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i * Verbal fillers * Teenspeak * Could this be the end of 'Chinglish'? * One millionth word * Taste v Flavour *Weather & Climate * Words & Englsih * Confusing Words...Confusing Spelling * Tongue Twisters * Spelling v Pronunciation * Fighting Talk * Mis-print Howlers * Banished from The Queen's English * English declares war on Americanisms * Resources
What your verbal fillers say about you
What are the most common but biggest faux pas in modern English?…
Verbal fillers or tics are the guilty pleasures of the communication world – all those useless, fatuous repetitive pieces of nonsense that we belch out the moment there is the slightest pause or hesitation in our stream of speech. Sometimes we start with them, often we end with them. Occasionally we use them instead of speech altogether, as in ‘Right, okay, well, basically, you know, I sort of, actually, kind of – if you like…innit?’
These words come courtesy of your subconscious during micro-moments of panic and to fill gaps to show that you believe it’s still your turn to talk, and it could be that you sprinkle them throughout your conversations like confetti. Okay so you mimic them from others, but why did you choose the particular words you use so constantly? Think your choice was random? Think again…
‘Right’ Often accompanied by a smacking and rubbing of hands, this is the ultimate clapper-board word, the one that announces you’re about to start a new job or train of thought and it’s performed as much for your own benefit as a signal to others that you’re about to kick off. The question is, why the need to scoop up your thinking and self-motivate on such a regular basis? You’re a positive person, but the trouble is your thoughts tend to run out of control and you struggle keeping track at times. This leads to mild levels of stress and confusion leading to you becoming your own little police force, dragging the threads of your thinking together and galvanising your brain into action. Use this too much and you’ll appear bumbling, chaotic and just a little bit of a control freak in what can sound like a call for silence from those around you.
‘…you know…’ These two words need to appear during, rather than at the start of, a sentence or in reply to a question, as in:
‘How did you feel when the rhino trampled you?’
‘Well, you know….’
Or:
‘I only had about three seconds to…you know…run away and I was…you know…very scared.’
Do we need to point out the obvious, which is that you will only use these words when you patently don’t know what you’re talking about or what to say? The words ‘you know’ are the ultimate cry for help. When you use them you’re asking, ‘Do you know? Can you help me out please?’ and this plead for empathy suggests severe brain break-down, albeit temporary.
Watch a professional speaker like a politician during an interview and the moment he/she emerges with his/her first ‘you know’ you can tell they’ve lost the plot and are bluffing big- time.
‘Actually’ Why use a word to prove the truth of what you’re saying unless you’re lying in the first place? ‘I was actually very upset’, ‘We could actually see that our plan was working’, ‘I was confused by that actually’. This is your personal attempt to underline what you are saying and it implies you’re used to being doubted and feel you have to over-prove your point. ‘Actually’ is a weasel word, flung about with desperation in a flaccid attempt to provide validation that is clearly missing, actually.
‘Literally’ Read all of the above and add a drizzle of intellectual pretentiousness.
‘Basically’ Only ever used by people who have relinquished all control over their ability to précis, and serves as a warning that the speaker is about to ramble on with a severe case of verbal diarrhoea. This is another self-policing word as you try to form structure and clarity to your points and therefore a clear sign that you have none. By using this word you also give false hope to your audience, demanding their attention by suggesting you will be good to listen to. The small break-down in trust once they realise you have more rabbit than Waitrose will become part of a general decline in your overall credibility.
‘Innit?’ Why place the question mark at the end of this word when it is nothing other than a statement or rhetorical question at best? At least three centuries ago this was a cockney abbreviation of ‘Isn’t it?’ and worthy of a reply, as in:
‘It’s raining out, innit?’
‘Yes, I do believe you will need an umbrella if you are thinking of venturing outdoors’
Now though it’s become a meaningless statement that ends every sentence like a full stop; a kind of verbal bum-boil that makes all speech as unattractive as possible, as in: ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, innit?’ Even the vaguest whiff of fashion has long since left this word, which means that by using it you show you’re nothing short of a sad soul who believes wearing your hood up makes you look like a gangsta.
‘Yamean’ This intense abbreviation of the words ‘Do you know what I mean?’ is like a verbal concertina that suggests a permanent state of acute cognitive confusion. By using this at the end of every statement you are elongating your speech to enquire after the understanding of your audience. By abbreviating to this one word you also imply that you are time-poor and need to get your messages across as quickly as possible, which beggars the question: Why not use words that are easily understood in the first place, meaning you would have no need to enquire that everything you say is comprehended by your audience? This constant, unrelenting checking suggests weakness. You are part of a pack that will reject members at will, hence the need to keep confirming that everything you say is ‘on message’. You are desperate to please and possibly a little paranoid to boot, yamean?
‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’ See all of the above but add a massive pinch of egocentricity. You don’t talk to other people, you preach. Most of what you say is incomprehensible gibberish but you demand an appreciative audience and by adding this phrase to the end of every statement you force listeners to nod sagely, as though pure verbal gold had just tumbled out of your mouth. You like to feel you are a guru in your own lifetime, although genuine gurus rarely use this verbal tic. Did Martin Luther King say ‘I have a dream, DO YOU HEAR WHAT I’M SAYING?’ No. He used eloquence and a microphone instead.
‘Sort of… /Kind of…’ These words suggest you have a tippy-toes approach to life, qualifying everything in case someone accuses you of being bold. You suggest life events are so baffling or astounding they make you run out of words. ‘It was a sort of recession issue’ or ‘It was a kind of unhelpful thing to say’ is like air-brushing your statements to avoid disagreement and portray you as a liberal thinker rather than opinionated. You tend to dither big-time over most of your decisions, sticking a big toe into the pool of life rather than pulling on your cossie and diving in.
‘If you like’ This oily, obsequious phrase is the Uriah Heep, hand-wringer of the verbal filler world. ‘It was an – if you like – unfortunate type of behaviour’ or ‘We have an – if you like – unhelpful situation here.’ When you use this phrase you are like a creepy, deeply-bowing, toupee-wearing waiter presenting a ghastly, over-inflated bill on a small silver platter.
The problem with ‘If you like’ people is that their utter submissiveness masks an inner stubbornness and will of steel. Just as you know you’re going to have to pay that dinner bill, so you know this ‘if you like’ user has no intention of changing their point of view. Passive-aggressive defines you perfectly.
Ineffable appeal: Emma Thompson has declared war on sloppy speech
That Emma Thompson, yeh? Skills innit! I’m like she’s well porn innit. Know what I’m saying?
I very much doubt that you do. So let me try again.
Miss Emma Thompson, highly acclaimed star of the silver screen, has added further to her ineffable appeal with some well-chosen words demonstrating her acute concern for the English language and in so doing has made a significant contribution to the debate surrounding the way the younger generation is failing to communicate in an efficacious manner.
You probably got it that time, but how horribly stilted it sounded. After all, no one speaks like that any longer, do they?
My first paragraph was an attempt to sound like a teenager — or at least the sort of teenager of whom Miss Thompson disapproves. The second might have appeared in the Daily Mail of the Twenties.
What she actually said was that teenagers make themselves sound stupid by speaking the way they do.
