I had written up a post – complete with loads of photos – of our recent holiday to Greece (which may or may not be of interest) only to find that WordPress is well and truly shagged and isn’t interested in me uploading such a post. Further I discovered that the punctuation breaks in my posts that include commas and periods/full stops aren’t working (even if I double-space), so I am waiting for some help de-bugging my site. I cringe at the fact that this lack of spacing (which I even insist on using in text/SMS messages) means all of my posts make me look like an illiterate baboon who signs off emails with “L8R” and liberally sprinkles conversations with such verboten terms like “LOL” and “Oh my god totally.”
Which brings me to today.
Language is important to me. Words are important to me, which is one of the reasons I love May and HFF so much is they occasionally send me running for the dictionary. It can go too far, as this reviewer said in one of the best summaries of a book I’ve ever come across. The use of language is something I am keenly interested in because I am not only a massive dork but a complete nerd as well. I’m not alone – recently in an email to a colleague, after the salutations I led off with “So the first draft will be available by Friday, although sections 5 and 7 will need serious augmentation post-collaborative review.” His reply was “Brilliant, thanks and if you ever start a sentence off with the word “so” I’ll have to kill you.” As he’s a good friend of mine I took no umbrage at his death threat. He has a point though – you shouldn’t start a sentence with “so”, it’s a big thing over here.
It’s not the only big thing.
Recently the BBC brought up American-isms that the British public loathe. What followed is the 50 top expressions or words Americans use which the British public despise. Some of these I am guilty of. When you have a birthday you “turn” a certain age (what else should you do? “Become” 37? What am I, a butterfly?) “Heads’ up” is one I also use. “You do the math” is a similar go-to term for me because I cannot call it “maths”. When you go to school do you study Englishes? No? Then leave the plural math at home. And if you’re going to get so pissy about the plural in “maths”, then stop calling it “5 pound” and call it “5 pounds”, you’re making my ass itch with stress over that one.
There are Americanisms which do make me shudder and I do hate. They include:
- That Southern specialty (speciality to the UK audience, only whenever I say it that way I feel like Mary Poppins, so specialty it is) of “Fixin’ to”. This term basically means “about to” – “I’m fixin’ to get in the car,” or “I’m fixin to get up.” Well stop faffing about and just do it then, and while you’re at it sling the -g back on the end of the word.
- “Cell”. Americans call a mobile phone a “cell”, not even a “cell phone”. This makes me shudder. It is not a dividing molecular organism. It’s a phone, and it’s mobile. I say this particularly as I work in telecom and calling it a “cell” is anathema to everything good in telecom land.
- “Totally awesome”. It’s either awesome or it’s not. Adding a quantifier does not do it any justice (unless it’s in the film Bridesmaids, in which case it is hysterical and perfect).
But don’t think I am picking on my fellow Americans. I love both countries fiercely but both of them have vocabulary nuances that get on my nerves. My fellow Brits are not out of the woods here, either. There are many British-isms that bug the shit out of me, and as this extremely well-written rebuttal states, it’s not “I hate this word/term” that counts, it’s understanding why you hate that word/term.
To whit, the British words and terms in my own personal Little Book of Hate:
- To whit, actually. I dislike it because it feels like I should smooth my mustache and pull out my rapier.
- The word “whilst”. While is just as good. Whilst is a mash-up between an activity you undertake with a pen knife and a stick and an old-fashioned card game.
- When someone comes over, they say that they will “knock you up”. If only it was that easy, sunshine.
- “Half twelve”. This means 12:30, stop confusing me (particularly as in Swedish, half twelve means half to twelve, ergo 11:30. I never know if I’m coming or going now.)
- When something goes not according to plan but shouldn’t be discounted, the phrase “It’s a part of life’s rich tapestries” gets trotted out. I loathe this term. I am not a carpet salesman. The only people who can say this phrase to me are Scots, purely because I love how they purr out the word “tapestry”.
- Extra I’s and U’s stuck into words. Pretend this is Wheel of Fortune, and those bad boy vowels’ll cost you.
- The living room is called the lounge. While I am not crazy about the phrase “living room” (is it the only room one can exist in? Do oxygen masks pop down?) “lounge” brings up images of silk pajamas (make that pyjamas), smoking a cigarillo and plotting my doom.
- It’s a pronunciation one, but in the name shopping mall, mall is “pronounced” like “hal”, not pronounce length as “tal”, why skip the double L? And while on pronunciations, I am not keen on how pasta is pronounced “pas-ta”, not “pasta” like “rasta”. Italian speakers, what’s correct? I confess I’ve never discussed complex carbohydrates with native Italians. Which way is correct?
- “Ginormous”. Really? I mean….really?
