A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120
bbc.com
bbc.com
We had a tally chart on the wall for anyone who slipped into saying one of them accidentally. I survived for weeks until I rang someone to 'touch base'!
They seemed to have a group policy (or something) that changed the the dictionary in Office back to 'American English' each reboot. I just ignored the coloured (!) underlines and typed the way I wanted as my own personal battle.
I don't actual have a problem with the variant spellings of American English. I have a problem with certain kinds of bad English that happen to seem more prevalent amongst Americans!
1) Verbalisation: "I am hoping to medal in the next Olympics". This sounds to me like they are planning to meddle with it. What is wrong with, "I am hoping to win a medal"?
2) Bi-monthly and bi-weekly. Twice a week or every two weeks? Twice a month or every two months. When you want to hold a meeting every two weeks then perhaps a fortnightly meeting would tell people when they need to be there?
3) Reaching out. To mean making contact. What is wrong with, I wrote to x, I called Y etc.
4) Bootstrapping a business: I get down-voted for this, but this seems to cover everything from, "I'm so rich I didn't need to take outside investment", to "I did this as an add on to my existing business and supported it with our existing funding" to "We started on a server I found in a skip and scaled it up from there until I could quit my job". In most of the cases I have seen it could be replaced with the phrase, "I started a business" without losing any meaning whatsoever.
I should stop annoying you all and do some work
"Great post. Another one that I hear way too often is go ahead and inserted into phrases, as in Why don't you go ahead and do X as celebrated in Office Space."
But I thought my initial sentence was sufficient. I guess not. Maybe people who actually use the phrase thought I was telling the guy to go back to work? Or..
I guess I shouldn't have said thanks. It's a low effort comment. Last time I thanked someone for something I was downvoted.
>Attempts to add something substantive< It's very interesting, (I'm new here) the feeling of direct voting - a little like if in the real world, people could affect your (say) bank balance immediately by voting on what you'd said. It would really affect and whether how you spoke about everything. Maybe the result would be like the voting on IMDb, where the best ratings awarded not the best movies, but those that everyone understood and liked, that offended nobody etc. Well, the frustrating part about being downvoted is not understanding why. It's hard not to conspiratorialize..
But who cares about votes. They're only good for..being able to downvote others, aren't they?! But it seems natural for people to care about their points e.g. on Stack Exchange-type sites. It's the pecking order/social standing we have been evolved to be good at computing, I guess. Hard not to care too much about it.
Edit: Also, I have a strong sense of humour, I mean in almost everything I write online, which it seems I will have to leave at the door. Total humourlessness seems to be desired and rewarded here.
Many words in English have this origin, eg., Shakespeare did this all the time giving us the verbs "to champion", "to elbow"... from nouns.
bi-* (2) is fair, being an ambiguity.
reaching-out (3) contains less information than the alternatives provide, but do they provide too much? Given how we are connected in so many different ways now, does labouring to include which mechanism really seem efficient?
(4) Bootstrapping is an american cultural fetishization of individual spunk/moxie (etc. americans have many words for it). I suspect your objection has more to do with this cultural disposition to self-promotion and borderline delusional accounts of their own gumption and lack of others.
Europe, owing to the class system and 1000s-year+ settlement has a lot more preoccupation with the role society plays in success.
As far as all that goes however, "bootstrapping" seems a good word to mean, "I think I did most of this myself".
PS. I will say, for any offended americans, that I think europeans sometimes have the reverse delusion, esp. the british: that nothing can be done alone, and it's not worth trying.
1) Shakespeare did it for extremely gallant reasons though, he preserved the meter and make his text beautiful!
3) How about 'get in touch with'? This leaves the subtleties of how to make contact up to the individual preferences of the out-reacher and out-reachee. I think my concern with 'reaching-out' is it is rather overplaying what tends to be just a call to ask one question. I might reach-out to the community in an out-reach project, this might involve various methods of communication and a sustained campaign.
The usage I really don't like is 'Reach out to Joe to progress the spec', when they really mean 'ask Joe how he is getting on with the spec'.
Again this is a cultural thing: Americans like to be friendly in a distance sort of way (which looks to european like pretending they are more socially promixmate than they really are).
For that reason I find it quite uncomfortable to be around a lot of them in one go. Europeans prefer social distance to be bridged quickly and directly, whereas Americans prefer to smooth it over with familiarity.
I tried really hard there not to call it dishonest. But it feels very dishonest to me. Of course, in Europe the British are the most American here: the further east you go the more direct people get.
Incidentally, this does speak to the point the author was making: how we are adopting idioms that are not culturally appropriate. For sure, I think, we do not "reach-out" because we do not include a sense of proximity in the way we speak to strangers.
