BS: American English usages taking over Brit

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 04:22 PM

> created by the Poles themselves as a mild protest for the butchery of the Polish intelligentsia by the Russians.

Surely a Pole in a Polish joke is the only sort of Pole who would think of a Polish joke as pro-Polish.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:31 PM

Words like momentarily, and presently and other -ly words seem to be added in speech when the speaker is impatient, or doesn't want to give a full answer. Its purpose is to stop the in(en)quirer from pursuing the question.
They should be used properly (if at all; they are often weasel words)) in written communication.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 09:20 AM

(If it's already been mentioned forgive me, as I'm too lazy to scroll through over 400 posts) but I do so hate the inane and nasal 'Hiyaaa' for 'Hello'. It's everywhere now. Is it American in origin? And 'You guys'. I always think of 'guys' as denoting American men, but it seems unisex now. I'm definitely not a 'guy'; the only time we used that word was on November 5th, and it referred to the dressed-up dummy of Guy Fawkes which we toted round asking, 'Penny for the Guy?'.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Dáithí
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 07:58 AM

How about the US use of "alternate" to mean "alternative" - surely not the same thing at all. To step on alternate steps isn't the same as to step on alternative steps - which latter would mean some other ones, over there, perhaps.

Or what about "momentarily". Does that mean in a moment (US) or for a moment (UK)?
D

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 07:27 AM

French fries? no connection to France. They were developed in Belgium.

Polish jokes? as I understand it, they were created by the Poles themselves as a mild protest for the butchery of the Polish intelligentsia by the Russians.
Remember, Copernicus was a Pole.Hardly a dolt.

Now, what have the Australians done to the English language?

How about Jamaica?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 15 Oct 13 - 03:01 AM

I was always amazed at how the likes of Norwich could be described as 'in the sticks' and the Ipswich football team are called "the tractor boys" when these places are massive in comparison to towns in my area. I suppose it is all relative. To folks in London I suppose Norwich is a wee place. And like BWM says the counties as a whole have a lot of agricultural. There are some pretty secluded places in Britain though especially in the northern half of Scotland where you can be quite a way from the nearest town of any size or pub.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 03:50 PM

Some in the US are perfectly capable of saying "I am presently busy weeding my garden, but I will meet you at the store presently... with seemingly no awareness of the dichotomy.

Go figger'...

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 01:19 PM

Thanks, GS - no offence was intended!

You're right about the 'backwoods' reference - I live in the county of Lincolnshire which, by UK standards, is relatively sparsely populated and is largely devoted to agriculture. I adopted the name when a female member (now deceased), known for her vitriolic style of posting, referred to me and a group of fellow Lincolnshire men as 'backwoodsmen' in one of her even-more-than-usually hysterical outbursts. :-)

Michael, I usually hold you and your contributions in high regard. Why on Earth would I be deliberately offensive towards you? Chill man! :-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 11:56 AM

He was addressing me, Michael, and my "Polish toast" quip. And I took no offense.

Incidentally (moving things along in other directions), I took Backwoodsman for a North American - because I have difficulty imagining any "backwoods" in the UK! Does it exist? I (naive) impression is that no patch of woods is far enough from another town (and another pub) to really constitute it.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 11:16 AM

Small>In the UK, we don't have the same derogatory connotations attached to the term "Polish" as you apparently do, so the rather weak joke was completely wasted on me.

.,,.

As who do, BWM? I [based here in UK as you know] was quoting an American joke, admittedly 'feeble' as such jokes are [part of their point], told me for folkloric interest, as an exemplar of a variant from our then current 'Irish' ones, by an expatriate British friend living in USA. So not quite clear to me whom you were addressing in such dismissive tones, or to what precise effect.

Best

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 10:41 AM

"Polish jokes" became a fad in the Chicago-Milwaukee area around 1965.

They were so common that there was an "Official Polish Joke Book" published in 1966.

Whatever the ultimate source (Germans have been blamed), the American "Era of the Polish Joke," when everyone seemed to be telling them, ended (in my experience) about ten years later.

They're still heard but not very often. There are probably some "tradition bearers" who know dozens of them and will tell them at the drop of a hat.

Before the "Polish joke" fad was the "elephant joke" fad of about 1962. There was also a fad for "dead baby jokes" around 1970.

The people I knew who told Polish (or, as they were usually called outside of the media, "Polack") jokes seemed to have absolutely nothing against real Poles. It was just a rhetorical convention.

