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Monday, 7 February 2011

Allegedly Annoying Briticisms of the Week

Bloody hell and lawks a mercy! Those po-faced septics are whingeing about our lingo. And it's not a wind up. From The Telegraph:

New Yorkers always fall for a nice English accent: whenever my well-spoken sister-in-law visits, they trill at her flowing diction and faultless vowels. Coming from Liverpool, I have a trickier time. In fact, I stopped ordering butter after three waiters in one smart restaurant failed to grasp my pronunciation. "Bootta! Bootta!" I pleaded, while my American friends wept with joy at my embarrassment.

Now, however, it is the words we Anglo-Saxons use, not how we say them, that is causing a stir. After mangling our language for years, Americans are complaining about their own dialect being polluted by "Britishisms".

New Yorker Ben Yagoda, a professor at Delaware University, is studying the invasion of traditional British lingo. He has set up a website to keep track of the wicked, uniquely British words such as "kerfuffle" or "amidst" that are creeping into everyday American usage.

Yagoda's biggest objection, he tells me, is to words for which there are "perfectly good American equivalents, like 'bits' for 'parts' and 'on holiday' instead of 'on vacation' ". They are, he says, "purely pretentious".

Of course, British English has been under assault from this side of the Atlantic for centuries. America's most notorious linguistic anarchist, Noah Webster, decided more than 200 years ago that the English couldn't spell, decreeing that theatre should become theater; favour, favor; jewellery, jewelry; and so on.

Yet so incensed is Yagoda by this new development that he has devised a grading system that awards marks – one to four – for what he calls the "pretentiousness level" of each word. "Advert" gets three, as locals talk about "ads" or "commercials". Saying someone has "got the sack" is also an aberration – Americans are always "fired".

Yagoda thinks use of these overt Britishisms is simply part of an attempt to be "cool" (American, I believe, for "contemporary and fashionable"). So perhaps we should be basking in our trend-setting abilities – not to mention grateful for the attention. After all, as Bill Bryson has said: "Without America's contribution, English today would enjoy a global importance on a par with Portuguese."

It does - proper English anyway.

Posted on 02/07/2011 4:07 AM by Mary Jackson
Comments
7 Feb 2011
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[another post from an annoying American]
 
Neither Staff Nor Scrip,
Neither Nuts Nor Chest
Or: Trill Me To The Marrow
Or: Get 'Em By The Short Hairs
Or: Under The Spreading Islamic Blight
Or: Remember Off The Bounding Mane
 
 
"Without America's contribution, English today would enjoy a global importance on a par with Portuguese."
 
Now that the Muslims' camel nose is under our too-generous big tents and British commercial interests are no longer much of a cat's paw for military intervention (or vice versa), and having so oft pulled the chestnut hairs of the British lion out of the fire*, now is not the time for us give it a "Brazilian."
 
Your Hair Apparent &
Chestnut Brown Canary In The Coal Mine,
Uncle Sam Androcles
 
"...out of the fire"? In a pig's eye!  Cunicula, cuniculi, we lost the canal because of thee.
- Anthony Eden, Thigh-warm Aden


7 Feb 2011
Send an emailreactionry


7 Feb 2011
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"Remember The Maine"
 


7 Feb 2011
Paul Blaskowicz
 
 
The United States to Great Britain Mary Baker Eddy May 15, 1898  (Written when Mrs Eddy was tinkering with the ideas of the Brtiish-Israelite movement.)
 
Hail, brother! fling thy banner/To the billows and the breeze;/We proffer thee warm welcome/
With our hand, though not our knees.  [Nuf sed...]

Lord of the main and manor!/Thy palm, in ancient day,/Didst rock the country's cradle/
That wakes thy laureate's lay.

The hoar fight is forgotten;/Our eagle, like the dove,/Returns to bless a bridal/
Betokened from above.

List, brother! angels whisper/To Judah's sceptred race, —"Thou of the self-same spirit,/
Allied by nations' grace,

"Wouldst cheer the hosts of heaven;/For Anglo-Israel, lo!/Is marching under orders;/
 His hand averts the blow."

Brave Britain, blest America! /Unite your battle-plan;/Victorious, all who live it, —
The love for God and man.






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