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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I love the British but their smug superiority about language is grating.
Especially since half the country speaks poor English by their own standards.
Apropos of nothing,
Bob is in hospital.
Bob is in the hospital.
In church? In THE church? In a church?
In School? In the school? In a couple churches. (Or church’s, for spsffan)
Forgot to mention (actually the supposed reason for #32) anybody who enjoys language should check out wordreference.com. I’ve been hanging out there for several years now.
Huzzah.
I remember reading an article arguing that the Southern American accent is closer to 1500’s British accent than anything currently spoken in England.
I couldn’t find a link for it, though. Anybody else aware of this?
I love the British phrase “it’s gone missing” when they mean “it was stolen.”
Bobbo – I thought your estimate of the number or words sounded low and did some googling myself. I see several websites that agree with you. But I also find some that seem to think the real answer is about four times higher! ( http://languagemonitor.com/no-of-words/ ). As the Oxford site suggests, it’s partly due to the way we count words.
As to the list of 50 “Americanisms”, geez! There are some really pitiable examples! I lived in Britain and suffered through the extra syllables they add to some words. My least favorite was to orientate rather than orient. My proper Scottish mother-in-law said she found my Texas accent adorable. I don’t have a Texas accent. Then she would take every opportunity to correct my pronunciation.
As for fanny pack? I didn’t know it was obscene. Someone has to teach you that in the UK and woman’s fanny is not her posterior. Quite the opposite!
I am currently studying the Thai language. It is tough. A tonal language with five ways to pronounce a word and each version (that often sound exactly the same to me) means something completely different. The alphabet is huge: 44 consonants and nearly that many vowels. Yet, with all that richness and numerical possibilities, the language has only about 60,000 words. It is growing but the growth is mostly English words being adapted to the Thai tongue. (A favorite mode of transport is the motasay a two-wheeled vehicle often known in English as a motorcycle.)
Languages are fun.
MULL THWART please eliminate these two to start with.
By the way, do the British ever get upset at the atrocities perpetrated on the English language by their convict outcasts down under? And why do Aussies turn so many sentences into questions with an upward tone at the finish?
#4 McCullough
They are two different words for the same thing, they aren’t different pronunciations. It used to bug me too until I learned this.
BTW, what’s the deal with Brits pronouncing lieutenant as “left-tenant” instead of “loo-tenant”?
Do the say “in left of” instead of “in lieu of”?
The Britishism that drives me up the wall is “at the end of the day…” when used in place of “when all is said and done.”
Whilst we’re being pedantic…
What really annoys me about the Americanism of English is how they say numbers!
430 should be said “Four hundred and thirty” not “Four hundred thirty”
Still, it could be worse! – The French say 99 as “Quatre vign dix neuf” (forgive my spelling) – which literally translates as Four twenties, ten and 9 (or as you Americans would say.. four twenties ten nine) 😉
#29 Arkyn1 Lets stick to using some variant of English here. That the Latin for Gold or lead ends in UM and not IUM is about as relevant here as Sandskrit. In English, a large ammount of elements names end in IUM. These include, Ca, Na, K, Cd and Al. Some of them do not even have Latin translations as they had not been isolated at the time of the Romans.
How people pronounce things is absolutely nothing to do with the article. half the native English speakers in the world seem to feel that they do not actually have an accent.
The big dislike non-Americans have is poor/alternative grammar, junk words and meaningless phrases being forced upon them.
We know what you actually mean when you say some of these things. Why should we have to re-parse your speech? A lot of it is business “pseudospeak” that is designed to make a noise but not carry any useful information.
As the original BBC article said, why not call it Globish? There is certainly stuff in there that is not English.
#43 Holdfast – I take exception to your comments. I have travelled extensively around the world in many cultures and have often been told the American accent is easiest to understand!
As for your assertion that Al is an “ium” word – well, only in England and it’s territories. The name was given by an English chemist (Sir Davy) in 1808 as “alumium” from the Latin alumen. HE later changed the name to “aluminum.” It was British editors who decided to add the “i” so the word would be consistent with other “ium” elements.
Quote from the Quarterly Review in 1812: “Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound.” And there you have it. Nineteenth century Brits liked the “ium” sound so much, they unilaterally changed the word.
One of the more disconcerting aspects of traveling in the US is to be informed, on approaching an airport, that “we shall be landing momentarily”.
One supposes that we can expect immediately to soar up into the air again and make a more permanent attempt at landing at some future time. 🙂
…and yes, Mr. Curtis, “physicality” is a “real” “word.”
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” – George Bernard Shaw
And they will never stop arguing about it !!!