Which isn't to say that real Poles weren't justifiably irritated.

Fun facts: Though "Polack" is now derogatory in English, it's just the English pronunciation of the ordinary Polish word. It's even in dignified use in Hamlet, whose father "smote the sledded Polacks on the ice."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 09:14 AM

The "toasted on the dry side" version seems to come only from the 1920s.

In the '30s, in my Grandparents' house where I lived, we did not have a toaster. My grandmother would make toast under the broiler of the oven, one-sided. But not toasted "on the dry side", and not as a means of avoiding wastage of already-buttered bread.

Instead, the procedure was to butter the pieces of bread and then
toast them in the broiler, buttered side up. The resultant toast was spotty, sort of like a palomino horse.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 02:09 AM

"Polish jokes" mostly went in and out of fashion in the 1980s, if I remember correctly - though they certainly live on among some people who thrived then, I guess.

I would not generalize the use of "Polish" as a modifier to all of the USA. Although it's certainly hard to tell - due to the cringe-worthy nature of the usage stifling its usage in public! - it is most characteristic of the working-class Northeast. Well, perhaps in the Midwest, too. I wouldn't know. It's gotta be somewhere where there are actually Polish people! I grew up not far from New Britain, Connecticut, which is one of the Polish Diaspora centers of the US. Once a week we ate kielbasa, and any community meals usually included pierogie, kluski (sp?) and gawumpki (sp?!). But out here in California, few people are aware of such things. Even to use the "kielbasa" elicits blank stares. So to say "Polish" in any off-color fashion would brand you as a bigot.

Of course, Californians have "Mexican" as their go-to ethnic/national term (though it does not equate with Polish). "Mexican standoff" is perhaps one similar concept. A more accurate equivalence: What we call a "Puerto Rican shower" in the Northeast US is a "Mexican shower" in the West, I believe.

I grew up calling fingerless gloves (the kind you wear outdoors to keep your hands warm, while retaining the ability to do fine work) as "Polish burglar gloves." Yep. Hardy-har-har. But I don't think it was about trying to be clever/funny, since the "joke" was too old and conventional. I get the feeling that such usages are more about affirming social class. That is, the "upper" classes, bereft as they are from Poles, etc., would be worried about the reaction from saying such things, whereas the working class folks (among whom you'd invariably know and interact with some Poles, etc etc) "don't care."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 01:51 AM

In the UK, we don't have the same derogatory connotations attached to the term "Polish" as you apparently do, so the rather weak joke was completely wasted on me.

"French" can have those connotations, but also, especially with reference to the culinary arts, it can be used as an indicator of "excellence" or "uniqueness".

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Oct 13 - 12:47 AM

Yes; I remember first hearing that US-ers use 'Polish' as we [reprehensibly] use 'Irish' in this way, from Heather Woods, ex-Young·Tradition, who has lived in NY for years but was on a visit over here. Likewise they tell Polish jokes as we tell Irish jokes. Her example, which will approx date this telling, was --

A man was found dead at the bottom of the Grand Canyon wearing roller-skates. The police were baffled till they found that his name was Evel Kowalski.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 10:00 PM

Like in "Polish jokes"?

Yes. I've actually never heard of making toast like that (was making a joke), but I'm quite sure that if it existed, we'd call it Polish toast.

As inappropriate (bigoted) as it is, the word "Polish" has been used in my area to label something as generally "backwards" or nonsensical. Or when there is some kind of clusterf#ck situation.

You can apply the adjective "Polish" to many things. I remember a notable occasion when my sister and I had spent some time in New Jersey. We complaint about typical, though innocuous, things that would confuse/irritate outsiders. For example, the fact that you cannot pump your own gas there, or strange aspects of the roads, like "jug-handles" (which require that you take a right in order to make a left). When we finally left New Jersey, my sister said, "Yes! We're finally out of this Polish state." It was funny and, yes, you had to be there.

I am well aware that this doesn't "excuse" bigoted terms, but: I have people of Polish descent in my family, and I have worked amongst Polish people (Polish-Americans) who just laugh at the usage.

"French" as a modifier, on the other hand, stereotypically conveys either something "dirty" or something done without proper "manners."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 09:58 AM

Like in "Polish jokes"?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 06:41 AM

If you can't have marriage sunny side up try divorce over easy!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 04:05 AM

There ya go!