‘I went to give a talk at my old school and the girls were all doing their “likes” and “innit” and “it ain’ts”, which drives me insane,’ she said. ‘I told them: “Just don’t do it, because it makes you sound stupid and you’re not stupid.” ’
Miss Thompson is, I think, horribly right and horribly wrong. Of course it drives her insane. It drives me insane, too. That’s the whole point. It’s meant to because we are adults. That’s why they do it. Teenagers want their own language and they want to exclude us from it.
Let’s go back to that first paragraph. What on earth is the word “skills” doing there? Well, I can tell you because I came across it at my youngest child’s school. One of the boys was describing his new PlayStation and the other boy — hugely envious — said: ‘Skills!’
It denoted the highest form of approval. All the other children knew that, but I’ll bet you didn’t. It may reach a school near you next week, transmitted across the highly effective teen network, or it may die the death.
‘Porn’ is another term of approval — even more bizarre than ‘skills’ — and I suspect it’s already had its day. By the time distinguished academics and publishers have caught up with the latest teen-speak, the teenagers themselves have usually moved on. That’s why I think Miss Thompson is wrong.
Innit: Iconic 'teenagers' Kevin and Perry, played by Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke, in a scene from the 2000 film Kevin And Perry Go Large
Language must evolve. Change is happening all the time. I struggled desperately a few days ago to understand an obviously important story about a worm attacking certain computer programmes in China.
Actually, I’m not absolutely certain that it was a worm and not a virus. If I’m to be entirely honest, I’ll admit that I’m not sure I know the difference, but I got the general gist of it.
My father would not have understood a word of the story. Rather, he’d have understood all the words — worm, virus, programme — but they’d have held an entirely different meaning for him.
A language that does not adapt and evolve is a dead language. How quaint the vocabulary of my second paragraph looks today.
I’m not sure Miss Thompson is right, either, when she says teenagers who use lots of ‘innits’ and ‘I’m likes’ sound stupid. For my money, they sound lazy. And in a way that’s worse.
What I found seriously worrying was what Jean Gross, who advises the Government on children’s speech, had to say earlier this year. Teenagers, she said, are becoming unemployable because they use a vocabulary of just 800 words. That was the headline news from her report.
It seemed unlikely. A child of two probably has more words than that. And when I looked into it a little more closely, the story turned out to be rather different.
It's not that they are incapable of using a full vocabulary, it’s that they choose not to
What Miss Gross reported was that teenagers develop a broad vocabulary of 40,000 words by the time they reach 16, but linguists have found that many choose to limit themselves to a much smaller range in regular conversation, and on a daily basis could use as few as 800.
What Miss Gross said she wanted to do was start a nationwide campaign next year to ensure that children use their full linguistic potential and are not impeded in the classroom and, later, the workplace.
It would focus on schoolchildren and she wanted to ask Stephen Fry to support it.
Good stuff on the face of it. What can be more laudable than children developing their full language potential? But put aside any suspicion you may have that the brilliant Stephen Fry might not be the perfect role model for a bolshie 15-year-old and note the key word in her report: ‘Choose.’
It’s not that they are incapable of using a full vocabulary, it’s that they choose not to. In other words, I suspect children are no different today from the way they were when I was one of them.
I vaguely remember that we 15-year-olds developed our own inclusive language. We called it Pig Latin — though it had precious little to do with the language of the classics — and we did it purely to confuse and infuriate our elders.
If Miss Gross still wants to mount a campaign, may I humbly suggest that rather than target the children, she goes for those who teach them.
Intelligent teenagers will grow out of teen speak. The danger is that they will grow into jargon
I’ve spent the past nine months visiting schools up and down the country. Those with the best results employ teachers who treat their pupils with respect but do not patronise them by trying to communicate with them in whatever language the children happen to have adopted this year. They insist that the children use theirs.
The worst teachers, on the other hand, try to ingratiate themselves by pretending to be teenagers themselves. It doesn’t work.
Then Miss Gross might extend her brief to those adults who are perfectly articulate but choose to hide behind jargon rather than use plain, simple language that we can all understand.
Intelligent teenagers will grow out of teen speak. The danger is that they will grow into jargon.
You doubt that jargon can be dangerous? Let me close with an extract from a document that a friend who once advised big City firms showed me. It was so preposterous that I included it in my book Lost for Words.
‘The main role of the Equity Derivatives Group is product innovation: to define and write new payoffs with sales, traders and quants (pro-active and reactive), participate to the study (sic) of the risk management of the new payoffs. The objective is to increase sharply the amount of pro-active business.’
That was in 2003. My friend did not understand a word of it. Neither did I.
Five years later, with banks around the world teetering on the brink of collapse and most of the world plunged into recession, we all understood the lethal power of ‘derivatives’ and this kind of ‘pro-active’ business. But by then the damage had been done.
I agree with Emma Thompson that it would be nice if children stopped saying ‘innit’. I think it’s far more important that when they become adults they use a language we can all understand.
Authorities in China have launched another campaign to wipe out amusingly misspelt English. Will it work?
Sign in a shop window in Shanghai. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Upsetting news for English-speaking residents in China: "Chinglish" is apparently being wiped out. Chinglish is the name given to the grammatically incorrect or misspelt English found predominantly on signs in parts of China. The language style has attracted a cult following, with a Facebook group, Flickr pages and even a book dedicated to the subject.
But there are fears that Chinglish could be killed off before really having a chance to flourish. Reports suggest that authorities, wary of the embarrassment some examples of Chinglish could cause prudish visitors to next year's World Expo, are launching a drive to correct the quirky mistranslations.
Before we officially declare Chinglish to be a dead language, we should note that this isn't the first such drive to wipe it out. On the website of the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (bear with me), in an interview with the Chinglish enthusiast Oliver Radtke in May, it was pointed out that "in recent years, China has kicked off campaigns to root out poor English grammar and misused vocabulary in official usage", including one before the Olympic games in Beijing last year. Judging from the examples that continue to flood into internet groups, the success of these campaigns seems to have been limited.
Radtke is a staunch supporter of what he describes as the "wonderful results of an English dictionary meeting Chinese grammar". He insists that his interest in Chinglish is about "passion not mockery", and most online groups seem to echo this, looking upon Chinglish with affection rather than scorn. The "Save Chinglish" Facebook group has attracted more than 8,000 members and more than 2,500 Chinglish examples, while members of the Flickr group The Chinglish Pool have contributed more than 3,000 photographs.
So what is it about Chinglish that has attracted such affection? Examples on the sites above range from amusing misspellings in menus – "Three testes ice cream", anyone? – to simple grammatical errors – a sign by a lake imploring visitors to "refuse to feed" the (presumably persistent) birds.
The best ones, as Radtke says, are where English words are used with Chinese grammar, often with incorrect spelling thrown in for good measure. These can range from the strangely poetic – "the rust embroidered shoes approve the zero concurrent y camp" – to the genuinely mystifying – "pood taken late at night breakfast".
Will the latest push succeed in wiping Chinglish out completely? It seems unlikely, but perhaps visitors to China will have to look that little bit harder to be warned to "be careful about a landslip" in a bathroom or "take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty" on a hillside.
One millionth English word could be 'defriend' or 'noob' by Matthew Moore. 2009.05.06.
The English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with "defriend", "noob" and "chiconomics" among the candidates, linguistic experts have predicted.
The English Language - 1 millionth word next month
The milestone will be passed at 10.22am on June 10 according to the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics that tracks the use of new words.
