British children 'turn to American English' 29 May 2012Last updated at 09:24 ET Argentine footballer Lionel Messi was among the famous people mentioned British children are increasingly using American English in their writing, according to a report based on entries to a BBC short story competition. Oxford University Press studied around 74,000 entries for Radio 2's 500 Words contest. Americanisms such as cupcake, garbage truck, trash can, candy, sidewalk and soda were found in many of the entries. Famous people such as Justin Bieber, Prince William and Radio 2's Chris Evans made repeated appearances. Children's writer Dame Jacqueline Wilson, singer Jessie J and the footballers Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney also featured prominently. Books proved to be a big influence on participants. Technology also had a big influence, with popular words including Google and app (short for application). Doors, the most used common noun, was included 67,783 times, while the most common names used in the stories were Lucy and Jack.
Why Do Brits and Americans Spell Words Differently? Two people, one common language… sort of. Center vs. centre, color vs. colour, realize vs. realise — a seemingly endless list of spelling divergences have cropped up in the 250 years since the colonies and United Kingdom were ruled by one and the same king. Why are there so many differences in British and American spelling, and how did they creep in? Each word has its own unique history, but the primary mover and shaker in this transatlantic drama is the nineteenth century American lexicographer Noah Webster, he of dictionary fame. According to "A History of English Spelling" (Manchester University, 2011) by D.G. Scragg, Webster's dictionary of 1828 is largely responsible for standardizing the accepted spelling of American English. Before 1828, many words, such as humor (or humour), defense (or defence) and fiber (or fibre), had two acceptable spellings on both sides of the pond, because they were introduced in England via both Latin and French, which used different spellings.
Americanisms: 50 of your most noted examples 20 July 2011Last updated at 02:30 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. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Continue reading the main story A US reader writes... JP Spore believes there is nothing wrong with English evolving Languages are, by their very nature, shifting, malleable things that morph according to the needs and desires of those who speak them. Mr Engel suggests that British English should be preserved, but it seems to me this both lacks a historical perspective of the language, as well as an ignorance of why it is happening. English itself is a rather complicated, interesting blend of Germanic, French and Latin (among other things). Why here? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. Continue reading the main story 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.
Why speaking English can make you poor when you retire 23 February 2013Last updated at 00:19 GMT By Tim Bowler Business reporter, BBC News Not all languages require the use of a future tense Could the language we speak skew our financial decision-making, and does the fact that you're reading this in English make you less likely than a Mandarin speaker to save for your old age? It is a controversial theory which has been given some weight by new findings from a Yale University behavioural economist, Keith Chen. Prof Chen says his research proves that the grammar of the language we speak affects both our finances and our health. Bluntly, he says, if you speak English you are likely to save less for your old age, smoke more and get less exercise than if you speak a language like Mandarin, Yoruba or Malay. Future-speak Prof Chen divides the world's languages into two groups, depending on how they treat the concept of time. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote End QuoteKeith ChenYale University Disassociating the future Findings challenged
Are 'geek' and 'nerd' now positive terms? 15 November 2012Last updated at 20:07 ET By Kathryn Westcott BBC News Magazine Campaigners in Sweden are trying to force a dictionary to change its definition of "nerd". But after two decades of "reappropriation" has "nerd" - and its sister word "geek" - now completely lost its derogatory connotations? In the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds the rousing final speech of one of the protagonists starts with the statement: "I'm a nerd." Its plot may be cartoonish but the film reveals a certain cultural backdrop - to be a nerd was to be socially awkward, even socially inferior. Things have changed. Continue reading the main story Nerds: The origin of the species Used to describe one of the creatures in the 1950 Dr Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo First recorded reference in Newsweek, in 1951 Commonly used by late 1970s, coinciding with boom in computer use The Social Network in 2010 came in a very different social milieu. Even sportsmen unabashedly refer to themselves as "nerds". Geeks
Differences between British and American English | OTUK - Study English online with British English teachers When you are learning English as a foreign language, it is important to understand the differences between British and American English. Mixing the two varieties will make your English sound strange and unnatural so it is best to choose just one and use it all the time. There is no “better” or “worse” variety of English and both British and American have their advantages depending on how and where you intend to use the language. “England and America are two countries separated by a common language” – George Bernard Shaw This quote by the famous Irish linguist and playwright still rings true today and various differences between British and American English remain. Native speakers of both varieties have relatively few problems understanding one another, but there are several points at which British and American diverge. The most evident differences between British and American English are in vocabulary. Shop vs. For a complete word list with further explanations, click here. -our vs.
British Accents and Dialects | Dialect Blog Wikimedia The United Kingdom is perhaps the most dialect-obsessed country in the world. With near-countless regional Englishes shaped by millennia of history, few nations boast as many varieties of language in such a compact geography. (NOTE: This page uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For information about this notation, please visit my page of IPA Resources.) The below lists several important types of British English. Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (a term by 19th Century linguist A.J. Features: Non-rhoticity, meaning the r at the ends of words isn’t prounounced (mother sounds like “muhthuh”).Trap-bath split, meaning that certain a words, like bath, can’t, and dance are pronounced with the broad-a in father. Speech Samples: Cockney Cockney is probably the second most famous British accent. Estuary English (Southeast British) Estuary is an accent derived from London English which has achieved a status slightly similar to “General American” in the US. Geordie 1.
