Posted on 02/07/2011 5:08:46 AM PST by NCjim
After mangling our language for years, Americans are complaining about the invasion of traditional British lingo, says Kath Hinton.
New Yorkers always fall for a nice English accent: whenever my well-spoken sister-in-law visits, they trill at her flowing diction and faultless vowels. Coming from Liverpool, I have a trickier time. In fact, I stopped ordering butter after three waiters in one smart restaurant failed to grasp my pronunciation. "Bootta! Bootta!" I pleaded, while my American friends wept with joy at my embarrassment.
Now, however, it is the words we Anglo-Saxons use, not how we say them, that is causing a stir. After mangling our language for years, Americans are complaining about their own dialect being polluted by "Britishisms".
New Yorker Ben Yagoda, a professor at Delaware University, is studying the invasion of traditional British lingo. He has set up a website to keep track of the wicked, uniquely British words such as "kerfuffle" or "amidst" that are creeping into everyday American usage.
Yagoda's biggest objection, he tells me, is to words for which there are "perfectly good American equivalents, like 'bits' for 'parts' and 'on holiday' instead of 'on vacation' ". They are, he says, "purely pretentious".
Of course, British English has been under assault from this side of the Atlantic for centuries. America's most notorious linguistic anarchist, Noah Webster, decided more than 200 years ago that the English couldn't spell, decreeing that theatre should become theater; favour, favor; jewellery, jewelry; and so on.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Talk about someone sounding pretentious, have you ever heard the more than average Conservative Rush Limbaugh pronounce 'schedule'?
My favo[u]rite:
Room Service:
“Morny. Ruin sorbees”
Guest:
“Sorry, I thought I dialed room-service”
Room Service:
“Rye..Ruin sorbees..morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??”
Guest:
“Uh..yes..I’d like some bacon and eggs”
Room Service:
“Ow July den?”
Guest:
“What??”
Room Service:
“Ow July den?...pry,boy, pooch?”
Guest:
“Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please.”
Room Service:
“Ow July dee bayhcem...crease?”
Guest:
“Crisp will be fine.”
Room Service:
“Hokay. An San toes?”
Guest:
“What???”
Room Service:
“San toes. July San toes?”
Guest:
“Uhh... I don’t think so”
Room Service:
“No? Judo one toes??”
Guest:
“I feel really bad about this, but I don’t know what ‘judo one toes’ means.”
Room Service:
“Toes! toes!...why djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow singlish mopping we bother?”
Guest:
“Oh, English muffin!! I’ve got it! You were saying ‘Toast.’ Fine.” Yes, an English muffin will be fine.”
Room Service:
“We bother?”
Guest:
“No. Just put the bother on the side.”
Room Service:
“Wad?”
Guest:
“I mean butter...just put it on the side.”
Room Service:
“Copy?”
Guest:
“Sorry???”
Room Service:
“Copy...tea...mill?”
Guest:
“Yes. Coffee please, and that’s all.”
Room Service:
“One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem, tossy singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy....rye??”
Guest:
“Whatever you say.”
Room Service:
“Tendjewberrymud.”
Guest:
“You’re welcome.”
seperation = separation? ;)
It's fairly new to me but of course when one's senile, everything is.
The biggest English-speaking country in the world is India.
It is possible that in the future Americans and Brits will all be speaking “dialects” of proper English, which is the Indian version.
No kidding. I’ll take “gobsmacked” and “kerfuffle” any day of the week over “we be chillin” and “shiz.”
I believe Rush uses it as an over much continuing "funny", after all, he went to shool too.
I think it’s cute when Brits try to speak American...
Only someone with the palate of a goat could find those dishes comestible
My battery’s gone flat.
What? Did you run over it?
No, it’s gone flat - my car won’t start!
Oh! Your battery’s dead!
No... it never was alive.
Actually I’m a Jew of Latvian/Hungarian descent.
I personally don’t know any Americans who are angry about this.
That’s one of my favorites. :)
Only concerned with you people polluting our politics with your Islamophilia, Hoplophobia and general socialist one world globalism.
oik
I use bum over butt—it was passed down from my English mom. She’s been out of England so long though, she isn’t familiar with most of the British slang words they use now.
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