- Cockney. If you’re from East London, it’s cute and a bit of a thing. Until I got used to it, I was a good few sentences behind while trying to figure out what the hell people were saying. You basically use a rhyme to describe something and then abbreviate that, so a curry becomes a Ruby Murray, which is shorted to Ruby. A suit is called a whistle and flute, also shortened to whistle. Whistle? What are you a ref?
- Dropping the definite article “the”. This one used to bother me, only now I quite like it. “I am going to hospital”. It sounds dedicated and makes me feel like a superhero. “To hospital! To shops! To Plumbing Supply Centre!”
Any others I’ve missed?
And if you’ve made it this far past the lack of correct spacing between the punctuation, I salute you. It would’ve made me so twitchy I’d have shut the window down by now.
-S.
(Writing a post about grammar and vocabulary idiosyncrasies makes one completely paranoid about the accuracies of their own post. I am sure I’ve screwed up somewhere in here. Don’t shoot the blog messenger.)
I am nervous now, my grammar and spelling are terrible. I am dyslexic and have to spend a lot of time checking, re-checking and getting others to check anything I write down for work comsumption.
Thank you for posting the rebuttal – it is hilarious.
In the North a lot of people say they “go cinema” or “go hospital” which makes me want to should “to, TO!”.
I love Ginormous though, it is ridiculous and what it is describing is ridiculous proportions so it is perfect!
I hope you had a lovely holiday.
Here I am! An Italian at your service. You wouldn’t believe the Italian words that are mispronounced (I live in Dublin but I think it’s the same in the UK).
To answer your question “pasta” is pronounced like “rasta” not as if it had to “s” in the word.
Here are my few eyebrow raising words.
“Linguine”. The “e” at the end is pronounced like a “eh, end, etc” sound, not like a “ea” as in “east”.
A sandwich Italian style is a “paninO” not a “panini” (which would be plural) or a “pannini” or two “panniniS”. If you want two than the plural is in fact “panini”. Would you believe I have been corrected a few times when ordering a “panino”?
We spell out al the vowels. Two vowels don’t make a single sounding one so the name “Mauro” is not pronounced “mOro” it’s “Maa-uro”
“Ch” is always pronounced like a “k” sound. Always. Unless it’s an English word.
Sorry for such a long comments, but you obviously touched a nerve there! (I have plenty more of course, just refraining myself!)
I am really guilty of using ‘whilst’ over ‘while’ and I must confess it’s because I’m unsure which I’m supposed to use. Is it an either/or situation or are the best used at different times? I turn to Google…
An American Southern-ism that I used to hate (but have grown to love) is “y’all”. Incidentally, do y’all know what the plural of “y’all” is? That’s right. It’s “all y’all”. :)
It’s hard for me to watch any English sporting event, because they treat a crowd as many individuals instead of one entity. Americans say, “The crowd is going wild,” while (not whilst) the English say, “The crowd are going wild.” “Crowd” is a single entity representing the entire group and should be treated singularly and not as a plural. Am I the only one this bothers? :)
‘Incidentally,do y’all know what the plural of “y’all”is? That’s right. It’s “all y’all”.:)’ MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE! God, I do love me a good southernism!
WordPress is an utter punctuation bastard, s’not just you lovey. I’ve nearly given up twitching about it.
To whit? To whoo!
And Up The U!
Annnd, in illustration of that, WordPress has neatly erased all the spaces after the commas. Touche, WordPress. I still twitch.
As a Joisey girl who has lived in Florida for far too long, I try to balance out my phrases. If I say “y’all” (or “all y’all”), I try to immediately follow it up with “youse guys”.
I loathe the phrase “it is what it is.” No shit! I’m appalled at how widely it is utilized, and how frequently I used to use it. I gave it up as a New Years Resolution two years ago. Now I visibly cringe on the rare occasion that it comes out of my mouth.
Even though I have never lived in Canada, I picked up my Canadian accent in college in Rochester, NY, and have chosen to not give it up. Although I rarely ever add “eh” to my phrases after my ex-husband picked that habit up from me and badly abused it. It amuses me that I have so little New Jersey left in me and am most often assumed to be Canadian due to my accent. Funny how I’d have the accent of a place I never lived yet not have accents from places I have lived (NJ, CO, CA, NY, VA, FL).
Perhaps it’s because my exposure to Briticisms were at the hand, er mouth of a Scouser that I have such a horrible impression.
Things that drive me batty 1) the pronunciation of basil. Most Americans say bay-sil, yet English say bah-sil. 2) Scousers seem to drop all Rs in a word unless it’s at the very beginning. Word becomes wod. It sounds like baby talk. 3) har-ass instead of ha-rass like I’m used to hearing 4) where did the H come from in yogurt?
I love some British pronunciations though – like military, advertisement and controversy.
I slaughter the American English language daily, so I can’t throw any stones. I’m with Ann though- I love me some southernisms, complete with added twang. Not in a condescending way mind you, more in a “its so cool some people talk like this and its just natural” sort of way.
