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A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

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Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#61

Post by phillc73 »

outsideoflife wrote: post #52
mjburgess wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like (1), sounds amusing and wonderful -- no? Many words in English have this origin, eg., Shakespeare did this all the time giving us the verbs "to champion", "to elbow"... from nouns. bi-* (2) is fair, being an ambiguity. reaching-out (3) contains less information than the alternatives provide, but do they provide too much? Given how we are connected in so many different ways now, does labouring to include…

This was such a beautifully written reply I thought it deserved a response! 1) Shakespeare did it for extremely gallant reasons though, he preserved the meter and make his text beautiful! 3) How about 'get in touch with'? This leaves the subtleties of how to make contact up to the individual preferences of the out-reacher and out-reachee. I think my concern with 'reaching-out' is it is rather overplaying what tends t…

'Reach out' also annoys me. Instead I would just use 'contact'. E.g. 'contact Joe to ask about the spec.'

'Shuttered' is another one I personally detest. 'Closed' is a perfectly good word, which doesn't need replacing.

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#62

Post by yodsanklai »

Spearchucker wrote: post #40
yodsanklai wrote: post #20

As a foreign speaker, American English has become the reference. Almost all English sources I use are American. (e.g. movies, tv series, youtube channels...). I try not to use words specific to British English and I set my spellchecker to U.S. English. It sounds wrong to refer to British English as the English language. There are several English languages that coexist and cross-pollinate.

That's interesting. I'm the other way 'round. Mostly because American English has managed to confused the hell out of me. Pronouncing (or softening) "t"s as/into "d"s means many Americans spell accordingly - Tao becomes Dao. Then there's the impossibility of popular phrases (individual words such as "movie" don't bother me much at all). "What are you hungry for?" simply cannot be. It makes more sense to ask what one…

I agree. Now that I think of this, I realize that there are lot of americanisms I would never use. Things such as "I'm gonna" or "dude". I feel it doesn't sound right when you have a heavy foreign accent. Maybe the best thing to do for a non-native English speaker living in the "global world" is to target an English free of local idioms, and a neutral north-american accent.

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#63

Post by posterboy »

outsideoflife wrote: post #27

When I worked for a multi-national silicon valley based company we got so sick of the creeping Americanisms (to be fair their jargon was worse, they even had a company glossary for it) that we started a game. We had a tally chart on the wall for anyone who slipped into saying one of them accidentally. I survived for weeks until I rang someone to 'touch base'! They seemed to have a group policy (or something) that cha…

1) To me it's similar, but with nominalization and gerund inflection. Because actually I'm under the impression it should say, "I am hoping to be medaling at the swimming contest(ing)." I have to admit, as a none native speaker i have a problem with the present progressive tense in general, yet grammarians are not 100% agreeing (argh) on the gerunds status as verb/noun/adverbial-noun status of the gerund.

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#64

Post by coldtea »

d--b wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because caring for language and culture is fascism. Yay change towards any direction!

It's not. Fascism is something else entirely.

Missed the (non there) /s

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#65

Post by mjburgess »

outsideoflife wrote: post #60
mjburgess wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, "reaching out" does suggest an over-familiarity. Again this is a cultural thing: Americans like to be friendly in a distance sort of way (which looks to european like pretending they are more socially promixmate than they really are). For that reason I find it quite uncomfortable to be around a lot of them in one go. Europeans prefer social distance to be bridged quickly and directly, whereas Americans prefer t…

This is interesting to me. I had to deal recently with a service desk in America, and they were as unhelpful as any other. But they dressed up all of their comments with a dose of 'Thank you for calling sir, is there anything else I can help you with, have a nice day.' It was as if they felt that being sickeningly polite was a good substitute for resolving my issue.

From an American's POV anything less would probably be considered an additional rudeness.

Every culture makes a public/private distinction and has different social conventions in each.

For example, sarcastic/ironic/cutting humour is mostly a private-space thing in america -- whereas in the UK it's common to both. I'd say this is related to their deep sense that public spaces should be friendly-distant.

