"Americans" spoiling "English"

[catgate]

I think the difference in local dialects is one of the joys of the language in U.K. and I should hate to see an official standardised English, but for transaction of business, the interchange between technical personel, government of all levels (from the bottom down), the media and all country wide interchange there should be a language understood readily by all and taught in school. (I suppose it would be nice if they taught anything in schools these days.)

I am a Yorkshireman and within my home county there are dozens of dialects. I can understand many of them and I would hate to see them disappear. They are so different to "English" that anyone born two dales away would have difficulty with them.

Ow ista? Wears ta barn? Wearnt tav yan? = How are you? Wear are you going? Will you not have one? It is certainly not English...and neither is American.

they still spell and pronounce the way we used to in England in the Eighteeenth Century

And I thought Dubya was just presidentialisationing! Silly me. B)

I'm going to bed. Mrs Catgate will be back from visiting (with) friends in Gran Canaria tomorrow, so I must be up early to clear all the dirty pot out of the sink and get the vacuum cleaner up and running!!!

[peter e]

Hi, Doug. I read your post on Gt North Run 2004. Are you doing anything this year? If so, you can rely on a contribution from me again.

[andsome]

.......and look at the regional variations in the way we pronounce it over here ...! ...

Once worked in Brierley Hill - thought all the punters were German.

Cor, yo day reely werk in Broierly Ill did yer? Aynuk and Ailloy dow live far from theer, in Dudlay.

[catgate]

I think my final contribution to this bg of worms opened up by Daphne has to be this:-

The Manifolded Parsnip Bench

The sun uprising was slowly, as over the hill, and road the down, came a young boycycle on a bise. He was early to school getupping and go, for today was Turnip Thursday, the day when all schooldinnerers cabbage get only for upeating country wide. On this particular Turnip Thursday all was great joyers and peacing for with it coincided the Day of Small Teachers.

The boycycle on the bise, who have Kevin for his call it, was taking to his fathers working job place employ, a portion small of loom fluff and webbingcobs, to stave off the ague of the wattle mongerer. Many a life save it have wattle mongerers with webcobbings and fluff dusty loom, particularly they who how doing it is known with.

Angus Bridgedribble, who answer the call it of daddy for Kevin, mongereth not the wattle, nor mongereth he any other worldly chattel. Angus, for so christened they him with, was a refill pen poison maker. Many has been the lady old dear who has given greatly thanks for the dexterity of Angus, when her poison pen filling was empty. The malicious empty page of spite is not malevolent with inkless poison. "More elbow to his power", saying are the old little lady dears, as vituperate, revile and slander they gamely into senility.

Mrs. Bridgedribble, or mummy Kevin call it have, else Doris to what she have of friends, stay home and clean up tea pot and ham sandwich make for during the day, and go out night school teach it for plough and horsey pull after evening winter. But after all making both meat ends is not so easy, even for pork butchering sausage.

One lady old dear pen poison letterer was enrolled in Mrs. Bridgedribble's plough and horsey come pull it for the winter, because big large spreading garden she have, and backside to match. This lady old dear little have a call it of Miss Muriel Haversidge, and she is live at an old country cottage, called The Larches because it having a garden filled with rosebay willow herb and rubbley builders.

Miss Muriel have kind feel it for stribbles, grass of the kangaroo and lavender bushing, but wroth and gibberings she keeps for toad parsley, gamekeepers purse, saddle weed and bog agriphebes.

One summer day fine cometh the knife grind and sell trinkety Sikh, who many for years, and beyond, use his grind skilling for the people good of this village little cosy. Put it to him or Miss Muriel for have she no knives for skilling grind, but saddle weed and bog agriphebes are she a more of plenty. "Yo Ho Missy ," are saying the grind Sikhing knifeman, " I are but only near for another several times or seven. Therefore let us grind it and skilling, throughout the village and country longth, and linghth, sublime."

And thus are cutting put the turnip and day longing of the small teachers and web cobbers. But say shush alone, for only we are to be all of knowing this.

©1997

htlp.www.throglplog.com.co/

I feel sure that it is still true today.

[-pops-]

Aluminum or aluminium? :D  :flowers:

Sodum or sodium?

Potassum or potassium?

Calcum or calcium

Uranum or uranium?

Tedum or tedium?

The worst contributions the Americans have made to English is the completely unnececesary alterations to the spelling, the unnecessary invention of portmanteau words (as we know, Dubya is one of the worst at this) and the unnecessary (and sometimes subtle) alteration of the meanings of words.

[deuces wild]

The worst contributions the Americans have made to English is the completely unnececesary alterations to the spelling, the unnecessary invention of portmanteau words (as we know, Dubya is one of the worst at this) and the unnecessary (and sometimes subtle) alteration of the meanings of words.

Hey, all we did was fix your mistakes. :P :rolleyes:

[-pops-]

Hey, all we did was fix your mistakes. :P  :rolleyes:

I think not, considering the examples I gave, compared against yours, all that is introduced is inconsistency :)

[deuces wild]

Sodum or sodium?