Whatever WordPress is doing, I approve in part. It has made your blog much easier to read on my phone! (Which, by the way, is either my phone or my Crackberry, and occasionally my cell phone. It’s never my cell (due to my science background or my career in law enforcement? I’m not sure which has the most impact there). Also, I don’t have a landline, so while it may be my mobile phone, it’s also my home phone. Clearly I could go on about this forever.)
As to the living room…in Chicago, the living room was always at the front of the house (the better to spy on the neighbors, my dear), so we always called it the front room.
Here are two of my irritants, which are fairly particular to the area I live. When you say something, and the person to whom you are speaking doesn’t hear you, they say “Do what (er, that’s dooo wuuut)? I didn’t ask you to DO anything, dammit!!! Also, when there is an activity that must be accomplished, people say “it needs done.”. As far as I know, it either needs doing or needs TO BE done. I don’t know why this irritates the crap out of me, but it does.
Also, you can keep your extra vowels – I’m all about conservation! But, for some reason, I am always tempted to throw that unnecessary u in behavior.
I’m so glad you referenced this article. I linked it on The Twitter the other day. Some of the 50 comments were just from people who are apparently still bitter about the US/UK break up. One guy was pissy that people are saying Z as “ZEE” instead of “Zed.” While I understand his plight, the only thing that went through my head was “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”
I love cockney rhyming slang. But then, I was introduced to it by a criminally hot Englishman who became the inaugural member of my bedroom’s No-Accent-No-Interest, Revolving Door of the U.N. phase. (Scandal–he was a northerner!!) Soon after he introduced the concept of it to me, he mused with his china (china plate—>best mate) in my living room trying to figure out why someone once called the TV a Liza. I was passing through to the kitchen and just blurted (before I even really thought–my brain jumped a few steps ahead of me and I just heard my own voice before a thought registered–i love that) “Liza Minelli….” So less than 24 hours after he’d introduced me to the concept of rhyming slang, he deferred to me as the resident expert on the subject, as my mind moved quicker than his. In fairness, I like it because it engages the ADD part of my brain.
I like extra letters. They’re a bonus in Scrabble. Fuck the Wheel, man. You don’t HAVE to buy letters on Wheel. I get pissed when people buy the obvious vowels. Save that fucking $250, man! But in Scrabble, that superfluous U in “mould” could mean a triple word score!
I’m surprised you don’t like “ginormous” given it’s origin. (“These toilets are GINORMOUS!” …which was on Bravo last weekend. Xmas in July.)
Lever is pronounced “LEH-vur” not LEEvur. You don’t find SEEvured heads in Igloo coolers, you find SEHvured heads in Igloo coolers.
And saying “shhhhed-joooool” just makes you sound like a pretentious douchebag. Stop it.
My ex, from Chester, would pronounce the word Three as Free and a rug was a lap blanket….not something you put on the floor. The most comfusing thing for me was everyone asking as a greeting “are you okay?”….Of course I’m okay…Hi how are you?
things that used to drive me around the bend.
So many of the Americanisms in the article started elsewhere. My favorite Englishism is “Shout me.” If the phone rings, shout me. Grrr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14285853
Not being a native English speaker, I wouldn’ dare to contest some of the things you wrote on your post. I’m from Argentina but went to a British school, and to this day I am confused about the pronunciation of “either” and “neither”, “schedule” and “issue”. If someone can shine a light on this, much appreciated.
Now, a little gift from another language freak, watch this and rejoice ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKdGwfMD8u8
SO…..speaking of Cockney, did the night club “The Frog and Nightgown” exist when you lived in Raleigh? I often wondered what it really meant (if anything). LOL using the SO to bug your friend.
Ummm
Like, you know
I mean (try listening to one Nascar race and count how many times they say “I mean”
ummm
went missing (this is probably correct but it still plucks)
totally
I’m not sure if the Brits still say “totally massive.” I had a British friend who used to say that and it always cracked me up because I lived in the Valley when I was a teen (early 80′s) and we used to hear it then. I found it funny that the Brits were saying it some 20 years later.
Around late 90′s I discovered the group “Massive Attack”. A coworker of mine (American) found that name ridiculously funny.
I like “it’s gone pear-shaped”. Reminds me of Grimace from the McDonaldland.
I went to school to be a teacher so bad spelling and grammar make me itch to get out the proverbial red pen. In Pittsburgh, bad grammar runs rampant…and spelling seems to be roadkill as most kids today just use Spellcheck. (My mother would have had a cow if I took that route! I can hear her saying “Go get the dictionary and look the correct spelling up!”)