The widespread popularity of English as a second language in Asia has brought about the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare's time with new terms coined on average every 98 minutes, the Texas-based group claims.
It acknowledges new words once they have been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and in other sources. The terms it is currently monitoring which could take English to the one million threshold include "defollow" and "defriend", words describing what users of websites like Twitter and Facebook to do contacts with whom they do not wish to stay in touch.
Another internet word "noob" – a derogatory name for someone new to a particular task or community – is also in the running, along with "greenwashing" (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and "chiconomics" (recession fashion).
Paul Payack, chief analyst at the Global Language Monitor, said: "Despite having a million words at our disposal it is unlikely that we will ever use more than just a tiny fraction of them. "The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected date. Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods, claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
Taste v Flavour ~ Have you ever wondered what the difference is between 'taste' and 'flavour'? I hadn't given it much consideration either until I watched a well-known chef called Heston Blumenthal on television recently. Try this...
First, take a piece of fruit or something you like to eat, holding your nose tight shut, place the morstel in your mouth and chew. Make sure that you keep your nose tightly closed.
Next, after about 10 seconds, release the grip on your nose... and Wow!... What happens?
The Explanation: Nerve endings and sensors in the mouth and the tongue taste only, hot, cold, sweet, sour. It is the sensory glands at the back of your nose, which operate when they mix with air, and give us a sense of flavourf. This is why, when we have a cold or flu, food has little or no flavour.
WEATHER & Climate'
Weather & Climate although similar, are actually two different things. Climate is what you can expect the weather to be like from year to year in different parts of the world. It is divided into seasons - Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
China has a continental climate. It's weather comes mainly from the continent of Asia , especially in the north, where we have long cold winters, hot summers and short periods of spring and autumn.
In Britain we have a maritime climate. Our climate is temperate which means that it is influenced by the sea, making it milder than in the rest of Europe but also wetter. Our seasons are more or less equal in length. The summers are not as hot and the winters are not as cold.
Weather is what you get from day to day and weathermen or meteorologists, can predict what the weather changes are likely to be for several days ahead.
Look at the weather facts below and think or talk about the problems you might have if you lived there.
THE DRIEST PLACE - Arica in north Chile . It has less than 0.1mm of rain each year.
THE FOGGIEST PLACE - Newfoundland , off the coast of Canada , there is fog in some places for up to 120 days a year.
THE HOTTEST PLACE - The average daily temperature in Dallol, Etheopia is 34`C.
THE SUNNIEST PLACE - In Yuma , Arizona in the USA , the sun shines 90% of the time. Can that be right? What about night-time? I think it means during daylight hours.
THE WETTEST PLACE - Tutunendo, Colombia , has an average of 11700mm (1.17 metres) of rainfall a year.
THE WINDIEST PLACE - Antarctica, where winds can reach up to 320 km /hour in some parts. It is also the coldest place where average temperatures can fall to as low as - 58`C.
THE CLOUDIEST PLACE - Back in Antarctica , for 180 days a year complete cloud covers the South Pole.
SOME MORE WORDS TO TALK ABOUT:
It's....COLD DRY HOT HUMID FINE MILD WET COOL RAINING WINDY SNOWING SUNNY SHOWERY ICY CLOUDY FOGGY
SAND STORM RAIN STORM THUNDER STORM
What does STORM mean?
THUNDER & LIGHTNING HURRICANE TORNADO
RAINING HEAVILY DRIZZLING MISTY MIZZLY
BLOWING HARD BLOWING A GALE RAINING CATS & DOGS......TIPPING DOWN LOUSY WEATHER
When you have time, look at an atlas and refer to the climate maps. You will find the different climate types and the areas of the world where they exist. You will also find world maps with lines on called isotherms and isohyets. What do these lines show?
Words and English.
Two friends and I were working on the website construction, preparing and editing features to be included in the future. After four hours, I turned my attention to reading 'The Telegraph', my favourite newspaper, available on-line at : www.telegraph.co.uk I was searching for information about Sir Menzies Campbell - former leader of The Liberal Democrats in the UK Parliament.
Another feature caught my attention, notably a report on the BBC's Secret Guide to Pronunciation.(2006.10.29) Difficult words, especially names, can cause considerable problems for people like News readers, for example; and others who compile serious quiz shows, or producers of travel programmes and documentaries.
Authors Lena Olauson and Catherine Sangster, from the BBC Production Unit, have produced a fascinating insight into the correct way to say words. Produced in conjunction with Oxford University Press*, widely acclaimed for its publication of Dictionaries. The BBCPU, I imagine that's how they refer to their department, has a data base of 20,000 'tricky' words.
The format is natural and unpretentious, using a mixture of simple re-spelling and the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Take Sven-Goran Erikson, the former England Football Manager, for example. He emerges as : 'Sven - Yaer - an - Ey - rik - son'. Not so helpful, I imagine. If I were a newsreader, I might be inclined to resort to, 'Mr Erikson, the former England Manager...'.
Thats not the point. The problems with English, as you will see elsewhere, are the complexities of spelling and pronunciation. Is 'kilometre' pronounced 'kil-ur-mee-tuhr' or 'kil-o-mee-tuhr'? The answer is that both are correct, but the former (first) is more traditional.
'Schedule' is another excellent example of bi-pronunciation. 'Shed-yool' as pronounced in British English, has been taken over by 'sked-yool' as pronounced in American English. I must confess, although my students credit me with knowing everything about most things, I sometimes get confused and resort to using both.
The word 'controversy' causes some 'con-tro-ver-si', 'contra-ver-si' and 'controv-er-si'. I think I'll stick with disagreement or argument.
Meanwhile, Sir Menzies, I discovered, is known to his friends as 'Ming'. This derives from the Scottish pronunciation of 'Mingis' - 'ming' rhymes with 'sing' with a soft 'g' sound,; 'is' is pronounced 'ees'. It originated in Ireland aparently, during the 8th century as 'juht' - pronounced 'yog'. The character was similar to a 'z' with a tail. During the 16th century, developments in printing, reduced it to a simple 'z'. In Norman times, it fell out of favour, but was retained north of the border in Scottish personal and place names.
After lunch, I became distracted from my 'shedyooled' proposed assignments, and became immersed for three hours browsing related articles and the archives of The Telegraph. David Derbyshire - pronounced 'Dar-bee-shur' reported changes in pronunciation in The Queen's Christmas Day Messages over a period of more than 40 years. (2000.12.21.)
In 1952, the 'l' in 'milk' was strongly pronounced. It has since softened almost to a vowel sound. At the same time, during the 1950's, short vowels such as; 'hid', 'head' and 'had', were indistinct, sounding more or less the same. So Her Majesty might 'pit her dogs on the hid', meaning 'pat them on the head'.
As an aside, something which has just occurred to me, that a wealthy neighbour of ours when I was a boy, used to have 'sex' in his garden shed. No! No! Not 'rumpy pumpy', they were 'sex' or 'sacks', in which garden rubbish was collected.
However, I digress. Other vowels also changed; 'a' was pronounced further back in the throat, rather like the way Chinese people tend to pronounce it; Princess Anne, was 'Princess Uhnne'. Words like 'food' and 'Sue', were pronounced further forward in the mouth, with a slightly lengthening and rounding of the sound, as Australians pronounce 'new'.
