To hate Americanisms...?

Think about the money spent on copyediting books to allow for variations. Lots of investment in color versus colour, etc. What if that money were spent to encourage literacy in standardised English?

The sorts of variations I'm thinking of wouldn't be in anything they'd need copyediting out of.

I'm very happy with a situation where I write documentation and scientific papers in 'American/international' English but we can still have regional variations in language. I'll hear nowt said agin that!

That’s right. Brits now say rubbish, Americans say trash. Trash is actually the word brought over by the British colonists to the USA. There are people on Smith Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who speak a form of Elizabethan parlance, and they say trash.

A lot of the colonists were from Lincolnshire…John Smith was from Willoughby Lincolnshire, and so it looks like forms of Lincolnshire dialect influenced American English.

So maybe Americans speak a more historical form of English (from Lincolnshire) than the British do. You all are annoyed at yourselves! :-)

Think about the money spent on copyediting books to allow for variations. Lots of investment in color versus colour, etc. What if that money were spent to encourage literacy in standardised English?

I was travelling alone! About eight. We had conductors in those days. I just paid my fare entirely in ignorance of the notices relevance to me. Like the one about smocking on the upper deck. I couldn't understand why anyone would be sewing up there anyway. We weren't a smoking family.

I actually love how 'gotten' flows smoothly and builds a little 'n' bridge to the next word as opposed to that clumsy transition from the hard 't'😅 We say it without thinking in NI. I have to make a special effort to say 'got' and it feels completely wrong.

We should not overlook the fact that outside of the UK and, to an extent, mainland Europe, English is so widely spoken throughout the world as it is the language of north America.

It's also not bad English, although there is often a more eloquent choice than any tense of "get" when writing formally.

Thanks for the clarification. You are absolutely right. My point was more around not blaming everything on Americanisms rather than the language itself.

Gotten is neither bad English nor an Americanism. It is the original past tense of Get. At the time when America was being colonised by Brits everyone on either side of the Atlantic used Gotten. American English retained the suffix, British English gradually dropped it. I quite like to hear Gotten.

I'm pretty sure a number of other words and phrases cited here as annoying Americanisms are actually historical English that they stuck with, while we moved our vocabulary toward continental Europe and the Empire.

Presumably at some point you deduced its meaning from context? That's a normal part of language acquisition. So hopefully by the time you were old enough to travel alone you understood what it meant, as would most adults.

Reminds me of “do not alight from moving train”.

When I was small and caught the bus to school I never understood the sign which read "Please tender exact fare and state destination" and you can tell how that stuck. I wonder how many adults knew that sort of English. It wasn't in Oxford!

People do ignore the Académie Française (and the Real Academia Española) in common use.

Even in formal use, Quebec isn't afraid to make its own rulings. You could use "madame la ministre" or "la professeure" in Quebec since the 1970s, despite what the Académie said about feminised job titles.

The Académie said in 1990 that oignon should be spelled ognon, and apparently school children are finally taught that spelling, but I've never seen it on a menu or in a supermarket yet.

Where I am, I am "how" and "why' are interchangeable.

"I'm not going swimming today"
"How?"
"Because it's foo cold"

There is a place for standardisation and for local dialects.

Seems better to me to teach a standardised English and grammar so we can understand each other and invest in education.

I don't think anyone is saying that standardized English should not be taught and used widely - certainly in situations where everyone needs clear understanding like road signs they should be as simple, unambiguous and standard as possible.

But that still allows for local variation in many other contexts. Folk music of various types. Various crafts and trades.

And there are lots of variations in spelling and grammar which can be easily be comprehended by everyone. It doesn't really matter whether color is spelled like that or spelt colour. Multinational teams seem to manage to understand both US and U.K. pronunciations, as well as the ways in which other nationalities say English words.

So here is an example. In Lincolnshire dialect “while” means “until”

So, the signs for the level crossings said: “wait while lights show”
And, someone waited until the lights showed, and when the lights showed, they went across and were hit by a train.

The signs were changed: Stop when lights show.

So, local dialects….

That’s one of the arguments for standardisation of language and teaching uniform grammar and usage.

I’ll just say Google translate is rubbish for Latin. There is a long way to go.

So we should retain local sayings for the sake of nostalgia and family history. Hmm. I’m not sure that is as important as clear communication between people now. I mean the sayings can be recorded/written down for the usage of historians, etc, but if they disappear through the evolution of language, they disappear. That’s just evolution.

As i say, we fit all spell phonetically and tro di grammar rules komot di window.

If pipo don’t wan mek themselves understood, deh get dat choice. But dem be marginalising themselves.

And wetin be dis kettle for fish wey you speak

Seems better to me to teach a standardised English and grammar so we can understand each other and invest in education. About 14% of the world can’t read, and that’s a tragedy. It is one in three in sub Saharan Africa.

Yes, for academic writing, all those various styles are indeed silly.

But everyday spoken language is a different kettle of fish, and online language is another.

Written language tends to be more formal, at least among people who have enough education to produce it and to care about producing it. A lot of people don't read, so their spelling, grammar, and punctuation in written English are poor, and so is their comprehension. You can't force people to care when they can get by with the tools they have.

FYI, it's, "(Y'all) have a blessed day", if you want to convey the meaning you have in mind.

This.
If you said "Please may I have" in my local shops they'd think you were Hyacinth Bouquet 😄

@RitaIncognita I grew up in the 60s/70s. Speaking in local dialect other than at home or with friends was very much considered substandard and was definitely unacceptable.

Why is that sad? I’m genuinely curious

Because language is part of your history? There are phrases and expressions that remind me of my long dead grandparents. After most other memories have faded I can still clearly recall the way they spoke. I'm not suggesting that these things need to be in common use, but it's worthwhile to maintain some connection to the language of our past.

I sadly don’t see the Babelfish coming to us anytime soon, to paraphrase Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Oh I don't know. I don't see why google translate etc couldn't be trained on all sorts of dialects of English as well as other languages.

As the world globalises, English will get more standardised. Hopefully it leads to more standardised grammar, spelling and clearer communication.

I think (hope, even) that a fairly standard 'global English' will emerge. I'd predict it will be a somewhat simplified version of standard American English.

But that in no way precludes the continued existence and indeed proliferation of other forms of English. These dialects can continue to be used, in much the same way as minority languages are, but perhaps with more cross-cultural enrichment.