Pittsburgh also has its own language–Pittsburghese. (www.pittsburghese.com) You can have the twins redd up their room and then come have a Primanti Brothers sammich and some pop. An’en yinz kin go dahntahn ‘n look ahrun n’at. Tranlation: Have the twins clean up their room and then come have a Primanti Brothers sandwich and some soda pop. And then all of you can go downtown and look around and that. There’s a link on that site so you can hear the words in Pittsburghese. The accent is one of a kind.
I’m a “do what?”-er. I can’t help myself.
I can’t deal with people who say “supposebly” instead of supposedly. Eyeball scratching begins immediately when I hear that.
Fran—my sister has a cat named Panino. Her honeymoon was in Italy, so they kept hearing the street vendors shouting “Panino! Sand-weetch!”
Not the weirdest derivation of a cat name I’ve heard by a long shot, but fairly amusing.
In terms of odd personal linguistic habits, I pronounce the first “r” in “February”. It helps me spell it correctly. I’ve learned to tolerate a number of linguistic skills (as in, learned to not reply with “you literarily-deprived bastard!” to homonym misuse), but there’s one radio PSA which has been driving me bonkers lately. It’s about the good that teachers do, and it includes the line—spoken by a teacher—”… when they get it, and they literally light up.”
No, no they don’t literally light up. Not unless you set them on fire.
Pasta is only pronounced parsta by people in the south of England. People further north pronounce it properly, as pasta. Like path, and not parth, etc. However, I am not Italian, so I don’t know how one should actually pronounce pasta.
Glad you found that review of Cloud Atlas, I thought it was just me the not native speaker…
On pronunciation, it is mostly Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald I say tomato, you say tomahto to me. From my European point of view the A-E-I are all terribly mixed up in English anyway.
Weirdest thing with that? If I say my name is Valentina people pronounce it just fine. As soon as they find out I really spell it Valentine they are suddenly worried they should change the sound and make it 3 syllables instead of the original 4.
It took me many months to be able to go from aluminium to aluminum and I still get confused in which language panties are what…
Valery Valentina/e
OH how your “half-twelve” had me laughing. My hubs (who is British) started trotting that out – I had to explain how in Afrikaans (as in Swedish) it also means “half-TO” not after. I couldn’t help but point out that he was the one in the wrong – even though the English invented the language that he was now butchering. Also – I started saying “mobile” about the time I landed and bought a new phone just three weeks ago. I feel like a right ponce saying it. Also, got myself into a lot of Barney on my first dual-carriage-way ’round-a-bout’ (bloody hell – it’s a traffic circle damnit!).
I just have to toss my pet peeves into the ring for discussion because they seriously bug me when I see it. First of all, a lot is two words and should not be written as one word. Second, I hate it when writers begin a sentence with “because”. That’s like starting a sentence in the middle of the thought instead of at the beginning.
I’m with wRitErsblock, “It is what it is” might the least helpful saying EVER!! How is saying that helpful? (mock anger) It’s like saying, “The blue sky is blue” or “The mean guy is mean,” only not as useful. If I don’t know what “it” is or why it’s that way, I DON’T KNOW WHAT “IT” IS OR WHY IT’S THAT WAY!! Saying “It is what it is” doesn’t help me figure it out or understand it one bit! (end of mock anger) : )
The Super Model Mrs. Solomon uses that phrase, and it drives me crazy. She might be doing it on purpose. : )
I have a better than average vocabulary, but Stephen Donaldson used to send me to the dictionary far too often. He’s gotten worse, too: his latest book seems to be a way to encapsulate a meager story with the Oxford English Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. He’s the literary equivalent of George Lucas.
It can take a long time to leave behind an expression that you grew up with. Having grown up in Maine it took a while to completely give up the all purpose modifier “wicked.” Wicked is used to enhance anything in Maine. A scorching summer day is wicked hot and the middle of January is wicked cold. An angry person will be described as wicked mad while a car speeding by is said to be going wicked fast. It reaches its peak of absurdity when applied to something you like which is called wicked good!
William Safire would be proud of you.
In popular culture, we are so far off the mark linguistically that even journalists and newscasters do not use correct syntax. And many don’t notice!
Surely the differences in our language/pronunciation should be celebrated rather then derided or mocked? Having said this, I have never heard anyone in England (even the south, where I am from) pronounce ‘pasta’ as ‘parsta’!
More than any words or phrases, I’m bothered by the British aversion to commas. I find that a lack of comma where there would be a pause in speech drives me up the wall.
This is going to sound odd, but… I hate, truly hate when people say, “Huh?” If you say something to someone and you don’t hear or understand them and they say, “Huh?” or, “What?” I just think “Huh?” sounds uneducated and “What?” sounds rude. If I can’t understand someone, I am apt to say, “One more time?” or “Pardon?” Funnier still, my youngest is 12, and we were in the car and I said something he could not hear and he replied to me, ‘One more time?” Kids do get rubbed off upon.