To ask if do (or will) miss British English?

[daimbarsatemydogsbone]

License plate - Number plate
Driver's license - Driving licence
Windshield - Windscreen
Envision - Envisage
Bring (instead of take)

So much British English is being replaced with the US versions.

UK courtroom dramas now feature lawyers shouting "objection!" and judges saying "sustained" - something that never actually happens in UK courts but the writers have all grown up watching US dramas and films.

I know it's inevitable but I celebrated the little differences - they seem to become fewer and fewer each year.

@Anonymous48, using "bathroom" to avoid saying loo, WC, toilet or whatever is mealy-mouthed: it's just a fact. Likewise the bad English on Duolingo is bad English, again: it's a simple statement of fact. You don't seem to understand the terminology you're using.

using "bathroom" to avoid saying loo, WC, toilet or whatever is mealy-mouthed

"Lavatory" is also essentially a euphemism, so arguably just as "mealy-mouthed." What makes it preferable to bathroom, especially considering that in the US, lavatory means sink?

License plate - Number plate
Driver's license - Driving licence
Windshield - Windscreen
Envision - Envisage
Bring (instead of take)

I am swithering over a few of these.

[quote GoodPrincessWenceslas]@Anonymous48, using "bathroom" to avoid saying loo, WC, toilet or whatever is mealy-mouthed: it's just a fact. Likewise the bad English on Duolingo is bad English, again: it's a simple statement of fact. You don't seem to understand the terminology you're using.[/quote]
Your "facts" are not facts.

Americans don't say bathroom instead of loo (which is itself a slang word, not a real word) because they're "afraid to speak frankly or straightforwardly" - the definition of mealy-mouthed. They say it because it's the accepted term where they live and what they grew up hearing it called. It is the correct usage.

What is your definition of bad English? Any terms that you personally don't use?

Even when there's no bath in it?

English has lots of quirks like this. Politicians in the UK have open door days for constituents called a "surgery." I don't think they are performing random appendectomies in there.

@phoenixrosehere

*I find it hilarious that threads of this kind are always littered with sniping at English people and all the wrongs of the British Empire etc. We seem to attract a lot of hate and obviously some of it is justified due to ignorance and history but as individuals we mostly haven’t control over the bad things done in our name.

Neither do many Americans and the different ways and dialects we speak that you want to be annoyed over. It’s always pointed out where it stems from along with other British people pointing out that many so-called Americanism are directly from here but it’s seemingly always ignored or turns into those ridiculous Americans enforcing their language on us which of course is going to lead to pointing out British history where they did the same thing to other countries with English.

You claimed I am annoyed. I didn’t say I’m annoyed. I am not annoyed. I feel a bit sad and wistful as I have said many times. As I have also accepted, this is a symptom of aging and a reminder of my own mortality.

Why does everything have to be a binary war between two entrenched opposites these days?

Why does everything have to be a binary war between two entrenched opposites these days?

Why do you see it that way? Two entrenched opposites?

@phoenixrosehere

I honestly wouldn't bother. However the OP tries to dress this up as some sort of personal tragedy, they're actually expressing ghastly xenophobia. Makes me ashamed to be English.

ice tea,..............no, iced tea, too lazy to say ed

corn beef,............no, corned beef, too lazy to say ed

it looks like it's going to rain,....................no, where I live it looks as if it's going to rain. It looks like a noun but it looks as if a verb.

I could care less,.............what, don't you mean that you care so little about a person or a topic that you actually couldn't care less? In that case why not manage to say the n't? Laziness?

Honestly, OP, if you have been around MN for any length of time, you will know that this is a somewhat divisive topic, and always descends, to a certain extent, to xenophobia. It was bound to develop a flavor of "entrenched opposites."

Because these threads always go the same way: a number of posters having an interesting discussion about language and the many historical and cultural reasons why American English is the way it is; peppered with a handful of idiots who pop up to declare that American English is wrong and that Americans - 350 million people living across 50 states - are rude, lazy, ignorant, and never say please or thank-you. Which results in those posters who are American, live in America, or have American friends and relatives they love quite rightly getting a bit snippy. Especially when they’ve patiently pointed out that many of the examples offered aren’t Americanisms in the first place, or only feature in some US regional dialects.

[quote 50ShadesOfCatholic]@phoenixrosehere

I honestly wouldn't bother. However the OP tries to dress this up as some sort of personal tragedy, they're actually expressing ghastly xenophobia. Makes me ashamed to be English.[/quote]
For pity's sake - this constant nasty accusation of xenophobia is wearing, unpleasant, reductive, ill-informed and plain stupid.

Why does anything other than saying "The English people, their language, customs history and behaviour is unacceptable always has been and every one of them is crap" suddenly "ghastly xenophobia".

For fucks sake!

I am not the xenophobe here.

@upinaballoon

ice tea,..............no, iced tea, too lazy to say ed

corn beef,............no, corned beef, too lazy to say ed

it looks like it's going to rain,....................no, where I live it looks as if it's going to rain. It looks like a noun but it looks as if a verb.

I could care less,.............what, don't you mean that you care so little about a person or a topic that you actually couldn't care less? In that case why not manage to say the n't? Laziness?

Quite apart from the fact that most Americans say iced tea and corned beef, the variations ice tea and corn beef are specifically African American Vernacular English, a dialect with its own rich history. So your post declaring it “laziness” is racist as well as plain wrong.

There threads are definitely xenophobic and racist.

@Anonymous48

Yes, I forgot about tennis shoes! Sorry about that.

@Theremoresefulday

There threads are definitely xenophobic and racist.

Please point to any racist or xenophobic content posted by me.

There's nine cupcakes here. There's two issues here, John.
'There's' is being used all the time instead of 'there are'. Why can't people just manage to get their mouth muscles and tongues round the two little words 'there are', or there're? I think it's come from the US to the UK. 'It's' in the last sentence is short for 'it has'.

Do teachers speak like this now? I think a primary school headmaster made this mistake on TV last year but I can't quote you the exact words he used.

A BBC presenter, the political one with the specs, said something like, "There's been something thousands vaccinated in the last week'. No, Mr. Mason, "There have been something thousands vaccinated in the last week." They've got degrees and massive salaries and they can't speak basic grammatical English and I guess most of them are too arrogant to care, and they'll sneer at me as a pleb and make out that their laziness is just the language changing, and I reach for the switch-off button often.

I didn’t say you were xenophobic or racist. I said these threads were.

@Theremoresefulday

I didn’t say you were xenophobic or racist. I said these threads were.

So not my postings - or presumably some others - so not the whole thread, just some parts of it.

I suggest you report the racist and xenophobic content to MN so it can be removed as it no doubt contravenes one or more rules.

I suggest you stop trying to tell other people what to do.

@Theremoresefulday

I suggest you stop trying to tell other people what to do.

I suggest you stop casually flinging about accusations of racism and xenophobia if you aren't prepared to back them up. I'm not telling you what to do - that would be ridiculous.

Read the thread.

You just did. You “suggested” what I should do.

The thread is literally peppered with micro aggressions.

Good point made by ComtesseDeSpair about African American Vernacular English. Quite a few usages and expressions that MNetters routinely decry are from or derived from AAVE. One in particular is "my bad." I'm surprised no one on this thread has jumped on that one.

@Theremoresefulday

Read the thread.

You just did. You “suggested” what I should do.

The thread is literally peppered with micro aggressions.

So report them - MN doesn't allow racism, they will be removed.

There are so many other things that bother me in the world that I have no shits left to give about languages changing as languages have always done.