I'm sure there comes a time in every Brit in America's life where some Americanism really annoys them and they turn it into an faux-angry tirade, claiming their mother tongue has been diluted, twisted, contorted and bent beyond all recognition wishing to reclaim their language once again for the English.
Language is constantly evolving, the English we know and use nowadays doesn't sound an awful lot like the language of Shakespeare. I certainly can't remember the last time I used the word 'forsooth'. It's at this juncture that I'm unsure of what some Brits get their nose out of shape for, we have changed our own language constantly and the idea that Americans couldn't and shouldn't moderniz(s)e the language to their own means is absurd. However there does come a point where, as a Brit, you have to nail your flag to the mast. There are some Americanisms which a Brit just cannot say. It's nothing to do with the snobbery which comes so easily to us, there's just too much of a block in our brains. It reminds me of taking a German class directly after a French one, you know what you would usually say in British English but the American English doesn't come quickly enough and before you know it you're standing there with your mouth open looking like a recent stroke victim.
Some of these words are just not natural sounds. I struggle with the name 'Kara'. The short 'a' sound doesn't come naturally, I have to instead think of it written down as 'Karer' and by the time I've thought of that it that pause has been filled with someone else talking. Bananas have become a fully British pronounced fruit in our house, my wife having been influenced by my insistence. Vitamin is one which I don't think I'll ever change, the change of stress is actually quite difficult to pinpoint, but it'll never be vita-min to me.
Changes in our language are what keeps it current, useful and essentially beautifully descriptive. I believe English to be the most descriptive language on the planet and the constant evolution is what is owes that to. American English may well become the dominant breed of this particular species, and it may well export more and more phrases and words through the medium of film and (mediocre) television but that's not to say it's the correct or incorrect. Linguistic differences should be celebrated.
Who needs all those extra "u's" anyway?
Language is constantly evolving, the English we know and use nowadays doesn't sound an awful lot like the language of Shakespeare. I certainly can't remember the last time I used the word 'forsooth'. It's at this juncture that I'm unsure of what some Brits get their nose out of shape for, we have changed our own language constantly and the idea that Americans couldn't and shouldn't moderniz(s)e the language to their own means is absurd. However there does come a point where, as a Brit, you have to nail your flag to the mast. There are some Americanisms which a Brit just cannot say. It's nothing to do with the snobbery which comes so easily to us, there's just too much of a block in our brains. It reminds me of taking a German class directly after a French one, you know what you would usually say in British English but the American English doesn't come quickly enough and before you know it you're standing there with your mouth open looking like a recent stroke victim.
Some of these words are just not natural sounds. I struggle with the name 'Kara'. The short 'a' sound doesn't come naturally, I have to instead think of it written down as 'Karer' and by the time I've thought of that it that pause has been filled with someone else talking. Bananas have become a fully British pronounced fruit in our house, my wife having been influenced by my insistence. Vitamin is one which I don't think I'll ever change, the change of stress is actually quite difficult to pinpoint, but it'll never be vita-min to me.
Changes in our language are what keeps it current, useful and essentially beautifully descriptive. I believe English to be the most descriptive language on the planet and the constant evolution is what is owes that to. American English may well become the dominant breed of this particular species, and it may well export more and more phrases and words through the medium of film and (mediocre) television but that's not to say it's the correct or incorrect. Linguistic differences should be celebrated.
Who needs all those extra "u's" anyway?
2 comments:
My wife and I speak in a kind of hybrid-role-reversal English at home. She will call the rear storage space in a car, "the boot" and I will call it, "the trunk".
"Capillaries" and "oregano" are certainly American pronunciations that I will probably never adopt, even if I could, which I can't!
Often words are just stressed in a completely different place and it throws the whole word into another place.
I find the whole thing interesting and amusing.
My wife was talking about the "saddle bags" on a motorbike today and I told her that they're called "paniers". But then I thought, maybe they aren't called "paniers" in the USA? Maybe they really are called "saddle bags"? Or maybe something completely different?
I think it happens with a lot of transatlantic couples; there's an overcompensation for what is really, a very small linguistic complication.
I had forgotten about capillaries; first time I heard that I assumed the voice-over artist just wasn't au fait with the word. Turns out, all the colonists are at it!
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