What Prime Minister Gillard Said by Deborah Cameron Julia Gillard by Deborah Cameron The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not mince her words earlier this month when she said of the opposition leader Tony Abbott: “if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror”. But even as her rant was going viral, its target and his supporters were complaining about Gillard’s language. By calling Abbott a misogynist, they said, she had crossed the line dividing legitimate political criticism from gratuitous personal abuse. One of Abbott’s colleagues called the accusation of woman-hatred ‘a vicious personal smear’, citing the definition of misogyny that appeared in the Macquarie Dictionary. It is true that misogyny has undergone what students of semantic change call weakening or ‘bleaching’. Arguably, this labelling makes a material difference to our understanding of the phenomenon being labelled. About the Author:
Peeve of the week: 20% correct « previous post | next post » Matthew Engel ("Why do some Americanisms irritate people?", BBC News 7/13/2011) starts out by describing the phenomenon of American lexical influence on British English. His description is even partly accurate: I have had a lengthy career in journalism. Lengthy. All of these words we use without a second thought were never part of the English language until the establishment of the United States. The Oxford English Dictionary cites reliable as in regular British use for more than two centuries before the establishment of the United States. But it's absolutely true that the OED's first two citations for lengthy are from John Adams in 1759 and Benjamin Franklin in 1773. Here I stopped to draw breath; for the style of my grandsire, the inditer of this goodly matter, was rather lengthy, as our American friends say. So Mr. Before long, Mr. 1782 Nomencl. of Westm. Linguistic sins, real or imaginary, are not really what's driving this process. Permalink
Center for Applied Linguistics The pedants' revolt: lament for a golden age of grammar that never existed | Mind your language The great grammarian Otto Jespersen, writing in 1909, said English grammar was "not a set of stiff dogmatic precepts, according to which some things are correct and others absolutely wrong"; but was living and developing, "founded on the past" but preparing the way for the future, "something that is not always consistent or perfect, but progressing and perfectible – in one word, human". Language has been changing since the Tower of Babel and will continue to do so. The most conservative of traditionalists admit this, and claim to accept it, though they are oddly shy about putting forward examples of change they are happy with. A lot of people seem to think all change must be for the worse. This brings me to the descriptive v prescriptive argument. Does this mean that things are getting worse? People have been wittering on like this for centuries. This is an edited extract from For Who the Bell Tolls: One Man's Quest for Grammatical Perfection, by David Marsh (Guardian Faber).
November 2011 Words fall in and out of favour over time ‘Times may change, but the word times is not changing that much.’ The opening sentence of the researcher Paul Baker’s article invites us to consider how the frequencies of particular words in the English language rise and fall over time. What of Baker’s results in this recent study? But the data shows other interesting patterns which are not linked to cultural change. We might speculate about the reasons for this shift (an Americanism perhaps), but Baker shows that the process is actually quite complex. · Both around and round: o Preposition: around the room vs round the room o Prepositional adverb: turn around vs turn round · around only: o Gradable adverb: around a million · round only: o Noun: round of drinks o Adjective: round table Around appears to be displacing round in the functions where both can occur, i.e. in prepositional functions, but round remains as a noun and an adjective.
Steven Pinker’s Bad Grammar In a prologue to “The Sense of Style,” subtitled “A Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,” the brain scientist Steven Pinker explains that he’s been reading style manuals of late, and that they bum him out. Strunk and White had “a tenuous grasp of grammar,” and George Orwell contradicted himself. Guides tend to fall back on “folklore and myth.” Some skimmings from the final part of Pinker’s book ran in the Guardian last month, under the provocative headline “10 ‘Grammar Rules’ It’s OK To Break (Sometimes).” When it comes to language, many people distinguish between “prescriptivism” (the idea that correct usage should be defined by authorities) and “descriptivism” (the idea that any way a lot of people use the language is correct). English is complex. In doing so, he seems to be confusing literary style (the qualities that distinguish Faulkner from Hemingway) with usage style (the qualities that distinguish The New Yorker’s comma deployment from the Times’s).
Who makes a language change begin? Are gregarious people linguistic innovators? What kind of people are the first to use a new language feature and so kick off a change in the language? As Derek Denis points out, we can’t predict a language change before it starts, so not much is known about who introduces language innovations. However, a set of interviews from York, England, recorded about 14 years ago, unintentionally captured the start of a change in general extender forms in spoken English. In the York recordings and stuff is the favourite general extender form for the younger generation. There were six of these individuals, with ages ranging from 62 to 22, though most were in their early twenties. What they had in common was that in their interviews much of the discussion revolved around their friends and their social circles. There was a close relationship between high levels of and stuff usage and high levels of gregariousness.