PS. Our Hotels are becoming increasingly Americanized in their service culture. Thankfully it's not everywhere. American waiters/etc. are almost repulsively familiar and "helpful".
Every culture makes a public/private distinction and has different social conventions in each.
For example, sarcastic/ironic/cutting humour is mostly a private-space thing in america -- whereas in the UK it's common to both. I'd say this is related to their deep sense that public spaces should be friendly-distant.
For this reason, amongst others, Americans have a reputation for not understanding irony/british sense of humour. It's more that they don't expect it in public places. I'd imagine an American experience of people British people joking at (say,) a funeral is something like a British experience of an American helpline. Vaguely repellent.
It's because it's mixing public/private which crosses intimacy lines. And intimacy is closely related to disgust (eg. someone you dont like kissing you).
PS. I've just had another thought about that. One of the issues we have in the UK at the moment is the importation of a strange kind of political correctness where you mustn't joke about stereotypes etc. (which is a particularly european thing: to joke about each other's culture -- this tends to feel connecting to europeans).
My guess is that because, in America, public spaces are supposed to be friendly-distant (hence why they censor all sorts of words, etc.) we have imported this sense about certain kinds of jokes.
To the American sensibilities a stereotyping joke in a public space is alienating. To a european one, it's a gesture towards intimacy.
I think we're probably going to lose this to American culture. We may have already.
Though still, it's interesting to observe: get a group of europenas of different nationalities together and they bond by joking about sterotypes. Stereotype an american and they think you're being hostile and trash-talking them.
This maybe due to the physical boundaries of Europe, that it's no insult to comment on another's "otherness" when they are traditionally (and a probably self-acknowledged) outsider. In the US, we're all stewing in the same pot with a more than a dash of (at least historical) racism and bigotry, so (negatively) emphasizing differences goes against our cultural mythology.
I can assure you, Americans have no difficulty with ridiculous caricatures of sterotypical British/French/German/Italian/etc behaviours.
That's the missing context British people have when opining about the American way of doing politics: that it's keeping a lid on something that here we do not have.
However I think it's more than that. The places that have the most european sense of humor and way of live are those with the highest population density. New York / Boston humour is quite close. Yet, NY -- the most dense US city -- is still only have as dense as paris.
The US is incredibly sparse. Everything is very far away from everything else even within cities: a shop is a drive from another shop.
I suspect that does something peculiar to public spaces.
The recent civil war and racism doesn't help though.
'Shuttered' is another one I personally detest. 'Closed' is a perfectly good word, which doesn't need replacing.
> 3) Reaching out. To mean making contact. What is wrong with, I wrote to x, I called Y etc.
As a young nonnative whipper snapper I think reaching out kinda makes sense in the modern world. We’re connected to people in so many ways simultaneously that the way in which we reached out is irrelevant and often forgotten. I don’t always know if I called, wrote, emailed, texted, slacked, tweeted, messengered or carrier pigeoned you. I just know I reached out.
And before you say most of those are a form of writing, I think they’re often perceived as closer to talking (in person almost) than to writing.
As an American, I've noticed certain words I associate with British English creeping into our vocabulary as well. In my mind I associate it with Harry Potter and Doctor Who, but I realize Anglophilia is no new thing--these are just the bits of British pop culture that hit me in my early adulthood.
The fact is that British and American English will each remain distinctive, even as they continue to share and evolve together as well. The Internet is definitely making this evolution happen more quickly. But it still goes both ways, and will continue to do so. Some of the changes you'll like and adopt without thinking about, some you will find annoying or crude, some you will hate with a completely irrational passion. It's part of life. Enjoy it!
"After all, as a nation we’ve been both invaded and invader, and our language is all the richer for it. Words like bungalow, bazaar, even Blighty, have their roots elsewhere. Heck, go far enough back and isn’t it pretty much all just distorted Latin, French or German?"
Not really, it goes mostly from the direction of the stronger nations to the less strong in the relationship.
And cultures and languages do die out in such processes.
Now, some might find all this inconsequential, but for some of us those things means something (and the fact that historically things change and die anyway isn't more comforting than it is when its told about one's family dying).
What I'm more amazed is how people can lament some latest sequel to a movie franchise "betraying" or losing the spirit of the original or losing its way etc, but at the same time can't understand others that are concerned with whole cultures doing the same.
Well, isn't that a strawman too? Seeing that, I didn't say those are "necessarily" the same people -- just that "some people" hold both opinions simultaneously.
So you haven't read all the article, or at least, engaged with any of its points -- perhaps rolling your eyes forwards may help in the future.
The claim the author makes is that British English will die as a distinctive sort, being subsumed by foreign additions that make little sense to the way we live our lives.