I'm fascinated by this kind of stuff, love it! It's the differences between us that make the world such a great place!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 02:40 AM

French Toast, I was informed by a chef I used to know, is a thick slice of bread toasted both sides, then split into two pieces of half the thickness so that one side is toasted and the other side is un-toasted.

Where I come from, that's called Polish Toast.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 10:55 PM

"We call bread fried in egg "French toast"

That's "Eggy-Bread" in these here parts of the Backwoods.

French Toast, I was informed by a chef I used to know, is a thick slice of bread toasted both sides, then split into two pieces of half the thickness so that one side is toasted and the other side is un-toasted. Which seems a complicated way of achieving what we achieved by the simple expedient of toasting thinner bread on one side only!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 07:28 PM

Soaking stale bread in milk, cooking and then sweetening, is as old as Rome (Pan dulcis)

When egg was added is uncertain, but cookbooks from the Middle Ages give the recipe for French Toast with egg.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: JennieG
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 05:42 PM

I for one quite like the variety in our current language - makes for a richer lexicon! Trying to keep just one style (i.e. 'Proper English') contained within the borders of one country is akin to pulling up the drawbridge and letting no one in......or out.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 05:00 PM

Interestingly enough, the OED dates yummy "French toast" recipes to the 17th century.

The "toasted on the dry side" version seems to come only from the 1920s.

It makes me wonder if the one-sided toast was named because that was about the only way you could make toast in a trench on the Western Front, with a knife or bayonet for a toasting-fork. (Assuming you had bread, which was something of a luxury in a forward area.)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 03:33 PM

The 'French toast' usage for bread fork-toasted on one side only, often is done this way because the bread is already buttered but has remained uneaten - a way of avoiding waste. My mother certainly called this 'French toast'. However, the bread fried in egg is certainly what Americans mean by 'French toast'; it figures largely in one scene of Thornton Wilder's moving play about American family life & community, "Our Town" (1938).

I'll bet anyone plenty of 6 to 5 that the French lay no claim to either comestible!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 03:10 PM

Interesting about the toasting fork! We call bread fried in egg "French toast"

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 02:39 PM

Kendall:
Surely that was French, not Dutch.

If a Dutchman threw his shoe it would just clog-up the machinery :)

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 02:26 PM

MtheGM, yes, unless you are Dutch. Then you would throw a "Sabot" into the works. (Wooden shoe). Hence, the word Sabotage.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 01:54 PM

Sensibly enough, the monkey wrench was once called an "adjustable spanner."

Or "spanner" for short.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 01:47 PM

Ah, thank you BWM. Always happy to learn something new. Now I shall know the distinction.

However, would you not agree that "throwing a spanner in the works" is the usual English expression for doing something deliberately to prevent or sabotage some sort of ongoing activity?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 12:32 PM

Allan Conn - breakfast at my Gran's back in the '50s and '60s (Lincolnshire, UK) always included toast made on a toasting fork over the kitchen fire and toasted one side only. We called it "French Toast", although strictly speaking it wasn't.

MtheGM - when I was an engineering apprentice, a spanner was a tool with non-adjusting jaws at one or both ends, whereas a monkey wrench (a.k.a. Adjustable Wrench) had jaws at one end only which can be opened or closed gradually by rotating a threaded wheel. So no, we don't call a monkey wrench a spanner - we call a spanner a spanner and a monkey wrench a monkey (or adjustable) wrench.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 09:21 AM

Since the Appalachians extend into Canada, the "correct" pronunciation is entirely moot.

Older New Yorkers usually don't enunciate the "r" in "New York." Younger ones do. Which is "correct"?

(If you say "the one that matches the spelling," you'll be stuck with "Nor-folk" - with an "L.")

My larger point is, "Go figure." (A relatively recent Americanism, useful and concise, if a bit tart for some tastes.)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 08:36 AM

We don't have monkey wrenches; they are still spanners, I think, & a spanner is what we throw into the works to disrupt processes.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: mayomick
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 08:32 AM

"that old Madonna number Hanky Panky" The use of "number" in that particular way - from which country does it come, MgM ?

I don't think the problem that most people have is with Americanisms (or Britishisms). It's the fact that you so often first comes across the new words or phrases when speaking to followers of naff TV shows and ads that bothers most people. Guardian readers resent hearing buzzwords that they suspect must have originated with somebody like Ruby Wax - especially when they know that they will have to use such words sooner or later to make themselves understood in the modern world. I'm sure many Americans must fear that the use of British English would make them sound pretentious .


