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THIS is an outrage, and if George W. Bush was in office, we'd be at war over it. 
I can barely make out what this british fool is saying, but I'd like to remind him that if it wasnt for America he'd be speaking German.
Ungrateful brats.
Britain declares war on words that snuck into our skedule...
Mark Easton is the BBC home affairs editor. He spent some of his childhood in Winchester, apparently, not Wisconsin. And his job seems unlikely to offer extensive travel opportunities to the United States.
Yet the other night he referred to ‘specialty shops’ (note the missing i) on the Ten O’Clock News. The rest of his report must have been drowned out by the screaming and spluttering of thousands of Mail on Sunday readers, who share my horror at the way British English is being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mindless Americanisms.
My article in last week’s Review (Say No To The Get-Go) brought forth a huge response, almost all of it supportive. Most gratifyingly, very few of the emails began: ‘Hi Matthew.’
I believe language thrives on give and take, but with the United States it is all take. Americans rarely hear any of our words, let alone adopt them.
But we are so overwhelmed by everything American that the British have lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and theirs. This is the reality of cultural imperialism.
Easton was not even speaking good American. ‘Specialty stores’ would be far more normal in the United States.
‘Speciality’ (with the i) is a lovely word, full of rolling syllables. His version is the kind of usage that comes out of the mid-Atlantic and needs to be dropped back there, from a great height.
And there is a great deal of other useless baggage that needs to be dumped along with it. You offered hundreds more examples.
Top of the long hate-list was probably ‘Can I get a coffee?’ (and these days it probably would be an overpriced, overmarketed American coffee rather than a nice cup of tea).
The answer, says Louisa C., is no ‘. . . unless you are planning to clamber over the counter and start fiddling with the steam spouts’.
It was closely followed by ‘I’m good’ as opposed to ‘I’m very well, thank you’. This phrase is even more infuriating when used as an alternative to ‘No, thanks’, in declining a second helping.
‘I just want to yell, “NO, you are NOT good – you might be really, really BAD,” ’ wailed Patsy Holden.
Other leading hates include ‘snuck’ as the past tense of ‘sneak’ and ‘dove’ as the past tense of ‘dive’; driver’s license instead of driving licence; overly rather than over; autopsy for post-mortem; burglarized instead of burgled; filling out forms instead of filling them in; fries for chips; chips for crisps; and food to go as opposed to take away.
There is also period instead of full stop; and of course ‘Hi, guys’, guys in this case being of either sex. These last two usages are associated with Tony Blair, which seems to redouble the irritation factor.
Not everyone suffers in silence. Martin Levin of London E4, says he keeps emailing Radio 2 to remind them there is no k in ‘schedule’, as does Keith Rodgerson, whose verbal enemies list is so long he can’t have time for much else other than letters of complaint.
It includes airplane for aeroplane, pharmacist for chemist, advisory for warning, and calling McDonalds a restaurant, which is a related but subtly different complaint.
The land is also full of ‘gotten’ haters – understandable because it is an extremely ugly word. This is a complex area, though, in that it was formerly used in Scotland and can be found in the works of Sir Walter Scott.
However, it was described as ‘archaic and affected’ in 1926, so has no business making a comeback.
And there is widespread loathing of the verbalisation of nouns: incentivizing and all that rot. David Barton of Kent says he used to work for an American company that decided to ‘sunset’ a department.
In sport, Bob Carr winces when his team suffer an American ‘loss’ far more than when they go down to an English defeat.
Wayne Bryant says that, if he were still playing competitive sport and was told ‘you’re ON the team ON the weekend’, he would refuse to turn up. Gordon Spalding adds ‘Can we touch base?’ to the collection of ludicrous baseball metaphors.
There is a simple answer to this. There should be a blanket ban on references to baseball in British conversation unless the perpetrator can explain the infield fly rule, which makes the lbw law look a doddle.
There is a more general solution: a growing understanding that Britain has a language of its own.
It may or may not be better than American, but it’s different and it’s ours, part of what makes us distinctive. People do care. It’s time for those with some responsibility for the language to start caring, too.