Potassum or potassium?

Calcum or calcium

Uranum or uranium?

Tedum or tedium?

So by your logic "opossum" should be "opossium"; "curriculum" should be "curriculium", "dictum" should be "dictium" and "forum" should be "forium". :blink:

[scuzzman]

The worst contributions the Americans have made to English is the completely unnececesary alterations to the spelling, the unnecessary invention of portmanteau words (as we know, Dubya is one of the worst at this) and the unnecessary (and sometimes subtle) alteration of the meanings of words.

Unnececesary alterations to spelling? You mean like through, weigh, neighbor, ceiling, etc...? In fact, these silent consanants are primarily British variants, as Americans are lazy with our English, and our words (by that, I mean those words that originated in America) are pronounced exactly as they are spelled (ie: "thru", "color" and "favorite").

Or, what happens when one "drives someone mad"? Is your driving making them angry, or are you causing them to become insane? This is a British term...

Here's my stance:

Americans are, by nature, a very adaptable people. We can and will adapt to any scenario, and we'll do so quite quickly, unlike out British counterparts. When a new word is tossed our way, chances are, it will become accepted. We take words from different languages and adapt them. We take them from industry jargon, slang from wherever, and when we can't find a word for a particular scenario, one is made up (such as "Yuck"), and this is all molded into our particular brand of English. This simply shows American versatility. If Brits wish to keep English pure, that's fine. I accept it -- but don't bust our chops about it.

In no place is anyone right or wrong about how something is handled, but it is instead a matter of one person's preference over another. This is something we, as adults, must learn to respect AND accept, or simply look the other way.

[andsome]

I get irritated by the constant unnecessary use of the word like. Unfortunately our teenagers are now using it as with other Americanisations. eg. I was LIKE irritated. Instead of I was irritated.

[Devanski]

I feel dat sol we'll ll b rytn n dis fashin, so ull jst av ti gt uzd 2 it. SYL8tr .... :P :D

[deuces wild]

Some of you folks act as if the British never bastardized their own language with slang. :blink:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~genepool/sayings.htm

http://english2american.com/dictionary/cat_clothing.html

http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/

http://www.londonslang.com/

It cuts both ways folks. :rolleyes:

Yo dude's! Don't 'dis each other. Wazzup wid dat? Chill tight . :P

[mark2]

DW

by your logic shouldn't Pentium be Pentum then :D :D

[deuces wild]

Not my logic....but a reversal of pop's "logic". :rolleyes:

[Daphne]

Here in G.B. when we are asked for details, and are give a form on which to provide them, we "fill it in". In USA you "fill it out". How can out and in mean the same thing?

Well, it's monday, and I think I can allow myself to point out to some paradoxes. Websters reads: fill in: furnish with specified information / fill out: to put on flesh (sic). Nothing else. :lol:

However, I think both forms are ok when applied to the action of writing down data on preprinted questionaries. Americans do very right when they say they fill in spaces, very especifically a gap on a form (But also time, etc.), cause they answer just one question, and then they "fill out" the whole form up to the bottom. Now a general use of "fill out" is not completely wrong, no matter that it sounds unusual to the English and British. This lets me think that Americans keep very well their linguistic heritage. Because, (by chance?) "fill out" coincides with the Dutch and German translations (eg. aus-füllen (out + fill)) used for the same meaning. And it sounds absolutely logical: when you've finished filling in your data you have fill out the form. So, why couldn't it be that you are required to fill out the form at once? This way, the Americans haven't invented anything new; they keep alive the Germanic heritage of English :thumbup:

[Daphne]

The languages that have disappeared have been assimilated into that which replaced them, just as English replaced Norse, Norman, Saxon etc. , but the "new" language was not called by any of its components because it was not any of its components.

Catgate, I highly respect your opinion. But languages are by no means the result of intermixing like human races. It is always the speech of the last conquerors which supersedes the previous one. The conquered people's language gets lost (see Britanic Celtic). Of course, there subsist reminiscences and remains in grammar and vocabulary, but these have only some influence if the languages envolved strongly differ from each other. And this did not happen among Germanic languages. On the other side, contributions of peaceful newcomers have always narrow effects. Does the Londoners speech have stronger Indian influences from immigrants? The traits of modern English were determined by the Anglian speech strongly latinized after William the Conqueror, who brought his bureucrats from present-day French Normandy. What thereafter happend is evolution, as you've also said.

world wide there are millions of people...  think ... The rest of "English" as they know it is American.

Catgate, you forget that the old Imperial language is spoken daily by hundreds of thousands in India and Africa, who cannot communicate with each other in any other common language. You will admit that they will no way speak American but a sort of British English.

I get irritated by the constant unnecessary use of the word like. Unfortunately our teenagers are now using it as with other Americanisations. eg. I was LIKE irritated. Instead of I was irritated.

We all should agree on this with you and Catgate. The worst of adopting some foreign slang (As I also could do by continous mistakes), is that they don't know the meaning. LIKE is used in America for "somehow" or "quite" and sometimes "enough", what if you consider this, is "like" stupid, because it will be repeated every 2 or 3 sentences. And, if it seems that I could have justify the world wide use of American English in a unrestricted manner, I want to put it very simple: One thing could be the enrichment of English through random contributions from everywhere, and another one is to speak basically a wrong English.

