Williamson, Lymington, Hampshire

Annoys me too. See point about slang, at number 4. But I don't see how it's any lazier than saying my fault.

 

25. "Normalcy" instead of "normality" really irritates me. Tom Gabbutt, Huddersfield

An oldie but a goodie. Here's what the Maven's Word of the Day said about it. For a long time, it was considered non-standard in AmE too, but we've overcome that and it's now nearly twice as common as normality.

 

 

Part 2....at some point!

 

 

* You probably smell a rat too. The BBC has had its budgets slashed. The people in charge of such things are all co{s/z}y with the people who run a very sleazy news organi{s/z}ation. I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC website puts things up to meet readership targets or some such thing, in hopes that their budgets and services won't be further attacked.

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2011/07/anti-americanismism.html

It's really annoying to read these, I got up to about 15 and had to stop. Why get so annoyed about this shit?

  On 7/21/2011 at 5:17 PM, disparaissant said:

i have a friend who's a linguist and he had this to say about that article:

  Quote

Recently BBC published an article on so-called Americanisms, words that seem to have entered the pure, never-changing and amazing language that is Queen’s English, and in order to make fun of those silly Yanks on the other side of the big pond, the British Broadcasting Company invited its readers to send in their most hated Americanisms, seeing as language change is much more upsetting than wars, droughts and rapes.

 

And the Britons did send in words and expressions, oh yes they did.

 

Enter the diachronic linguist. Enter the pissed-off diachronic linguist with a need to kick every prescriptivist wanker’s arse from this side of Scotland to the dark side of the moon.

 

As linguists we subscribe to one basic idea about communication; a language is not static, while a synchronic study of language is possible, a language in itself is inherently eternally diachronic, and the same goes for English. The language of gods and infighting, or was that Gaelic?

 

Anyway, the first thing we need to deal with is the idea of a proper way of speaking English, i.e. Queen’s English; not even the Queen speaks said language anymore, the polished dialect school children are taught in ESOL and EFL classrooms around the world is an obsolete dialect in that the Queen herself, in an attempt to approach her citizens have acquired a polished version of Estuary English.

 

In other words, the Queen speaks David Beckham English.

 

Secondly we need to realise that English functions mainly as a medium of global communication today. In other words, while English originates from England, it would be foolish to believe that England still functions as the main catalyst of new words and expressions, or to use a fancy word, additions to the Anglophone vocabulary. Not even America holds that position, but rather Globish, i.e. the amalgamation of different learners’ Englishes, and while the States still hold an important place in the linguistic game that is English, it is both childish, and uneducated to blame American English for the ‘decay of our native tongue’.

 

English is a pidgin gone Creole gone language; as such it functions mainly because it realises the importance in allowing change. The relative easy grammar of English is a direct effect of a neverending exchange with other languages; the arguments about gotten are as founded on a real need to complain, as would an article about the change from Anglo-Saxon to Old Norse personal pronouns have been back in 900 AD.

 

What about English then? Within the UK? Trust me, it is as ever-changing as it has always been. From the day Shakespeare decided to say wherefore, thereby borrowing an Old Norse word back into English, to the creation of muggles, English has always changed and acquired new words and expressions.

 

If we wanted to, we could perhaps divide the world of Englishes into two fields, kitchen table languages, and OED languages - where the former constitutes the real language, the diachronic result of communication, the latter is a stale version of the former, representing a synchronic and already outdated version of what was never truly meant to be anything but a means of communication.

 

Ask yourself this, is there a word your family uses that nobody else would understand? Trust me, there’s at least one word in your vocabulary which does not exist in the OED. My students invented the verb to shant earlier this summer, some 94 students now use this verb as a way to express the complicated in leaving a place one does not know if one is ever going to see again. Is this word an English word? You tell me. And then ask your self what you call a thingamajammie, a bitsamabobs or a whatchamacallit.

 

English.

 

Always changing.

 

What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice …

 

A couple of years ago, you would have looked at me as if I was crazy if I’d asked you to disapparate, and if I asked if I could tweet you something, or friend you, you’d called the police, today these are parts of everyday usage - English changes, and while differences exist between American and English English, these differences should be seen as opportunities, rather than obstacles to overcome.