Do continue to send your pet-hate Americanisms to englishincrisis@gmail.com
Mark Easton is the BBC home affairs editor. He spent some of his childhood in Winchester, apparently, not Wisconsin. And his job seems unlikely to offer extensive travel opportunities to the United States.
Yet the other night he referred to ‘specialty shops’ (note the missing i) on the Ten O’Clock News. The rest of his report must have been drowned out by the screaming and spluttering of thousands of Mail on Sunday readers, who share my horror at the way British English is being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mindless Americanisms.
My article in last week’s Review (Say No To The Get-Go) brought forth a huge response, almost all of it supportive. Most gratifyingly, very few of the emails began: ‘Hi Matthew.’
I believe language thrives on give and take, but with the United States it is all take. Americans rarely hear any of our words, let alone adopt them.
But we are so overwhelmed by everything American that the British have lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and theirs. This is the reality of cultural imperialism.
Easton was not even speaking good American. ‘Specialty stores’ would be far more normal in the United States.
‘Speciality’ (with the i) is a lovely word, full of rolling syllables. His version is the kind of usage that comes out of the mid-Atlantic and needs to be dropped back there, from a great height.
And there is a great deal of other useless baggage that needs to be dumped along with it. You offered hundreds more examples.
Top of the long hate-list was probably ‘Can I get a coffee?’ (and these days it probably would be an overpriced, overmarketed American coffee rather than a nice cup of tea).
The answer, says Louisa C., is no ‘. . . unless you are planning to clamber over the counter and start fiddling with the steam spouts’.
It was closely followed by ‘I’m good’ as opposed to ‘I’m very well, thank you’. This phrase is even more infuriating when used as an alternative to ‘No, thanks’, in declining a second helping.
‘I just want to yell, “NO, you are NOT good – you might be really, really BAD,” ’ wailed Patsy Holden.
Other leading hates include ‘snuck’ as the past tense of ‘sneak’ and ‘dove’ as the past tense of ‘dive’; driver’s license instead of driving licence; overly rather than over; autopsy for post-mortem; burglarized instead of burgled; filling out forms instead of filling them in; fries for chips; chips for crisps; and food to go as opposed to take away.
There is also period instead of full stop; and of course ‘Hi, guys’, guys in this case being of either sex. These last two usages are associated with Tony Blair, which seems to redouble the irritation factor.
Not everyone suffers in silence. Martin Levin of London E4, says he keeps emailing Radio 2 to remind them there is no k in ‘schedule’, as does Keith Rodgerson, whose verbal enemies list is so long he can’t have time for much else other than letters of complaint.
It includes airplane for aeroplane, pharmacist for chemist, advisory for warning, and calling McDonalds a restaurant, which is a related but subtly different complaint.
The land is also full of ‘gotten’ haters – understandable because it is an extremely ugly word. This is a complex area, though, in that it was formerly used in Scotland and can be found in the works of Sir Walter Scott.
However, it was described as ‘archaic and affected’ in 1926, so has no business making a comeback.
And there is widespread loathing of the verbalisation of nouns: incentivizing and all that rot. David Barton of Kent says he used to work for an American company that decided to ‘sunset’ a department.
In sport, Bob Carr winces when his team suffer an American ‘loss’ far more than when they go down to an English defeat.
Wayne Bryant says that, if he were still playing competitive sport and was told ‘you’re ON the team ON the weekend’, he would refuse to turn up. Gordon Spalding adds ‘Can we touch base?’ to the collection of ludicrous baseball metaphors.
There is a simple answer to this. There should be a blanket ban on references to baseball in British conversation unless the perpetrator can explain the infield fly rule, which makes the lbw law look a doddle.
There is a more general solution: a growing understanding that Britain has a language of its own.
It may or may not be better than American, but it’s different and it’s ours, part of what makes us distinctive. People do care. It’s time for those with some responsibility for the language to start caring, too.
Do continue to send your pet-hate Americanisms to englishincrisis@gmail.com
Ungrateful brats.
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