The roots of that bad sounding American English are in schooling and school education in USA. And the reason for this is that American elites do not care too much about public education as Europeans do. Too this you may add the popularization of attractive wrong semantics.

[deuces wild]

The roots of that bad sounding American English are in schooling and school education in USA. And the reason for this is that American elites do not care too much about public education as Europeans do.

Is that so? How do you arrive at that conclusion? :blink:

[Rebel=UK=]

The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

"The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).

Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8191.htm

[Daphne]

It is not my personal conclusion. Look at the statistics. Compare how much spends Washington on public education as % of budget, relate it to schooling population, check how many leave school unfinished, and then compare it to European numbers. Sure, you'll find some countries in Europe where the eduction quality is worse than in America, and on the other side find good public schools there.

On an other level you can see what the preferences are when choosing a public or private University.

[Daphne]

Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere

Sorry. Not so far. That cannot justify outsourcing to India. Oracle had good skill developers in America, and they got to be what they are because of them. Such decisions are taken mainly on the ground of money, money, money. Indians get a quite good level of education, but are by far more cheaper to contract. In America, higher Education doesn't rank so bad. But it is too expensive.

[deuces wild]

The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).

The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).

Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

"The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).

Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8191.htm

That does not mean we are against education.

We throw all sorts of money at it. We are spending close to $60 billion on education at the Federal level alone. Add to that the billions spent by the States and local municipalities. In 1999 we spent $7,000 in tax dollars per student.

The problem is the parents not caring (general in low income and single parent families) and no amount of money can fix that.

Here is one perspective (written 10 years ago but still applicable):

Why does the world's most productive country have the world's least productive school system?

The U.S. now spends more per student on public elementary and secondary education than any other advanced country belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Yet, international comparisons show our students trailing behind even many undeveloped countries in mathematics, science, geography, foreign languages, and other subjects.

At least three reasons account for such low productivity in the U.S.

First, by historical and world standards, the conditions of American children are alarming. Statistics show that rates of child abuse, single parenthood, teen pregnancy, youth delinquency,homicide, and suicide are all much higher in the U.S. than in other countries. Research has linked each of these child-rearing deficiencies to poor academic achievement.

Second, the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes schools a state responsibility, resulting in a system with varying degrees of local school board and teacher discretion. Though it has many advantages, our decentralized system of education is mismanaged in many ways. For example, the U.S. spends 25.1 percent of its public school budget on non-teaching staff, more than twice the average of other countries surveyed by the OECD.

Such excessive, largely administrative, costs stem primarily from the federal government's clumsy efforts to interfere with and subsidize local schools. Although it pays only 7.6 percent of school costs, the federal government imposes many mandates and regulatory burdens on state departments of education and local school boards. In doing so, the U.S. Department of Education creates a great deal of red tape that has little to do with learning.

Federal rules, for example, require schools to sort students into arbitrary categories of poverty, race, ethnicity, bilingualism, mental disabilities, and poor achievement. Research convincingly shows that students are better off in regular classrooms rather than in costly segregated programs created specifically for such groups. Under current policies, however, the more students that administrators categorize as mentally disabled, bilingual, or poor achievers, the more federal money flows into their schools. The incentives, plainly, are perverse.

Finally, state legislatures have increasingly centralized the financing and control of public schools. This has put greater power into the hands of teachers unions and other producer interest groups. Such groups play on American sympathies for children to gain hikes in taxes and spending on education and contractual guarantees of job security. None of these "reforms" actually benefits children.

http://www.heartland.org/archives/perspectives/walberg1.htm

THIS LINK shows that we spend more per student towards their education than any other Country, including the UK, France and Germany. In fact the UK spends almost half of what we do per student.

Obviously, based on the money spent vs results one can conclude that money is not the answer.

So to say that American elites don't care about education is hogwash. It is the parents who often don't care and that leads to the poor results here in the States. We have cities with drop out rates (from high schools) as high as 65%. :o With that sort of mentality, how can we succeed?

[Tankus]

Too much coffee ...again ............ Deuces ....?

Uks golden years of education disappeared by the mid 80's ......

Numbers have gone up ,quality has gone down .....!

More inequality now too ....further education costs too much ....!

[deuces wild]

Too much coffee ...again ............  Deuces ....?

Uks golden years of education disappeared by the mid 80's ......

Numbers have gone up ,quality has gone down .....!

More inequality now too ....further education costs too much ....!

I never made any case about the quality of education in the UK. Why not direct your comments to those that did.

Too much wine.....again......Tankus...? :D

[doug]

I think this topic has had a pretty good gumming so far. Time to call it a day.

[Tankus]

Mighty Murry Shiraz ..... I recommend it ...very fruity

Just thought that we have similar problems in the UK as you mentioned in the US ...

Bring back elitism ...?

Less in..... better quality out .....?