 

As a lingua franca, English has lost all it’s rights to be prescriptivist; and it is time the world finally realised this.

its.

"i could care less" - that's always bugged me, man. can i get a witness? lol

What a bag of fucking shit.

Murve, please don't say "UKers are so lame" as if these twats are representative of our collective mentality. Otherwise I'm going to start judging Americans by the fine upstanding citizens on Cops.

It infuriates me.

My pulse rises every time I hear or see it.

it makes me cringe no end.

was thoroughly disgusted with myself.

It makes me shudder.

My teeth are on edge every time I hear it.

My worst horror...

It just sounds grotesque and is immensely irritating.

I can feel the rage rising even using it here.

Sets my teeth on edge with a vengeance.

calm down eurobros

  On 7/21/2011 at 5:06 PM, keltoi said:

1. When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me. It's not New York. It's not the 90s. You're not in Central Perk with the rest of the Friends. Really." Steve, Rossendale, Lancashire

I would love to force this person to listen to Coma Cat by Tensnake on loop.

"least worst option" is something i've never heard as an american. i suppose "americanism" is more accurately "stupid things british people say"?

Anyone who gets annoyed by things like this needs their ears boxing - but only once their head has been successfully removed from their arse. It's the year 2011, we share so much culture with other English-speaking nations that it's perfectly natural for expressions to cross borders. The English language is a beautiful living thing.

If we start getting nationalistic and prescriptivist about it, we're going to turn into the French. And nobody wants that.

  On 7/21/2011 at 5:47 PM, Murveman said:

Shopping Trolley? Do you guys really call it that? And Fortnight? You can't expect us to say that. You do the Maths? I think that would be considered incorrect here. Expiry instead of Expiration?

 

I lol'd at Fanny Pack.

yeah we say shopping trolley. and fortnight. and all of those...

fortnight comes from fourteen nights, and makes perfect sense.

mathematics, therefore maths plural.

anyway shouldn't bi-weekly mean twice a week rather than once every 2 weeks? bi-annually is twice a year. see this is how stupid these bastardisations (i say this rather than americanisms cos it happens here too) can be.

ps. i agree the article is stupid.

  On 7/21/2011 at 6:05 PM, sirch said:

"i could care less" - that's always bugged me, man. can i get a witness? lol

That's not an Americanism.

I wouldn't get me knickers in a twist about it innit

I was listening to a podcast and someone said "I'm just wondering what your guys's opinion on this is". I shit you not "Your guys's".

Also, when "niche" is pronounced "nitch". Infuriates me.

  On 7/21/2011 at 6:23 PM, baph said:

  On 7/21/2011 at 6:05 PM, sirch said:

"i could care less" - that's always bugged me, man. can i get a witness? lol

 

That's not an Americanism.

 

I wouldn't get me knickers in a twist about it innit

Hey i'm down with my Yank cousins, it's fine.

Americanisms/bastardisations of all kinds are just funny... and slang is entertaining,.. i don't really care that much, isn't it.

and i always say "can i get half an ounce of cutter's choice, please"... have done for years, so i'm one of those idiots that uses "americanisms", too. i hope i've pissed some of these people off behind me in the queue before with that.

There are quite a few phrases on that list that I have never heard spoken aloud.

I am from the USA.

Where at least I know I'm free.

  On 7/21/2011 at 6:48 PM, thanks robert moses said:

There are quite a few phrases on that list that I have never heard spoken aloud.

 

 

I am from the USA.

 

 

 

Where at least I know I'm free.

Nobody is free!

  On 7/21/2011 at 6:48 PM, thanks robert moses said:

There are quite a few phrases on that list that I have never heard spoken aloud.

 

 

I am from the USA.

 

 

 

Where at least I know I'm free.

And I won't forget the men who died and gave that right to me.

*stands up*

americanisms schmerschmericansims... there are enough awful phrases you hear from the english hoi poloi to drive one up the wall, to be fair.

seems like a lot of those americanisms are business jargon. sounds like brits are having trouble with their american bosses more than anything else. quit fucking franchising our mcdonalds.