Here are some words and phrases from wiki's entry on the American lexicon:

strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.

caucus, gerrymander, filibuster,exit poll).

commuter (from commutation ticket), concourse, to board (a vehicle), to park, double-park and parallel park (a car), double decker or the noun terminal
breakeven, merger, delisting, downsize, disintermediation, bottom line;
hobo, bouncer, bellhop, roustabout, white collar, blue collar, employee, boss [from Dutch], intern,busboy, mortician, senior citizen), businesses and workplaces (department store, supermarket, thrift store, gift shop, drugstore,motel, main street, gas station, hardware store, savings and loan, hock [also from Dutch]), as well as general concepts and innovations (automated teller machine, smart card, cash register, dishwasher, reservation [as at hotels], pay envelope, movie, mileage, shortage, outage, blood bank

, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze and jazz, originated as American slang. Among the many English idioms of U.S. origin are get the hang of, bark up the wrong tree, keep tabs, run scared, take a backseat, have an edge over, stake a claim, take a shine to, in on the ground floor, bite off more than one can chew, off/on the wagon, stay put, inside track, stiff upper lip, bad hair day, throw a monkey wrench, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, it ain't over till it's over, what goes around comes around, and will the real x please stand

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 05:36 AM

Re the Madonna thing. A bit of a sidestep but I've never understood the lyric in Sting's "An Englishman In New York" that is the bit that says "I don't like coffee, I take tea my dear, I like my toast done on one side".

I don't know anyone who has their toast done like that and had never heard the idea prior to hearing this song. Is it something peculiar to parts of England, to parts of English society, is it just something US folk think English people do, or is it just a daft lyric?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 12 Oct 13 - 12:13 AM

So have I got it right that Americans think of the hand the opposite way around from us ie, with its 'back' on the opposite side?

No, it's the same side.

Americans are just masters at slapping asses. The variations in the way we that slap asses is like a language in itself, which foreigners can only learn under the great risk of their identity dissolving into vapor, or that pink stuff Chicken McNuggets are made from.

One fine day, perhaps, Britons will learn to slap asses in the back-handed way. They'll dub it "The American way," just to be clear. Part of the population will rush to do it that way just because it is the American way. The trend will spread from Liverpool, whose fake-tanned population will embrace it with a will, while Southern urbanites will disparage it. But it will finally spread to the communities outside London, and even the old country geezers will take notice. News outlets will deem it a "chav" thing, and others will use its example rhetorically to express their on-going bitterness (or, "butthurtness," in America-speak) over the fact that American ways have spread in the world, and Chinese students are not putting a "u" in the word "color."

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 11:17 PM

Re that old Madonna number Hanky Panky ("Nothing like a good spanky!"), & the lines "All I want is the back of your hand Somewhere on my behind". It occurs to me that, to us, 'the back of the hand' means the knuckle side, which might sometimes be used aggressively across the face but it would be difficult to administer in a spanking on the buttocks, and what she must have meant was what we would call "The flat of the your hand", ie the palm side.

So have I got it right that Americans think of the hand the opposite way around from us ie, with its 'back' on the opposite side?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 11:04 PM

Do we?

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Airymouse
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 06:06 PM

Of course, someone living near Norfolk Virginia or the Appalachian mountains is more likely to use the correct pronunciation, than someone living elsewhere. Similarly, we in Virginia are likely to have difficulty with "Spokane" or "Nevada". But it's not a North-South issue. If you put on a production of Richard the Third and you start talking about the Duke of "Nor folk", I think your audience, English or American, will not be happy. Also New Yorkers don't seem to have any trouble with "Suffolk County Long Island". As for using a long A in "Appalachian", nobody seems to want to do that with "Apalachicola Florida" or with the "Apalachee" Indians for that matter. As someone has pointed out, it is curious that there is a long history to defend two nearly opposite meanings of "presently". I think this is true of "cleave", but if you go back far enough, the two opposite meanings of "cleave" came from two different words.
P.S. I've noticed that the British do use "do" differently from us.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 03:45 PM

In one grocery supermarket chain here, each item is bar-coded; one shows the barcode to a wand or window, and the amounts are recorded and totalled. Do your own packing. Then you pay with credit card to the "cashier", who handles no cash.

They also have the old-fashioned conveyor belts and a real cashier for the luddites.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 02:43 PM

Change is inevitable. resistance to change is also inevitable.