Dr Harrington form Macquarie University, Sydney, carried out the research and found traces of 'East-end' English (London Cockney) and 'Estuary English', deliberately badly spoken English by thirty-somethings in south-east England.
One of the essential elements of speaking 'Estuary English', is to be able to litter your speech with sentences ending with the enquiry, 'innit?''It's a very pleasant day, innit?' Somehow, a vision of the Queen in the drawing room of Buckingham Palace, polishing a ti-ara ( a small crown with jewels used on ceremonial occassions), saying to her husband, 'It's very beautiful, innit, Phil?'; doesn't seem to ring true. A Palace spokesman said, 'We are unable to comment because we have yet to see the report.' An inside source reported that he overheard him murmer, 'It's new, innit?
Neverthless, Dr Harrington produced an interesting piece of research which, from my point of view, illustrates how language changes at all levels over a relatively short period of time.
That brings me nicely to a report by Nigel Reynolds (1999.07.29.), that Microsoft is blatantly snubbing the Queen's English with the publication of the 'Encarta World English Dictionary' in association with Bloomsbury Press, a British Publishing House. They claim that, English as it is spoken in Britain no longer accounts for much around the world.' The Encarta World English Dictionary claims that World English will contain thousands of words from other countries and will be more important than British English.
Nigel Newton (Nye-gel New-tun), Chief Executive at Bloomsbury, maintains that, 'the Queen's English is an outmoded and backward looking concept.' Kathy Rooney (Kath-ee Ro -Nee or Kath-ee Roo-nay (Aus) - both are correct), attacked traditional English dictionaries as being 'Brito-centric' and 'perpetuating an 'imperialist and supremacist' view of language.
That's nonsence. We have explored in other sections on this website how English has evolved over 2000 years, and continues to do so. Besides taking words from Latin, Greek, Indian languages, Chinese and practically every other culture on the planet, we have also taken on board and grappled with words and expressions from the United States; 'ass-hole' and 'motherf***er', for example. There is no doubt in my mind, that Kate Thing-ummy is speaking assocentrically.
Encarta's publication has spurred speculation that it's owner, Bill Gates, is poised to attempt to corner the Dictionary Market. Mr Newton maintains that the project was Bloomsbury's proposal and that Bill What's-his-name had no personal involvement in the matter. Who's he kidding? Don't try to tell me that the horse doesn't know where the cart is going. If someone was using 5million US$, GBP, Euros or even a cent of my money, I would want to know where it was going.
That aside, estimates predict that by 2050, 50% of the world's population will be competent in English. Bloomsbury - Microsoft say that English must adapt faster and absorb local words from wherever it's spoken.
It is interesting to note that different versions will be published in the United States and Britain, which seems to defeat the object of defining words for use world-wide. There may, however, be a logical explanation. Ten years ago in Florida, an American Publisher of English text books told me, 'The problem with the United States is that we have no history, and no Culture. In twenty-five years, we'll all be speaking Spanish.' - Laissez faire! (That's a French expression).
Hugh Davies reported (1999.06.09.) 'Ba gum, there's an ee in t' Oxford Dictionary'. This goes to demonstrate how accurate and forward-thinking the Oxford University Press is in up-dating it's dictionaries annually.
The new word, 'ee', will be found jammed between 'EDP' (electronic data processing, and 'eejit', an immaginative Irish word for 'idiot'. It is an northern expression for 'oh', much the same as 'ay-ah' is in Chinese. Another example is 'oy', an expression used when you wish to attract someone's attention, - 'Oy! Pass me that dictionary, weel yuh.' Penny Silva, deputy editor of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary (1999), gave 'ohnosecond' as a splendid example of the way the English language adapts to changing circumstances. It refers to the instantaneous moment - lightning fast - that you realise that you've pressed the wrong key on your computer.
A word I sometimes use is 'filip' - I don't even know if it exists as a real word. In my world it's the moment you open a little tub of cream for your coffee in McDonalds. No matter how you try, a 'filip' launches itself from the container and spoils a clean shirt.
Each month, 18,000 new words are added to the data base at Oxford University Press for scruting and possible inclusion in the 'Concise Oxford Dictionary', originally created by Henry Fowler in 1911.
Elizabeth Knowles, editor of the 'Oxford Dictionary of New Words', said in 1977, that 'much of the pleasure and interest in compiling a book of this kind, derives from the opportunities to enjoy the inventiveness with which vocabulary adapts to changing situations.' She quotes: 'gob-smacked', 'sound-bite', 'road-rage', 'double-wammy', 'set-top-box', 'bonk-busters' and 'policy-wonks' as examples of the 2000 words which have entered English circulation in the past few years. Perhaps 'Brito-centric' and 'assocentric' will make it before 2010.
Other factors have come into play: e-mail english for example; withoutpunctuationcapitallettersabreviationsandspellingwhichiamsometimesatalosstodeciferplshelp
The use of cliches - 'a phrase or idea which is used so often that it becomes meaningless' (Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary). Nigel Reynolds (1999.06.02) mentions... 'At the end of the day...', 'At this moment in time...' and 'Know what I mean...'. My pet hate is the three-times repetitive expression... 'I, myself, personally think...'.
A survey by Collins - publishers of 'The Collins Concise Dictionary' commissioned in 1999, asked people to name public figures who 'mangled' English. Politicians John Prestsott and Tony Blair (UK Deputy Prime Minister and PM respectively at the time), won hands down, with Bill Clinton, former US President coming a close third.
Mr Reynolds mentions the down-grading of the English language such as, adjectives which are used to modify verbs...'He swam good.' The repetitive use of 'like' in spoken English; like for example 'I was going to like, do other work before, like, became interested in like, browsing the Telegraph archives, like. Ju-no-wot I mean?'
Nouns become tranferred to verbs, as in the almost insolent question, 'Excuse me?'
Jon Snow, former C4 (Channel 4 Television-UK) said, 'I think English is a constantly evolving language, and I particularly appreciate the development of new adjectives.'
It's true, and if we accept that idea, then all changes must be accepted as part of that development, where we like them or not. Language is about communication. Communication is making yourself understood, and each has its place in a particular situation.
e-mail English is not appropriate for use on a c.v., or resume, when you're applying for a job. It may, however, be acceptable when you are in that job, for communicating brief messages between departments. The English you use chatting up a girlfriend in a disco, is not the same as the language you speak with your parents, friends or in a business situation. So, 'Whassa problem?' (Bill Gates).
There isn't a problem as long as we recognise that changes are inevitable and on-going. Everyone mangles and manipulates English at some point or another. Advertisers use English to instill us with a sense of security and trust.
John Humphrys** wirtes, 'Language is more than a tool for expressing ourselves. It acts as a mirror to our world, reflecting back to us, the way we live.'
He elaborates by recounting that HM Customs & Revenue (formerly the Inland Revenue), advertises itself as 'working with the largest customer base of any UK organisation.' Of course it does! It controls the UK's collection of Income Tax, so we don't have any choice.
Supermarkets now offer a 'shopping experience', as if they are doing me a favour trying to get me to part with my money on things I don't want and don't need, in an environment which itself is manipulative. I am coaxed with soft music, special lighting that makes vegetable and fruit look more appetising, the smells of fresh ground coffee and baked bread. A place where I have to walk miles to buy an essential item such as milk, and manouver my way between jealously guarded trolleys, laden with pounds worth of over priced, over packaged food, containing too much fat, sugar and salt.