For this reason, amongst others, Americans have a reputation for not understanding irony/british sense of humour. It's more that they don't expect it in public places. I'd imagine an American experience of people British people joking at (say,) a funeral is something like a British experience of an American helpline. Vaguely repellent.

It's because it's mixing public/private which crosses intimacy lines. And intimacy is closely related to disgust (eg. someone you dont like kissing you).

PS. I've just had another thought about that. One of the issues we have in the UK at the moment is the importation of a strange kind of political correctness where you mustn't joke about stereotypes etc. (which is a particularly european thing: to joke about each other's culture -- this tends to feel connecting to europeans).

My guess is that because, in America, public spaces are supposed to be friendly-distant (hence why they censor all sorts of words, etc.) we have imported this sense about certain kinds of jokes.

To the American sensibilities a stereotyping joke in a public space is alienating. To a european one, it's a gesture towards intimacy.

I think we're probably going to lose this to American culture. We may have already.

Though still, it's interesting to observe: get a group of europenas of different nationalities together and they bond by joking about sterotypes. Stereotype an american and they think you're being hostile and trash-talking them.

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#66

Post by bigal67 »

Walf wrote: post #8
Fej wrote: post #2

Misleading title, author equates "English" to "British English".

International English. Supposably, Americans could care less that other English-speaking countries are closer to en-GB than en-US, despite the relentless onslaught of inconsiderate software defaults.

supposedly ;) Sorry... being slightly facetious :)

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#67

Post by rumcajz »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #29
rumcajz wrote: post #16

An interesting phenomenon I've noticed is that a lot of people, and often intelligent people, believe that language that have been evolving for thousands of years should, somehow, just stop evolving today. Interestingly, while one would expect it to be correlated with political belief (conservatives would want language as it was in good old days, progressives would embrace the change) my personal anecdotal evidence s…

Richard Dawkins once tweeted his rule for accepting something new. If it adds something new to the language, he accepts it. If we already have existing words that do a better job, he rejects it. This begrudgingly forced him to accept the use of ‘like’ the way teenage girls use it because they don’t mean “this person said”, or “I said”. They mean some more like “this person said something to the effect of”.

Interesting. One would expect Dawkins, being an evolutionary biologist and father of the concept of meme, to just accept the change. But he probably wasn't speaking of what should or should not be. Rather about what he's doing himself.

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#68

Post by vixen99 »

d--b wrote: post #22

It's sad to see such bullshit conservatism from someone who has written for bbc and the guardian. This is the kind of arguments that Brexit backers use. "Let's protect the English language! Let's kick all the foreigners out!"

Well that's eloquently destroyed any possible argument for Brexit. Well done!

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#69

Post by aquadrop »

Spearchucker wrote: post #45
Arun2009 wrote: post #26

From the perspective of a non-native speaker of the language, it seems to me that the United States is English's killer product. A great deal of the credit for the English language's dominance must go to the US and the culture and technology it exports relentlessly all over the world. Far from killing the English language as the author complains, the US might just have made it prevail over similar contenders like Spa…

Let's see how this turns out over the next decade or so. Both the US and the UK have and are slowly withdrawing from the world stage, making English less and less important. Without the UK in the EU, for example, why would English need to remain the common language when German is the most spoken language in Europe?

Most spoken first language. But much more people can speak English overall. When people from Greece, Sweden, Estonia, Slovenia meet, they will most probably could speak English as common language, not German. Let's all stick to one global language, it would be so much easier for everyone...

Re: A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120

#70

Post by SirFatty »

Spearchucker wrote: post #45
Arun2009 wrote: post #26

From the perspective of a non-native speaker of the language, it seems to me that the United States is English's killer product. A great deal of the credit for the English language's dominance must go to the US and the culture and technology it exports relentlessly all over the world. Far from killing the English language as the author complains, the US might just have made it prevail over similar contenders like Spa…

Let's see how this turns out over the next decade or so. Both the US and the UK have and are slowly withdrawing from the world stage, making English less and less important. Without the UK in the EU, for example, why would English need to remain the common language when German is the most spoken language in Europe?

"Both the US and the UK have and are slowly withdrawing from the world stage..."

What a crock...

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