To hate Americanisms...?

[Groof]

I think maybe because it feels like all English-speaking cultures are becoming boring and homogenous.

New ones I've noticed that people in the UK didn't routinely say five years ago but are now EVERYWHERE:

• birth control (instead of 'contraception' or 'the pill')
• wait list (instead of waiting list)
• reach out

Which ones do you hate or AIBU?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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!

Oh my god, this drives me unnecessarily crazy. Just say it properly FFS!!!

They are. It was the correct pronunciation in Britain until the 19th century, because it comes from French. In the 19th century someone decided to "correct" the pronunciation. It's not clear if it was to make it sound less French, or because people thought a silent h shouldn't exist in English.

it's yet another case of Americans preserving an older usage because Britain changed after the dialects diverged.

Québécois use a similar argument for why their version of French is more correct than actual French.

Personally I think “it hasn’t evolved therefore is more correct” is a specious argument.

It's not more correct, though. It's equally correct. That's the issue: assuming one dialectal variation is the true and correct one. The British regularly use the "original" argument as a defence in any case, but my point is that you can't complain about Americans "changing the language" and "getting it wrong" when all they're doing is preserving an older usage.

I agree with @knitnerd90.

I don’t think it’s a question of being ‘more correct’, just that these words are not incorrect. The word gotten as used in Ireland is not incorrect, for example. It never died out there, but it receives so much hate on MN because people don’t understand that.

If you use ‘gotten’ in a post some people will look down on you and some will even correct you. It’s those attitudes that are incorrect, not the word.

don’t think it’s a question of being ‘more correct’, just that these words are not incorrect. The word gotten as used in Ireland is not incorrect, for example. It never died out there, but it receives so much hate on MN because people don’t understand that.
If you use ‘gotten’ in a post some people will look down on you and some will even correct you. It’s those attitudes that are incorrect, not the word.

It's exactly the same with "Can I get?" I'm fed up being looked down upon like I'm the village idiot or some sort of peasant when I dare to point out that this is very much the norm in a lot of Scotland.

I wish people would realise that just because it's a regional variation doesn't make it wrong, just different.

Yes many posters on here seem to struggle with the notion that two or more things can be equally correct.