But I am digressing. Marks & Spencer, one of the UK's premier stores, apparently now promotes the idea of 'your M&S', which is blatently mis-leading, because it belongs to the share-holders not to me.
Mr Humphrys supports the notion of safe-guarding grammar and clarity in a age of texting, slang and hype. He is right to say, 'It does matter'. It is essential for expressing our thoughts, ideas, emotions, conducting business and world trade. For entertainment, through Art, Literature and Music.
The 'Queens English' is not perceived as being literally English as spoken by the Queen. Immediately the words are spoken, the listener has an image, picture, representation, idea or reflection of good, normal corret English.
One of the joys of English is that it is a monumental language. As a direct result of historical devellopment, it is complex, diverse, exciting, enthralling and enigmatic. It can be mangled, manipulated, twisted and abreviated - Why is 'abreviation' such a long word?. It is continually developing, expanding and changing.
People who write, broadcast, lecture, study, research or entertain using English, clearly enjoy their work. 'Enjoying English' is what this website is all about, and has been the stimulus to my perspective of teaching the subject throughout my career.
www.enjoyingenglish2008.org began as an inspirational dream three years ago. Now a dozen or more friends are involved, contributing ideas, features, comments management and other work, since the development of the original concept. Students too, throughout China, make contributions. We hope that, in time, hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions of people across the world, will want to contribute to the notion of enjoying english.
Alan Cooper.
November 2006.
- Oh! Sir Ming? Recalling what information I was looking for, escapes me now.
* 'BBC's Secret Guide to Pronunciation' by Lena Olauson and Catherine Sangster is published by Oxford University Press, priced 14.99GBP (pounds)
** John Humprhys: journalist, writer and broadcaster, presents the 'Today' programme on BBC Radio 4, arguably the best current affairs programme in the world. He is the interviewer / interrogator most feared by politicians due to his direct, no-nonsence approach.
Extracts from 'Beyond Words...' by John Humphrys is published by Hodder & Stroughton, priced 9.99GBP - an audio edition will be available shortly.
see: www.telegraph.co.uk to read the Telegraph on-line newspaper. Use the menue for specific information and search e.g. 'telegraph books' for others.
CONFUSING WORDSTry this out! Each sentence below appears to be the same, but has different pronunciation and meaning.
Answers will appear later under 'Funny Old World'.
1. The bandage was wound round the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full, it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. The soldier who decided to desert, hid dessert in the desert .
6. Since there is no time likee the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
7. I didn't object to the object.
8. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
9. There was a row amongst the oarsmen about how to row.
10. They were too close to the door to close it.
11. The buck does funny things when he sees the does.
12. A seamstress and sewer fell into the sewer.
13. To help with the planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow .
14. Upon seeing a tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
Tongue Twisters...
Tongue wisters are words and phrases which are designed to be spoken out loud. Try it for yourself, then repear it faster.. and faster... and faster and faster...
I know you know. I know you know I know. I know you know I know you know I know.
How many cans can a canner can, if a canner can can cans?A canner can can as many cans, as a canner can, if a canner can can cans.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
A Finnish fisher named Fisher, failed to fish any fish one Friday afternoon, and hefinally found a big fissure in his fishing-net.
Why do you look at me? How do you know I am looking at you, if you are not looking me?
Did you get tongue-tied?
Spelling v pronunciation.
English is a great language but it can be very confusing because it doesn't always make sense. For many years, some people have suggestedsimplifying the complicatedspelling rules. For example; why are tongue and lung, write and write spelt so differently when they sound the same? Why do words like cough,bough, through and enough look the same but sound so different?
Among the suggestions are these:
- drop the silent 'e' in words like give or have
- drop the silent b in words like thumb and dumb
- spell all gue endings as simply 'g' - catalog
- use 'y' instead of 'ey' in words like monkey
- when 'ch' or 'ph' are pronounced as 'k or 'f', as in the words 'stomach' and 'photograph' make the change.
George Bernard Shaw, a famous writer showed how silly some spelling . I had to subjcet the subject to a series of tests in his subjects .
Fighting Talk! They're words we use daily... but have bloodthirsty origins
Some of the most harmless sounding words and phrases - 'best man', 'baffle', 'braille' and 'mayonnaise', for example - can be traced back to the bloody battlefields of centuries ago.
A new book on the military origins of words reveals those with the most unexpected provenance...
Who do you think you are kidding? Our favourite expressions are from British Army slang
OLD FOGEY Before 'foggy' had any meteorological applications, the term was used for anything or anyone bloated, flaccid or unhealthy. In British Army slang of the mid-18th century a 'foggy' or a 'fogey' was an invalid soldier or one so old that he was restricted to garrison duties.
HAVOC Originally rooted in the Anglo-Saxon word for a hawk, 'havoc' was also a cry raised on the battlefield calling for unlimited slaughter. In the reign of Richard II (1377-99), the cry was outlawed under pain of death - by beheading - for those who raised or answered it. SPRUCE Prussia was formerly known in England as 'Pruce' or 'Spruce', and the reputation of the Prussian military for attention to detail gave rise to the English word. The erect posture of the officer corps also gave its name to the spruce tree, as it grew straight, tall and uniform of foliage. BRAILLE In 1819, a young French artillery officer called Captain Charles Barbier de la Sierra became frustrated by the difficulty and dangers of trying to read orders at night without lighting a lantern and attracting enemy fire. He devised a code of embossed night-writing, which failed to attract interest in military circles. However, Louis Braille (1809-52), a teacher at the French National Institute for Blind Children, saw the potential for Barbier's system of dot-clusters to revolutionise texts for the blind, which until then had been raised letters.
Smelling the bouquet or a deadly weapon
GRAPE In the 12th century, a grape was a hooked weapon that was used to find openings in joints of armour and gouge away at the flesh. During peacetime, grapes were found to be ideal for harvesting 'wineberries', as they were then known, before the weapon's name transferred to the fruit. CUT TO THE QUICK Originally to be 'cut to the quick' meant that one had received a hefty sword blow that cut through the armour and into the flesh beneath. UPSHOT To a medieval archer the 'upshot' was the final arrow fired in a competition, specifically in the shoot-off between two tied parties. The umpire's decision to call for such a tie-breaker was proclaimed with the cry of 'Jeu parti!' - 'game divided', which evolved into 'jeopardy'. DEADLINE During the American Civil War, the Confederaterun Prisoner of War camp at Andersonville, Georgia, had a 'dead line' some distance from the stockade wall and any prisoner seen crossing it was assumed to be trying to escape and was shot dead. The camp was open for only 13 months, from February 1864 to March 1865, but suffered a death rate of 1,200 inmates per month. Press coverage of the camp's commanding officer, a Swiss mercenary called Henry Witz, brought 'deadline' into general use in the late 19th century. PAY THROUGH THE NOSE Nose-slitting was once a common punishment for theft or non-payment of fines, and there are many references to the socalled Nose Tax extracted by ninth-century Norse raiders from the northern parts of the UK. Those who did not pay had their noses slit up each nostril to encourage them to save up next time. It also made it very easy for returning raiders to identify previous non-payers. COLD FEET Properly called Immersion Syndrome, trench foot was rife among World War I troops, caused by long periods standing around in cold and muddy water. It was painful and debilitating, but also a sure ticket to hospital, and those keen not to be shot at would endure the pain until just before a major offensive, reporting to the medical officer at the very last minute. MAYONNAISE After a long siege in 1756, French forces under the Duc de Richelieu ousted the British from Port Mahon on the Spanish island of Minorca. The siege had been protracted and the blockade so successful that the Duc's chef was hard pressed to come up with a victory banquet. But he did the best he could and dressed the salad with a new sauce, which he christened 'Mahonaise' after the port.
