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This blog is written in en-GB

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Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#301

Post by billyjobob »

cuttysnark wrote: post #267
kstenerud wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a cunning plan: Sneak as many Brits into Hollywood as possible, and have them slip in as many British references into American films as they can. Over time, they'll effectively BECOME British, and Robert's your father's brother! Just whatever you do, don't mention the taxes! I did once, but I think I got away with it...

I experienced this. I only lived in the U.K. for 6 months, but the number of chiefly British phrases/words/idioms that nestled their way into my way of speaking and stayed (20+ years on) was interesting and somewhat surprising. For example, I never said "supposed to" again — "meant to" has always sounded and felt so much better. Similarly, "can't be bothered/asked" often exactly describes the situation in a way that…

> can't be asked

What you heard wasn't what they were saying.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#302

Post by tialaramex »

MrJohz wrote: post #256
tialaramex wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main people who'd want such a thing would be linguists, so that they can label samples. The non-prestige dialects of a language don't usually attract official interest, not least because officially the people who understand that dialect could also understand a prestige variant. Scousers may not talk like King Charles among themselves, but if he speaks they're not confused about what the King is saying even if the…

In fairness, I think that's partly because AAV doesn't have the political and national identity that some other similar dialects have. I (as a lay person with no training in linguistics) feel like AAV and Scots are similar in terms of how far away from English they are, and many people would describe Scots as its own language, distinct from English.

Scots is complicated because there was an entirely distinct language "Gaelic" which just isn't even close to English at all, spoken in that geographic area historically. Now, today there aren't very many people who live there who would even claim to actually speak Gaelic, but the influence of that language seeped into the dialect spoken there, so while the random bloke you meet in Scotland may not speak any Gaelic, if you (maybe as an academic study) know Gaelic some of the vocabulary of their speech is obviously from Gaelic, not English.

Linguists would tell you that Scots is a sibling to English rather than just a dialect of English, having both descended from Middle English and that the dialect of English people in Scotland speak is instead "Scottish English". In practice of course humans don't language tag their speech (indeed they rarely even language tag written text) so it's murky. Maybe one word in ten that a Scottish bloke just said to confuse a tourist was technically Scots not Scottish English and perhaps some of it was even Gaelic. The important thing was that they confused the tourist as desired, for which frankly even an inside joke would work.

Sociolects are fun. In one of my friend circles the word "fish" is understood to mean the controller for a video game, I don't know why exactly, but if you said to one of us "Pass the fish" they'd hand you a controller without even seeming puzzled, that's just obviously what you'd call it. But in another circle it means nothing and you'd be greeted with confusion.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#303

Post by thrance »

dgellow wrote: post #155
liotier wrote: post #74

This French person has taken to writing in en-GB, as a token of protest against current USAian politics. I thank the USA for this step in French-British rapprochement ! Also, in the late 90's, The Register made me love British English... Local accents are great branding.

I really want to see a local Euro English[0] develop as an actual, recognized variant of English. Both because it would be really funny, but also as a way for Continental Europe to develop a common language we can shape our own way 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English (we don't have to take the examples in this page as-is, we can definitely make better local oddities!)

How I long for an Esperanto-speaking Europe...

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#304

Post by vitally3643 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #138
vitally3643 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain cultures teach that diversity is a bad thing to be feared and extinguished. Diversity is only a good thing when your mind has been poisoned by "education" and "experience". It requires an open mind to see diverse experiences as a good thing, and certain cultures think having citizens with open minds is an unprofitable way to run a society.

> Certain cultures teach that diversity is a bad thing to be feared and extinguished. Ok, I take the bait. Which ones?

The one where I live :(

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#305

Post by card_zero »

kstenerud wrote: post #75
biofox wrote: post #28

I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everythi…

I have a cunning plan: Sneak as many Brits into Hollywood as possible, and have them slip in as many British references into American films as they can. Over time, they'll effectively BECOME British, and Robert's your father's brother! Just whatever you do, don't mention the taxes! I did once, but I think I got away with it...

Wasn't that already attempted once, in the 1950s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_American_Speech

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#306

Post by GaryBluto »

My_Name wrote: post #264
r3trohack3r wrote: post #172

I can’t say I understand this new current of culture/writing. It’s something like: get angry, turn small acts into grand acts of social defiance, and signal your social ingroup by referencing other things we are angry about. “Do you remember that JK Rowling lady we all hate because she’s an evil witch? Haha, yeah. Anyways, I’m British and I’m going to keep writing like I’m British.” Edit: I agree with the thesis. You…

You seem to be unaware of one of the British idioms used in language, it's called "A joke". Calling her 'the wicked with of the terfs' was one of those. I found it quite funny personally. I can find the joke funny despite my opinion of Rowling as a person or her statements on particular topics. Sometimes, here in the UK, we make jokes featuring people because the joke is funny, not just to virtue signal. Here in the…

I've lived in the UK all my life and have the same thoughts as GP.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#307

Post by bluebarbet »

JimDabell wrote: post #61
dijit wrote: post #13

> Here's the thing. No. Hahaha I decided to have a bit of fun with the Accept-Lang header, if you're british it shows a totally different version of my blog including changing my name to a more british variant, a background including tea, phone booths, kings guards, busses, bulldogs and flags... and the colour scheme changes to RWB. https://blog.dijit.sh The original plan was actually to write two variants of every b…

You might be interested to know that the BBC has a Pidgin version. > BBC News Pidgin now dey on Whatsapp > No dull yoursef, be di first to get latest tori, analysis, exclusive interviews and ogbonge coverage of Nigerian and International news from BBC News Pidgin, straight to your Whatsapp. > Click here to join di channel — https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

It's technically West African Pidgin English, AKA Guinea Coast Creole English, (perhaps) AKA Cameroon Pidgin, which seems to be much the same thing and has an ISO-639 code (wes).

IMO if these are all the same language then they should perhaps be dignified with a proper name that doesn't involve the generic term "pidgin".

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#308

Post by seszett »

MrJohz wrote: post #229
jwatzman wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few others. “Quite” comes to mind — “I am quite hungry” or “that meal was quite good” can mean opposite things, depending on the speaker region and even voice inflexion if spoken.

Once you start going in that direction, a lot of things that British people say can require some amount of translation, see e.g. this table: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:640/format:webp/0*0Fs1...

Honestly it's not the first time I read such comments, and... they're not about the British as much as they are about the Americans, I'd say.

I think almost all of the expressions in the left-hand side have direct, almost literal equivalents in French for example, with the same meaning as they have for the British, including being very context-dependent.

Also works for Flemish by the way, although the Dutch are supposed to be more literal so maybe Flemish/Dutch is to be seen the same way as British/American.

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#309

Post by kelvinjps10 »

vitally3643 wrote: post #298
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This culture they inherited from the British that annihilated the indigenous population compared with the Spanish or Portuguese that breeded with the native population

No, the Spanish did plenty of genocide as well.

Im not denying that but still the they had a higher offspring with the native comparable to the approach of the British of removing most of the indigenous population

Re: This blog is written in en-GB

#310

Post by bmacho »

TimK65 wrote: post #176
prima-facie wrote: post #149

If you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses…

So thankful that we use the correct date format (yyyy-mm-dd) in Sweden.

Wrong decimal tho.

Why isn't there an en-EU or en-ISO locale that has:

  - yyyy-mm-dd
  - SI units
  - 1,234.56 number format
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