It sounds wrong to refer to British English as the English language. There are several English languages that coexist and cross-pollinate.
Then there's the impossibility of popular phrases (individual words such as "movie" don't bother me much at all). "What are you hungry for?" simply cannot be. It makes more sense to ask what one feels like eating. Same with "I'm excited for..." Just doesn't make sense. We're excited ABOUT a thing, not FOR a thing. The American propensity to fake it because PR annoys me no end, too. Every time I hear "I'm thrilled to..." I do a little mouth-vomit. There's just NO authenticity behind a statement that starts with those words.
Many more such nuances. Like "He disrespected me" instead of someone being rude, curt or otherwise unfriendly to another (respect is earned).
There are going to be as many opinions about this stuff as there are people.
What a crock...
Interestingly, while one would expect it to be correlated with political belief (conservatives would want language as it was in good old days, progressives would embrace the change) my personal anecdotal evidence says it isn't.
If it adds something new to the language, he accepts it. If we already have existing words that do a better job, he rejects it.
This begrudgingly forced him to accept the use of ‘like’ the way teenage girls use it because they don’t mean “this person said”, or “I said”. They mean some more like “this person said something to the effect of”.
The Spanish cognate 'maravilloso' survives.
If you want to do something about it, and you aren't an American, then preserve what's unique to your place and people. Don't get swept up mindlessly in the global consumerist culture. Merely lamenting is not going to save vanishing diversity.
I believe something similar applies now to Australian English. Many of the words and phrases, developed over 200 years of unique shared experience, and also incorporated from a diverse range of linguistic immigration, are no longer commonly in use. Or at least not commonly in use amongst the younger urban population, which seems to drive much of the national cultural norms today.
I think the language is poorer for this loss, but also understand it is perhaps an inevitable consequence of constant exposure to the dominant Western global cultural force.
A hundred years ago modern-day "britishisms" would be viewed as "killing the English language".
Also, what's "British English"? These two are British English:
- received pronunciation with it's "proper English": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q
- Glasgoans (??) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c with "bubblin' and greetin'" and other weird stuff
I expect more from the BBC than to let a former Bloomberg journalist make generalizations without anything to back it up. "Awesome" occurring more often than "marvelous" doesn't provide us with anything other than the fact that the author appreciates the latter more than the former.
Seems appropriate that I should go write a piece for the BBC on how journalism has declined and how Brits are contributing, and be sure to cite this article.
It's a change I've personally lamented due to the loss of the word awesome to use for its original meaning without a good replacement.
It's a tough time to be an American, and most people realize that. Exploiting that with bad journalism is just throwing gas onto a trash fire IMO.
edit: More importantly, if Brits want to preserve the language as they see it in their country, they should consider going the French route [1].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
I grew up in England but live in Canada and speak quite Americanized English as a result. I've got nothing against Americans or them speaking American English and I don't think the author has either. I do agree with him however that as Brits (and as Canadians in my case) we are losing something valuable by adopting American English unthinkingly and it's worth paying a bit more attention to individually when we use language as a result.
It's entirely possible.
> which is why the French approach is stupid
I think there's some merit to what they do, but it is a bit much.
> I do agree with him however that as Brits (and as Canadians in my case) we are losing something valuable by adopting American English unthinkingly and it's worth paying a bit more attention to individually when we use language as a result.
I would agree, but would say the author / BBC could have had more tact and not used the headline, "How Americanisms Are Killing the English Language." If a Japanese news outlet ran an article, "How the British have 'watered' tea down for more than 100 years" -- not too many Brits would be excited about reading it.
And should the non-clarified form of the language not automatically be assumed to be the original form of it? Compare Spanish Spanish vs Mexican Spanish, it feels an unnecessary clarification
Same for Spanish, when I'm talking about that language it doesn't even cross my mind that someone might think Mexican Spanish.
But English is not my first language so it may be different e.g. for Americans.
Supposably, Americans could care less that other English-speaking countries are closer to en-GB than en-US, despite the relentless onslaught of inconsiderate software defaults.
So they do care?
The meaning overlaps a lot with supposedly, which is much more-commonly used, so it sounds a bit odd.
It is a synonym for "conceivable", whereas supposedly means: "according to what is accepted or believed to be true"
To assuage American readers? That's a rather condescending attitude, don't you think?
The very word "American" is presumptuous. Imagine if the Chinese referred to themselves as "Asians" and their country as "Asia".
I've taken to using estadounidense until something better comes along in English. ..or Spanish becomes the main language in the US :-) Australian English has/had the rather pungent seppo - rhyming slang for septic tank = Yank. But estadounidense is at least accurate.
It is especially reasonable when used this way by an English writer writing for a British publication.