Happiest day of your life or a traumatic affair
BEST MAN Back in the days when brides were kidnapped and forced into marriage, the groom needed the best swordsman around to guard his back as he made off with his bride. Today's best men appear to have got off lightly with a speech. POISON DWARF Originally coined by World War I German troops to describe enemy troops whom they preferred to keep at a distance. The 51st Highlanders and the Black Watch both claim to be the Poison Dwarves. However, the Germans were actually referring to the diminutive yet dangerous Gurkhas.
GO BALLISTIC American military slang from the late Sixties, which originally applied to a missile whose guidance system had malfunctioned - leaving the projectile in free flight and fall, at the mercy of the laws of ballistics. The term shifted to mean those acting irrationally, who suddenly flew into a rage. BASTARD Derives from 'bast' or 'bat', alternative names for the kind of pack-saddle used in the baggage trains that followed an army on the move. This saddle opened out into a crude bed for nights on the trail. A child conceived on a 'bast', and thus unlikely to be the issue of a sanctified union, was called a 'batard' in French and in English a 'bastard'. TAKE (SOMEONE) DOWN A PEG OR TWO The height at which a warship's identifying flags flew was dictated by a series of pegs at the foot of the mast, and maritime etiquette demanded a junior ship 'dip' her colours in the presence of, say, an admiral's ship. The expression was commonly employed metaphorically by the late 1500s. SARCASM Based on the Greek 'sarkasmos' or 'flesh-tearing', this was first used on the ancient battlefields to describe a demented and withering attack, involving much hacking and slashing at the flesh of the other party. By the late 16th century, the term was being used in English to describe a withering verbal attack. UNDERMINE The main objective of any besieging force attacking a castle or walled city was to breach the walls, but there was often a moat in place to make it impossible to place mines against the wall. So attackers had to start their tunnels some way distant from the walls and burrow under the foundations to try to weaken or breach the walls from below.
Baffling behaviour is founded from a knight hung upside down
BAFFLE Has its roots in the French baffler and the Italian beffare, meaning 'mockery'. It appeared in English in the 16th century to describe the public humiliation of a knight, who was hung upside-down for the peasantry to ill-treat. After being battered, swung and mocked the victim was disoriented when set down. RANDOM
Based on the German 'rand', meaning 'rim', 'edge' or 'outer limit', 16th-century English created 'random' to describe a horse or man running at the outer limit of capability (i.e. as fast as possible), or a gun firing at its maximum elevation to achieve the outer limit of its achievable range. It was the artillery usage which gave rise to the modern meaning, since all accuracy was sacrificed in the interest of range and the shot fell haphazardly.
FIGHTING TALK: The Military Origins of Everyday Words And Phrases, by Graeme Donald. Published by Osprey £9.99.
www.allwords.com an on-line dictioary with multi-lingual translations to and from Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish. Includes crossword puzzles and other features
Many of the above are useful to teachers, have links or teaching resources. Also see - www.newwriting.britishcouncil.org/teachers references specifically for teachers sorted/arranaged by issues and themes.
www.writingcourse.eu writing department of The Learning Curve with a growing number of articles and references
'Chip shop owner battered man' and 'For sale: 83 Ford Grandad' - a hilarious new book reveals the worst misprint howlers. By Martin Toseland
Ironically, with increased use of computer 'spell-checkers', unintentionally funny misprints on restaurant menus, in books, newspapers and adverts are actually becoming more common. MARTIN TOSELAND has collected some of the most amusing for a new book. . .
Arthur Kitchener was seriously burned Saturday afternoon when he came in contact with a high-voltage wife.(Surrey Advertiser) 'Ha..ha!... should read.'..high-voltage wire'.
Just for fun, see if you can spot the mistakes and find the correct meaning.
News in brief
The Irish Stammerers' Association will hold a seminar will hold a seminar entitled 'Aids for Stammerers' tonight. (The Irish Press)
People in Preston ward are invited to a meeting at 7.15pm tonight in St Mary's Church Hall, Brighton, to meet councillors and beat police officers. (Evening Argus)
The skeleton was believed to be that of a Saxon worrier. (Express and Echo)
Chance to win
Concert promoters MCP have donated three pairs of tickets for the Princes Hall show. All you have to do is answer the following question: With which band did Midge (Ure) have his first number one hit in 1976? Answers to: Ultravox Competition, The News, 4, High Street, Camberley, Surrey.
The strike leaders had called a meeting that was to have been held in a bra near the factory, but it was too small to hold them all. (South London Press)
One man was admitted to hospital suffering from buns. (Bristol Gazette)
Douglas Bader pub
A new public house at Martlesham, near Ipswich, has been named after Sir Douglas Bader, the RAF's legless wartime hero. (Daily Telegraph)
Londonderry Development Commission plans to spend about £24,000 on improving the standard of street fighting in the city centre and a number of housing estates. (Belfast Telegraph)
Cash plea to aid dyslexic cildren. (South Wales Evening Post)
Police in Hawick yesterday called off a search for a 20-year-old man who is believed to have frowned after falling into the swollen River Teviot. (The Scotsman)
Winners in the homemade claret section were Mrs Davis (fruity, well-rounded), Mrs Rayner (fine colour and full-bodied), and Miss Ogle-Smith (slightly acid, but should improve if laid down). (Leicestershire parish magazine)
In our report of the Welsh National Opera's Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, the computer spellchecker did not recognise the term WNO (Welsh National Opera). A slip of the finger caused it to be replaced with the word 'winos'. (The Guardian)
An item which was deservedly appreciated and encored was Chopin's Pollonaise 'Sea Minor'. (Wexford Free Press)
Life and death
The first aid treatment for a broken rib is to apply a tight bandage after you have made your patient expire. (Manchester Evening News)
Hooper - Wilfred Harry. Loving memories of my dearest husband who passed away 15 June. It's a lovely life without you, and sad has been each day. (Northants Evening Telegraph)
Mr S. Butters for reasons of ill-health, is permanently discontinuing widow-cleaning. (Cambridgeshire Times)
Corrections
Due to an error in transmission we stated in an inquest report on Saturday that Mrs Susannah Vincent, of Porth, was found dead with a bottle in her left hand and a plastic bag over her head. This should have read 'a Bible in her left hand'. We apologise for any distress caused to the family. (Swindon Evening Advertiser)
Error: The Observer wishes to apologise for a typesetting error in our Tots and Toddlers advertising feature last week which led to Binswood Nursery School being described as serving 'children casserole' instead of chicken casserole. (Leamington Spa Observer)
Due to a printing error, a story in last week's Gazette referred to athletics coach Billy Hodgins as an 'old waster'. This should, of course, have read 'old master'. We apologise to Mr Hodgins for any embarrassment caused.