What is really needed is a list of all the things the Brits get wrong (start with just about anything to do with cars – boot, bonnet, etc.)
#30. Yes. ’80s or 1980s are actually correct.
Greg Allen. I remember seeing something, on PBS no doubt, making the case that some forms of Southern accents in the US are very much like those from some part of Great Britain and that New England accents are very much like those from some other part of Great Britain. But, I forget what parts of Great Britain, and which of the several Southern accents, or for that matter, New England accents they were referring to. It was at least a decade ago that I saw this.
But, while I’m here, and knowing that the article was not about accents, the entire world should know that America does not end with an r. Nor does Angela, or spatula. The good folks in Boston and Rhode Island should also take note!
>> # 42 Tripod22 said, on July 21st, 2011 at 3:15 am
>> 430 should be said “Four hundred and thirty” not “Four hundred thirty”
Why?
I was taught Four Hundred Thirty in two different school systems. Its just a “rule” and totally arbitrary. And different people have different rules?
I wonder if google can offer any light?
………….Ha, ha:
http://webmath.com/_answer.php
I live in this “irked” place and all I have to say is of course there is *nothing* said over here that is even remotely irritating. For example: “I am sat.” You can’t be doing something in the present AND past tense, unless of course you are British. There is a long list, but I won’t bore you with them all.
#50 Greg
>> should be said “Four hundred and thirty” >> not “Four hundred thirty”
>> Why?
Many of the differences between US and British use of English can be traced to the influence of German speaking immigrants to the US.
This a case in point, because the German for 430 is vierhundertdreißig, with no “und” in the middle.
Another classic example is wash cloth, from the German Waschlappen, whereas the British say face flannel.
Maybe this helps a little.
#53 Fred – in my experience, Brits just say “A flannel” but point taken.
#51 Bobbo : Link says it can’t be found. However, I say drop the “and” to be correct. After all, would you say one hundred AND thirteen billion AND two hundred AND seventy five million AND one hundred AND thirty two thousand AND six hundred AND twelve? (the number has no significance – don’t parse it) More simply, we don’t say twenty and four (unless we’re talking about blackbirds). Yes, Honest Abe did talk about four score and seven years but he certainly would not have eighty and seven years ago.
I tried an online search of several style sources and could not find an answer. Maybe someone else will be luckier. I do know that style sources always suggest consistency is important so if you choose to conjoin hundred with lesser number by an “and” you should be doing so for all such conjoinings (such as my absurd example above).
I can get by in several languages and NONE of them require an “and” in such cases though some are tolerant of it. I suggest dropping the and unless you’re writing out an addition equation.
“Functionality” is a most unfortunate word. “Learnings” instead of “lessons”. I blame football where it became fashionable to motion rather than move.
#55 there is a use of motion like that in the UK. At work, I regularly hear staff asking people about their motions.
That’s right, I work in a hospital and the motions are bowel ones…
#54 Animby,
You appear to have too many ANDs in your example. If you were British you would probably say “one hundred and thirteen billion, two hundred and seventy-five million, one hundred and thirty-two thousand, six hundred and twelve.”
We only use the conjunction to join numbers less than one-hundred to hundreds or thousands (hundreds, thousands and higher denominations are joined in a list separated by commas). So:
24 = “twenty-four”.
2,424 = “two thousand, four hundred and twenty-four” (or “twenty-four hundred and twenty-four”)
242,424 = “two hundred and forty-two thousand, four hundred and twenty-four”.
At least that is the way I was taught, and I’ve never heard anyone around me use the ‘correct’ way you describe.
fred’s comment #53 sounds plausible. If you leave out the conjunction, aren’t you creating a compound noun?
Compounding verbs and nouns happens frequently in Germanic languages but not so much in French or English. Sure, there are lots of compound nouns in English for commonplace objects, but they are fixed phrases. I can’t think of another example where it’s regarded as OK to join nouns together on an ad-hoc basis.
Unsurprisingly, my comments on the divisiveness nature of the piece and the inaccuracies in it’s own verbiage went unpublished.
Like all my comments to Richard Black, the arts degree journalism, in charge of science reporting….
… not that I’m bitter, obviously 🙂 he he he
#58: Rob.
I don’t see your missing comment in the spam folder and I doubt anyone deleted it. It apparently didn’t take for some reason. The vagueries of WordPress.
#57
I was taught that the “and” represented the decimal place. So you have:
24 = “twenty-four”
2424 = “two thousand, twenty four”
242424 = “two hundred, forty two thousand, four hundred twenty-four”
242.10 “two hundred forty two and ten”