The Dinosaurs died out because they could not cope with changes.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 01:28 PM

M, you don't need the conveyor belt. Not all "check-outs" have them.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 12:58 PM

Back in the day.... gak choke LOL, sorry couldn't resist...

well, anyhow, an aside about when cash registers first came into common use.

During the transaction, the till drawer opened and the little bell chimed to let the owner/staff know that the cash drawer was open - detering those whose who would try to steal from the register when it was "unguarded". However, not all employees were trustworthy either, pocketing cash from customers and then not putting it in the till. So along comes the pricing system that is with us to this day... the 5 dollar item is now $4.99. And the till must be opened to provide the customer with their change. It also sounds cheaper... that psychological factor beloved by salespeople the world over.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 12:52 PM

" PRESENTLY "Now I am a sensible man, by and by a fool and presently a beast" Clearly "presently" does not mean "now." GOT If you prefer "got" to "gotten" how would you like "his only begot son","

It's not quite right to suggest these are differences between British and American though. In Scotland 'presently' did and still does mean at the present time and also 'gotten' is used. The COD confirms the use of 'presently' in Scotland but fails to mention the use of 'gotten' here.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 12:28 PM

'Checkout' is certainly not the same as 'till'. All shops used to have a till, aka a cash register, to keep the money in & get the change from. But the 'checkout' consists only partly of a till, but with the addition of a belt on which one places one's purchases from one's trolley, which are then scanned by the operator & a total sum for payment reported to the customer -- who then, unless paying by credit card, hands over the money, which is put into the till, which is a part, but only a part, of the total apparatus involved.

The whole of the area concerned -- the aisle thru which one passes to place one's purchases on the belt prior to paying one's money to be put into the till, is subsumed under the designation 'checkout'. Probably originally an American word, because the supermarket system of self-service & checking out originated there. But a very useful & comprehensive term it is indeed.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 10:35 AM

I used to call a till a cash register. And to me a counter is static, whereas in a supermarket there's a conveyor belt. I fairly recently came across a delightful American couple in Kensington Gardens. They were considering a visit to Kensington Palace, and I said it was most interesting but they may have to queue. This seemed to throw them and they asked what I meant, so I assumed it's a word not often used in USA. I actually love it when language evolves and new, sometimes startling expressions come into use, often by the young. I particularly like Multicultural London English, as spoken by Lee Nelson and Ali G. Wicked! Qualiteee!

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 09:58 AM

The two languages are getting closer together; television works both ways, with British dramas and BBCNews and BBCAmerica seen over here.

LOL England & America.. two countries separated by a "common" language. It does sound like something Shaw would have said.

Every living language undergoes change. Slang and jargon get added in and over the course of time become generally accepted. Or do you really want the Queen's ( or King's ) English to join the ranks of a dead language? Not gonna happen of course, but one should be careful about what they wish for.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 08:36 AM

The OED shows both meanings of "presently" arising around 1400, along with the "now rare" sense of "without delay; at once." For some unexplained reason the meaning "now" was "avoided in literary use between the 17th and 20th centuries" and is considered "by some [sic] usage writers" today as "erroneous."

Go figure.

> we in Amereicnsa are losing nice distinctions in pronunciations: The POOR man POURED a cup of coffee as he PORED over the want ads; will MERRY MARY MARRY?

Not everybody ever had all those distinctions. Do you distinguish "horse" and "hoarse"? (Some Americans do.) Then there's "which" and "witch."

Go figure.

For northerners, the Appalachians have an "a" as in "date." For southerners, an "a" as in "hat."

Go figure.

You may be right about "Norfolk," but "Norfik/ Nawfik" were the only versions I ever heard up until the '90s. (Never lived there either.)

Long ago I knew a disgruntled ex-sailor who said that when conditions warranted the city was often called "Nor-fuck," with emphasis. (There was a less subtle name as well.) Maybe "Nor-foke" is being promoted to
undermine that feature. (Not that it will make any difference.)

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 03:49 AM

A checkout is the place where the till (or cash register) is. But a till needn't be present and a till doesn't need to be at a checkout.

Subject: RE: BS: American English usages taking over Brit
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 01:18 AM

"Presently" originally meant 'now' over here also. Then its meaning drifted to mean 'soon'. My impression is that it has recently [or even presently] reverted to the original meaning; possibly due to US influence.

We too have always made the distinction by shifting enphasis between adjective & verb usages of words like frequent, absent accent &c.

~M~