The authorities at Ongar library have received a number of complaints about a card in the index file which read: SEX: SEE LIBRARIAN. This has been changed. The new entry reads: SEX: FOR SEX, ASK AT THE DESK. (Eastern Gazette)
In a recent report of a competition held at one of Pontin's holiday camps it was inadvertently stated that it was for 'elephant' grandmothers instead of elegant grandmothers. We apologise to Mrs Helen P-, who gained third place, for any embarrassment this may have caused. (Stockport Advertiser)
Adverts
Children shot for Christmas in the home - Regent Photographic Studios. (Morecambe Visitor)
For sale: 83 Ford Grandad. (Express and Star, Wolverhampton)
Lady, 65, reasonable looks, medium build, 65, likes short walks, outings, the occasional drunk. (Westmorland Gazette)
Airedales - house-trained, safe with children, best protection against burglars or ladies living alone. (Dog World)
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council: Crematorium assistant required. The Council operates a no-smoking policy. (Sheffield Star)
Weddings
The bride was very upset when one of her little attendants accidentally stepped on her brain and tore it. (Kent Messenger)
On Monday, Councillor Thompson's son will be married to the eldest daughter of Councillor James. The members of the Corporation are invited to the suspicious event. (Suffolk newspaper)
Sports
The mystery fan behind the takeover bid for Port Vale today said he will pull out of the deal if his identity is revealed. It is understood Stone-based businessman Peter Jackson wants to remain anonymous until the contract is signed and sealed. (Staffordshire Sentinel)
Names
Letchworth Spiritualist Church. An evening of Clairvoyance with Mr Deadman Saturday, July 27, at 7pm. (Stevenage Express)
Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness, from Lake Superior State University - USA
Green - The ubiquitous “green” and all of its variables, such as “going green”, “building green”, “greening”, “green technology”, “green solutions” and more, drew the most attention from those who sent in nominations this year.
Carbon footprint/carbon offsetting - “It is now considered fashionable for everyone, tree hugger or lumberjack alike, to pay money to questionable companies to 'offset’ their own 'carbon footprint’. What a scam! Get rid of it immediately!” Ginger Hunt, London, England.
Maverick - “The constant repetition of this word for months before the US election diluted whatever meaning it previously had. Even the comic offshoot 'mavericky’ was terribly overused. A minimum five-year banishment of both words is suggested so they will not be available during the next federal election.” Matthew Mattila, Green Bay, Wisconsin.
First Dude - “Skateboard English is not an appropriate way to refer to the spouse of a high-ranking public official.” Paul Ruschmann, Canton, Michigan.
Bailout - “Use of emergency funds to remove toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets is not a bailout. When your cousin calls you from jail in the middle of the night, he wants a bailout.” Ben Green, State College, Pennsylvania.
Wall Street/Main Street - “It’s simply over-used. No 'serious’ discussion of the crisis can take place without some political figure lamenting the fact that the trouble on Wall Street is affecting 'folks’ on Main Street.” Charles Harrison, Aiken, South Carolina.
Monkey - “Especially on the Internet, many people seem to think they can make any boring name sound more attractive just by adding the word 'monkey’ to it. Do a search to find the latest. It is no longer funny.” Rogier Landman, Somerville, Massachusetts.
<3 – This is supposed to resemble a heart, or stand for the word “love”. Used when sending those important text messages to loved ones. “Just say the word instead of making me turn my head sideways and wondering what 'less than three’ means.” Andrea Estrada, Chicago.
Icon/iconic - “Everyone and everything cannot be 'iconic’. Can’t we switch to 'legendary’ or 'famous for’? In our entertainment-driven culture, it seems everyone in show business is 'iconic’ for some reason or another. “John Flood, Bray, Wicklow, Ireland.
Game changer - “It’s game OVER for this cliché, which gets overused in the news media, political arenas and in business.” Cynthia, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
Staycation - “Occurrences of this word are going up with gas prices. 'Vacation’ does not mean 'travel’, nor does travel always involve vacation. Let’s send this word on a slow boat to nowhere.” Dan Muldoon, Omaha, Nebraska.
Desperate search - “Every time the news can’t find something intelligent to report, they start on a 'desperate search’ for someone, somewhere.” Rick A. Hyatt, Saratoga, Wyoming.
Not so much - “Do I like concise writing? Yes. Do I like verbose clichés? Not so much.” David W. Downing, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Winner of five nominations - “It hasn’t won an Academy Award yet. It has only been NOMINATED!” John Bohenek, Abilene, Texas.
It’s that time of year again - “When is it not 'that time of year again’? From Valentine’s sales to year-end charity letters, invitations to summer picnics and Christmas parties, it’s 'that time’ of year again. Just get to the point of the solicitation, invitation, and newsletter and cut out six useless and annoying words.” Kathleen Brosemer of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Britain declares war on words that snuck into our skedule...
Mark Easton is the BBC home affairs editor. He spent some of his childhood in Winchester, apparently, not Wisconsin. And his job seems unlikely to offer extensive travel opportunities to the United States.
Yet the other night he referred to ‘specialty shops’ (note the missing i) on the Ten O’Clock News. The rest of his report must have been drowned out by the screaming and spluttering of thousands of newspaper readers, who share my horror at the way British English is being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mindless Americanisms.
My article in last week’s Review (Say No To The Get-Go) brought forth a huge response, almost all of it supportive. Most gratifyingly, very few of the emails began: ‘Hi Matthew.’
Taking liberties: Have Brits lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and America's?
I believe language thrives on give and take, but with the United States it is all take. Americans rarely hear any of our words, let alone adopt them. But we are so overwhelmed by everything American that the British have lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and theirs. This is the reality of cultural imperialism.
Easton was not even speaking good American. ‘Specialty stores’ would be far more normal in the United States. ‘Speciality’ (with the i) is a lovely word, full of rolling syllables. His version is the kind of usage that comes out of the mid-Atlantic and needs to be dropped back there, from a great height.
And there is a great deal of other useless baggage that needs to be dumped along with it. You offered hundreds more examples. Top of the long hate-list was probably ‘Can I get a coffee?’ (and these days it probably would be an overpriced, overmarketed American coffee rather than a nice cup of tea).
‘Can I get a coffee?’ was top of the hate list
The answer, says Louisa C., is no ‘. . . unless you are planning to clamber over the counter and start fiddling with the steam spouts’.
It was closely followed by ‘I’m good’ as opposed to ‘I’m very well, thank you’. This phrase is even more infuriating when used as an alternative to ‘No, thanks’, in declining a second helping. ‘I just want to yell, “NO, you are NOT good – you might be really, really BAD,” ’ wailed Patsy Holden.
Other leading hates include ‘snuck’ as the past tense of ‘sneak’ and ‘dove’ as the past tense of ‘dive’; driver’s license instead of driving licence; overly rather than over; autopsy for post-mortem; burglarized instead of burgled; filling out forms instead of filling them in; fries for chips; chips for crisps; and food to go as opposed to take away.
There is also period instead of full stop; and of course ‘Hi, guys’, guys in this case being of either sex. These last two usages are associated with Tony Blair, which seems to redouble the irritation factor.
