The Magazine’s recent piece on Americanisms entering the language in the UK prompted thousands of you to e-mail examples.
Some are useful, while some seem truly unnecessary, argued Matthew Engel in the article. Here are 50 of the most e-mailed.
some examples from the article:
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
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fanny pack’s are my favourite …
24/7 John? Really? Low blow…
I wouldn’t call these Americanisms. Most of the examples sound like corporate jargon, cliches, or are just grammatically wrong or ambiguous. Do people in America really talk like that?
Well I have always had a problem with their pronunciation of aluminum.
Aluminium is just silly.
They have my permission to go shag themselves.
You’d think they invented the language..
Some of these simply prove that the UK is catching up to the US in the ignorance of its citizens.
I’m agreeance with many that many of the phrases are annoying.
I’ve always been mystified by the British pronunciation of the word “schedule”. It just doesn’t make sense to me unless they also pronounce other words that begin with Sch differently like “school”, “scheme”, or “scholar”.
English has more words than any other language. It can more finely and precisely describe more things than any other language. English uniquely adapted bits and pieces of many languages that it came into contact with–as opposed to say French which consciously attempted to reject such influences.
“Bits and Pieces” is a good example stemming from what we “hear” all the time but don’t often fully appreciate: the Anglo/Saxon early history of England. More fully Anglo, Saxons and Jutes? To make sure you were understood in everyday communication you would say a word in Anglo and then in Saxon. The same idea said twice. The law was especially corrupted by this practice saying nearly everything twice: ceases and desist and on and one.
But when you look at English, unlike every other language on earth, you see every other language on earth. Hebrew, Greek, Latin are just the start with German and French heavily added in==or vice versa whatever you think Anglo roots are.
comparative linguistics is a fascinating subject. My favorite for a while has been “schadenfreude.” Borrowed so often for its apt fit, how long before it enters the english language?
The notion that the English are upset by the intrusion of Americanism is a shabby made up issue. English “IS” nothing but an intruded language==its crowning characteristic and achievment.
I don’t know if it’s an “americanism” but my current pestiest peeve is people who say “couple xxxx” instead of “couple OF xxxx”.
Ok, saying it is bad, WRITING it is much much worse.
I’ll be back in a couple days.
I’ll be back in a couple OF days.
Morans.
Bobbo, take a look at “The Language Instinct” by Stephen Pinker. He goes into great detail regarding the history and melding/”pidginization” of various languages.
And I agree with the French; keep your language standard. Languages that “evolve” never evolve elegantly; they evolve toward vulgarity and ambiguity.
Fo shizzle my nizzle.
#11–unbiquitos==thanks. Surely that is not the import of the great Stephen Pinker? All languages “grew” from their guttural roots. The only designed/formal language being Esperanto that no one speaks. Pure cultural hubris to claim “purity” when it comes to language==its ALL pidgin.
Googled this “rough” fact: Number of English words 250,000. Number of French words: 43,000. Some of the discussion is interesting: how to count a word. Can both English and French include the Latin? and so forth.
Read somewhere the average number of words a person commonly uses in only in the few thousands. If you get into “words”, there are many amusing games, twists, surprises you can have with them. The more “legitimate” words you have to play with the better.
Do we think “better” with more words available or do ideas somehow exist unexpressed waiting for the right words to come along? My fav: “Know what I mean?” And the answer always should be: No.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/93
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_words_are_there_in_the_French_language
About one half of the words on the list in the article are perfectly correct American English. Some are jargon or slang or simply bad grammar regardless of where they are spoken.
But, as one of the comments on the BBC site points out, since “oftentimes” appears in Macbeth, some aren’t American at all.
Some, like “maths” are simply never used here in the United States, and others, like “fortnight” are so rarely used that most people don’t know what the word means.
While pissing off the British by misusing their language can be fun, pissing off the French is far, far more satisfying.
#4 McCullough, If you spell Al as Aluminum, can I assume that you spell Na as Sodum, Ca as Calcum, Cd as Cadmum and so on? Come on, be consistent!
This is not what the article is about though.
#8 Adam, the way you pronounce a word is also an entirely separate thing from what the article was talking about. That is a matter of your accent.
It is new words and phrases that specifically come from the USA, offer no advantage over already existing ones and actually make meanings less clear which annoy.
My personal dislike is not even mentioned in the article. It is the back-assward date format that you use.
I understand that the Japanese (or Chinese?) do it YY/MM/DD – biggest/middle/smallest. That is actually very logical. That is the way we do numbers with the biggest items at the left and the smallest at the right. Very easy to sort. Most of the rest of the (non-US influenced) world does it DD/MM/YY or small/middle/big it is an order. It is confusing when you come across something middle/small/big. Is 03/09/2010 the 3rd of September last year or the 9th of March? I can tell it’s not the Japanese date as the year is at the right hand side.
I’ll “Ping” you, where did that come from
My take on some of them:
> 9. “Touch base” – it makes me cringe no end. Chris, UK
Perhaps because if you silly Brits watching baseball instead of cricket…
> The word I hate to hear is “leverage”. Pronounced lev-er-ig rather than lee-ver -ig
As long as I’ve been alive (and it’s a while now), in the US, that word has always been pronounced lev-er-ig. You’d probably have to go back a couple of hundred years (and outside a movie) to find another American that pronounced it “lee-ver-ig”.
