Unstoppable rise of American English: Study shows young Britons copying US writing style

The future of written English will owe more to Hollywood films than Dickens or Shakespeare, if the findings of a study into children’s writing are anything to go by.

The analysis of 74,000 short stories found that their written work was littered with Americanisms, exclamation marks and references to celebrities.

Researchers who looked at the entries to a national competition found they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash can, sidewalk, candy, sneakers, soda, cranky and flashlight.

The stories, written by pupils aged seven to 13, show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo.

‘Smart’ is now often used for ‘clever’ and ‘cranky’ for ‘irritable’.

Celebrity culture also has a powerful influence on children’s work, with Simon Cowell and Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi among the famous names cropping up repeatedly.

But pupils are let down by basic spelling, punctuation and grammar, according to the study by Oxford University Press, which looked at the entries to BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition.

Children stumbled over simple spellings such as ‘does’ and ‘clothes’ and struggled to use the past tense correctly, often saying ‘rised’ instead of ‘rose’ or ‘thinked’ instead of ‘thought’.

Researchers also found that punctuation was underused, especially semi-colons and speech marks. Some did not know how to use capital letters.

However, exclamation marks were overused. Researchers found 35,171 examples in total, with some young writers using five at a time.

The study of more than 31million words will be compared with future research to see how written language evolves. Popular US fiction such as the Twilight vampire novels and films is thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.

If I was in dire need of medical care I would be too, but attending a hospital does not need to be a "dire" need. Many illnesses are chronic and I dont know what the situation is in the US, but here in the UK hospitals do tend to specialise. My wife had a tendon injury in her hand. She went to the local hospital as a first point of call, but had the operation in a specialist one a couple of hundred miles away.

No, sorry, I dont buy this explanation of the use of definite articles. Not in this context anyway.

I think HiTech RedNeck had a better explanation of the difference back in post #63: "I get a sense that the definite article is omitted when the place being gone to, or stayed in, is viewed as a broad social institution, rather than a place of personal choosing." We Americans don't think of hospitals as representing a broad social institution. Those are places where various physical/mental ailments are treated, and where some research takes place (at least at larger hospitals). The activities at a hospital are too varied to be lumped together as a social institution (to the American mind, anyway).

Here in the US, clinics specialize. A clinic can be a stand-alone operation, or can operate within a hospital facility. Hospitals typically house a variety of clinics. A hospital can specialize in a certain type of care, e.g. cancer care, but the way hospitals are classified is on the level of care available at the emergency room. Level 1 trauma care is the best available.

“American preference for “flu shot” explains the high level of firearms violence in their society.”

Total BS...the ‘high level of firearms violence’ only occurs in cities that ban firearms...Washington DC, New York City, Chicago. Even your ‘Bobbies’ carry guns now because of the high level of firearms violence in GB...where firearms are banned! And over on that side of the pond some would just as soon blow up the place with bombs. In the late 70’s I could walk right up to the front door at #10 Downing Street, and I have. Now a person can’t even set foot anywhere on Downing Street...car bombs, you know...

“...the flu vaccine contains no live virus, and therefore, cannot cause the flu...”

The nasal flu vaccine, FluMist, is made with weakened live virus.

Conclusive link now admitted: swine flu vaccine causes chronic nervous system disorders

Saturday, October 08, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

The nation of Finland has now openly admitted that the swine flu vaccine “conclusively” causes narcolepsy, a chronic nervous system disorder that makes people uncontrollably fall asleep. The Finnish government, in acknowledging this link, says it will pay for “lifetime medical care” for 79 children who have been irreparably damaged by the swine flu vaccine. (http://news.yahoo.com/finland-vows-care-narcolepsy-kids-had-swine-flu...)

Narcolepsy isn’t the only side effect now admitted to be caused by swine flu vaccines: 76 of the 79 children also suffered hallucinations and “paralyzing physical collapses,” say Finnish researchers.

Remarkably, even though the link between swine flu vaccines and permanent neurological damage in children is now openly admitted by the Finnish government, there is absolutely no talk about halting the utterly unscientific ritual of injecting children with flu vaccines in the first place. Not only are flu vaccines harmful to children (as is now admitted), but flu vaccines don’t even work! A simple daily dose of vitamin D would do far more to halt influenza than any vaccine.

The U.S. government, of course, still refuses to admit vaccines cause any harm whatsoever. Both the government and the vaccine industry continue to push the fabricated fairy tale that “vaccines are safe and effective,” meaning they harm no one but help everyone. Yet the truth is practically the polar opposite: Vaccines harm countless millions of children each year in ways that are usually never linked to vaccines (mild mental retardation, suppressed immune function, learning disabilities, etc.). At the same time, vaccines are all but worthless at preventing infections. Even the vaccine industry’s own research shows that flu shots only work on 1 out of 100 people, meaning they’re completely useless for 99 percent of those who take them.

Instead of admitting the truth that vaccines cause autism, the U.S. government has conspired with vaccine manufacturers to create a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program which essentially pays “hush money” to parents of permanently harmed children to make sure they cannot bring their claims of harm to federal courts

Even worse, the medical establishment — which is heavily influenced if not downright dominated by pharmaceutical interests — absolutely refuses to advocate vitamin D as a flu prevention nutrient. Vitamin D is safe, effective and affordable. It’s available without a prescription and could save literally billions of dollars in national health care costs for just pennies per day per person. So why won’t the medical establishment promote vitamin D? Precisely because it would cost the industry billions of dollars in lost profits from all the sickness and degenerative disease that is prevented by vitamin D.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.