Not everyone suffers in silence. Martin Levin of London E4, says he keeps emailing Radio 2 to remind them there is no k in ‘schedule’, as does Keith Rodgerson, whose verbal enemies list is so long he can’t have time for much else other than letters of complaint.
Let battle commence: A war of words has been declared between the British form of the English language and Americanisms
It includes airplane for aeroplane, pharmacist for chemist, advisory for warning, and calling McDonalds a restaurant, which is a related but subtly different complaint.
The land is also full of ‘gotten’ haters – understandable because it is an extremely ugly word. This is a complex area, though, in that it was formerly used in Scotland and can be found in the works of Sir Walter Scott. However, it was described as ‘archaic and affected’ in 1926, so has no business making a comeback.
And there is widespread loathing of the verbalisation of nouns: incentivizing and all that rot. David Barton of Kent says he used to work for an American company that decided to ‘sunset’ a department.
In sport, Bob Carr winces when his team suffer an American ‘loss’ far more than when they go down to an English defeat.
Wayne Bryant says that, if he were still playing competitive sport and was told ‘you’re ON the team ON the weekend’, he would refuse to turn up. Gordon Spalding adds ‘Can we touch base?’ to the collection of ludicrous baseball metaphors.
There is a simple answer to this. There should be a blanket ban on references to baseball in British conversation unless the perpetrator can explain the infield fly rule, which makes the lbw law look a doddle.
There is a more general solution: a growing understanding that Britain has a language of its own. It may or may not be better than American, but it’s different and it’s ours, part of what makes us distinctive. People do care. It’s time for those with some responsibility for the language to start caring, too.
It happened last month, shortly after the first cuckoo. I heard it, I swear I heard it. The first get-go of spring. It was on the BBC Breakfast programme on May 11: a presenter was wittering, and distinctly said that something-or-other had been clear 'from the get-go'.
From the what?
Actually, I know all about the get-go or, worse still, the git-go. It's an ugly Americanism, meaning 'from the start' or 'from the off'. It adds nothing to Britain's language but it's here now, like the grey squirrel, destined to drive out native species and ravage the linguistic ecosystem.
The British have been borrowing words from America for at least two centuries
We have to be realistic: languages grow. The success of English comes from its adaptability and the British have been borrowing words from America for at least two centuries.
Old buffers like me have always complained about the process, and we have always been defeated. In 1832, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was fulminating about the 'vile and barbarous' new adjective that had just arrived in London. The word was 'talented'. It sounds innocuous enough to our ears, as do 'reliable', 'influential' and 'lengthy', which all inspired loathing when they first crossed the Atlantic.
But the process gathered speed with the arrival of cinema and television in the 20th Century. In the 21st it seems unstoppable. The U.S.-dominated computer industry, with its 'licenses', 'colors' and 'favorites' is one culprit. That ties in with mobile phones that keep 'dialing' numbers that are always 'busy'.
My dictionary (a mere 12 years old) defines 'geek' as an American circus freak or, in Australia, 'a good long look'. We needed a word to describe someone obsessively interested in computer technology. It seems a shame there was never any chance of coining one ourselves.
Nowadays, people have no idea where American ends and English begins. And that's a disaster for our national self-esteem. We are in danger of subordinating our language to someone else's - and with it large aspects of British life.
Yet no one seems to care. The stern old type of English teacher has died out and many newspapers cannot now afford 'Prodnoses', the last-line-of-defence sub-editors who used to guard the language with a thick pencil.
Sometimes, the language can be improved by the imports. The British would never be able even to define the deficit had we not adopted the American billion (a thousand million) to replace our old hardly used billion (a million million).
I accept that estate agents find it easier to sell fancy apartments rather than boring old flats. And it's right that our few non-passenger trains should carry freight not goods, because that's a more accurate description of the contents.
But the process is non-selective and almost wholly one-way. And it works very strangely. Almost all the parts of a car have different names in America, yet there is no sign of hood replacing bonnet, or the trunk supplanting the boot.
Meanwhile, the most improbable areas of activity are terminally infected. Take the law. Ask any lawyer and they will explain: witnesses in British courts do not testify, they give evidence; nor do they 'take the stand' to do this, they go into the witness box. They do things the American way in media reports of court cases, though - day after day.
We are witnessing a transatlantic takeover in politics as well. This month, Britain acquired a National Security Council. Last year, it gained a Supreme Court. There is talk that the House of Lords will be renamed the Senate.
It also used to be understood that, while American politicians 'ran' for office, British politicians always 'stood'. I liked that: it implied a pleasing reticence. Now in Britain both words are used interchangeably and in this month's General Election candidates stood and ran at the same time. No wonder they kept falling flat on their faces.
Then take sport, where Britain's national tastes are totally different from those of the Americans. I happen to belong to the .0001 per cent (approx) of the British population who count as baseball fans. This makes it even more offensive to me when politicians parrot phrases such as 'three strikes and you're out' although they haven't got the foggiest idea what it means.
Technical baseball terms are everywhere. We constantly hear about people 'stepping up to the plate'. For some weird reason, cricket coaches are especially fond of this one. And ideas keep coming from the baseball position of 'left field'. Wouldn't silly mid-on be more appropriate?
And so, hi guys, hel-LO, wake up and smell the coffee. We need to distinguish between the normal give-and-take of linguistic development and being overrun - through our own negligence and ignorance - by rampant cultural imperialism.
We are all guilty. In the weeks after 9/11 (or 11/9, as I prefer to call it), British journalists, and I was one of them, solemnly reported that the planes had been hijacked by men waving box-cutters, even though no one in Britain knew what a box-cutter was. Very few of us bothered to explain that these were what we have always called Stanley knives.
But it is time to fight back. The battle is almost uncertainly unwinnable but I am convinced there are millions of intelligent Britons out there who wince as often as I do every time they hear a witless Americanism introduced into British discourse.
Stand up and say you care. Feel free to write with your favourite horrors. Come out of the closet. Or better still, the cupboard.
Matthew Engel is a columnist on the Financial Times. Send your pet hate Americanisms to englishincrisis@gmail.com.
www.allwords.com an on-line dictioary with multi-lingual translations to and from Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish. Includes crossword puzzles and other features
Many of the above are useful to teachers, have links or teaching resources. Also see - www.newwriting.britishcouncil.org/teachers references specifically for teachers sorted/arranaged by issues and themes.
Verbal fillers or tics are the guilty pleasures of the communication world – all those useless, fatuous repetitive pieces of nonsense that we belch out the moment there is the slightest pause or hesitation in our stream of speech. Sometimes we start with them, often we end with them. Occasionally we use them instead of speech altogether, as in ‘Right, okay, well, basically, you know, I sort of, actually, kind of – if you like…innit?’
Sign in a shop window in Shanghai. 
Who do you think you are kidding? Our favourite expressions are from 
Smelling the bouquet or a deadly weapon
Happiest day of your life or a traumatic affair
Baffling behaviour is founded from a knight hung upside down
Arthur Kitchener was seriously burned Saturday afternoon when he came in contact with a high-voltage wife.
Winners in the homemade claret section were Mrs Davis (fruity, well-rounded), Mrs Rayner (fine colour and full-bodied), and 
Taking liberties: Have Brits lost their grasp on the difference between our form of English and America's?
Let battle commence: A war of words has been declared between the British form of the English language and Americanisms
By 
The British have been borrowing words from America for at least two centuries 