> 4. I caught myself saying “shopping cart” instead of shopping trolley today
Really. “Cart” is way off the reservation?
> 7. “Bangs” for a fringe of the hair.
As opposed to the much more logical “Bang on!”.
> 18. Take-out rather than takeaway!
Silly Europeans. Actually, we use “To go” or I’m going to get some “take out”. I’m going to get some “take away” sounds very UCToY (Upper Class Twit of the Year).
> 36. Surely the most irritating is: “You do the Math.” Math? It’s MATHS.
Technically, it should be “You do the mathematics”. In the US (and again for as long as I can remember) “math” is short for “mathematics” (plural), the correct form is in fact “You do the math.”
Math is to Maths as Internet is to Interwebitubies.
> 44. My brother now uses the term “season” for a TV series.
Perhaps this is because he has no clue how TV works. There is a difference between a TV series and a season. “Black Adder” is a TV Series comprised of four seasons.
#14
RE: Date format
On this one, any developer is keenly aware. The European format is far more logical than the American format. I’ve fought for years against web designers using any #/#/# format specifically because of that confusion.
Tell you what, if the Brits will switch to driving on the right side of the road, we’ll switch date formats.
#14 “I understand that the Japanese (or Chinese?) do it YY/MM/DD – biggest/middle/smallest. That is actually very logical. That is the way we do numbers with the biggest items at the left and the smallest at the right. Very easy to sort. Most of the rest of the (non-US influenced) world does it DD/MM/YY or small/middle/big it is an order. It is confusing when you come across something middle/small/big. Is 03/09/2010 the 3rd of September last year or the 9th of March? I can tell it’s not the Japanese date as the year is at the right hand side.”
It depends on the country. Here in Sweden, it’s a mix between two main formats: either the ISO YYYY-MM-DD or the little-endian DD/MM-YY . Note,however, the punctuation of the latter, where there are different separators for the different groups: just two numbers xx/yy means day + month, which confuses things when you start looking at US dates.
Two numbers in the form of xx-yy (which, admittedly, is rarely used) would formally be month+ year, but far more commonly, month and year would be written YYYY-MM , with a four-digit year (or possible as ‘xx-yy, where the apostrophe signals that you’ve left out the century).
…also, 24h clock > 12h ;P
#16 Thomas
Lets not be so judgmental, esp when you’re not correct either. This is a legitimate difference in wording, not ignorance on the part of the commenter.
The British call each “season” a “series” I’m assuming they use “program” to refer to the entire show.
I agree season makes more logical sense though.
#17 Thomas
What benefit would we gain from switching sides? I like to drive on the same side of the road as I do walk down the corridor. My right hand is next to someone going the other way – I have the options to shake his hand or grab him by the throat depending on how I feel. 😉
#20
What benefit would we gain from switching sides? I like to drive on the same side of the road as I do walk down the corridor.
I too like to drive on the same side of the road as I walk down the corridor. In the US, most people walk on the right side of the corridor (probably not in small part because everyone drives on the right side of the road). If a bad guy is coming down the corridor, better to be on the right side where your sword arm can be effective than to have your sword arm right next to your opponent (assuming people are right handed on average).
Ask a Brit to say “Paella” the’ll say “Pie-ella”, many say “brah-ver” instead of “brother”, so the Brits can complain all they want about these so-called Americanism, but until the learn to speak their own language and pronounce spanish words with the same skill they pronounce french words, I’m not listening.
“… Oh why can’t the English learn to speak?”
~Prof. H. Higgins
It’s a living language. Unlike French.
Language contamination story.
I spent a lot of time in the early 80’s playing with my computer. Writing programs in Basic and 8080 assembler.
One day I noticed a rash had appeared on both of my arms. I called a dermatologist’s office and made an appointment.
During the examination the Doctor asks “Do you take showers or baths?”
My brain goes
if (showers or baths) then “yes”
I answer “Yes.”
Doctor looks at me strangely. Apparently he wasn’t a programmer.
#22 it is nothing to do with pronunciation. As a Scot, I assert that southern English accents are poor and the urban ones of those can be quite appalling.
An example of that came on Top Gear recently where Jeremy Clarkson asked a Glaswegian to say the word “burglar” and found it funny when that man actually pronounced the word burglar correctly unlike him who pronounced it “berglar”. That example will be lost on the southern English.
#20. I had always heard that the reason for left side driving came from jousting, as most are right handed.
In the Virgin Islands (US and British) we drive on the left. When a tourist rents a car, there is a sticker on the dash that says Keep Left. Unfortunately, some mistake it for a political statement.
#24…”80’s” ? Surely you mean “80s”.
A pet peeve of mine is using apostrophes where they do not belong.
This is coming from John who gets irked by the phrase, “By and Large” and “Veggies”. I agree though, these phrases are irritating and are generally just plain ignorant.
#14 About Aluminum as opposed to Aluminium: The consistency argument is spurious, at best. The symbol for gold (Au)is Aurum, not Aurium. For lead(PB)is Plumbum, not Plumbium. It happens that some elements end in -ium, some in -um, some in -on, and even -en. There really is no consistency. You are seeing a false pattern.
And if it is too difficult for you to translate date formats in your head, I pity you.
#27
Your peevish alright. Maybe the ’80s. Shouldnt you keep you’re pet’s on a leash?