Americanisms

[Differentforgirls]

Is “pay check (not cheque for some reason) to pay check” a thing in the UK now. I keep seeing this on here. Surely it’s “payslip to payslip” or “wage to wage”.

Context is being skint. So you live wage to wage.

AIBU to think we’re losing our language to Americanisms?

Would it have been "seated there" in your example though?

Although that wasn't the case, it was an al fresco place; we hadn't been seated by a server, but my husband had been sitting there when he went in to grab a coffee. He came out with his coffee and some folks were sitting at "our" table. So when he said "we were sat there", he meant that we had been sitting there, not that we had been seated there. Either way, gramattically he was incorrect but I think this is more an example of vernacular British english rather than bad grammar per se.

There's a similar example in Ireland, where you might say "I'm after naming her Georgina" (a very specific example, I know!) about your newborn daughter which would mean, "I have named her Georgina" and despite being grammatically incorrect, it's more a turn of phrase than someone having poor command of grammar.

I have zero issues with Americanisms. I have a colleague who detests and actually gets seriously upset with them. We’ve noticed our Gen Z students use them a heck of a lot. We get math, line rather than queue, takeout, flashlight, candy etc as well as “like” and “my bad”. Colleague gets properly irate. I guess because I specialise in 20th century American Lit, I really don’t care as much. I’ll go a step further and say certain Americanisms make far more sense. Sidewalk for example, perfect sense.

Rather than pavement?

Not heard that one. My son watches American you tubers. He uses lots of American words, trash and candy for example. Really annoying but I remember when my dd was 6 she used to do fake you tube videos and would talk in American accent. She grw out of it though! I think it's to be expected, we all consume a lot of US TV, films ect.

'I was sat' and 'I was stood' are no less grammatically correct than 'it needs washed' and are very common in North-West England. Why is one excused on the grounds of being commonly used in Scotland (and NI, in my experience), while the other is ridiculed?

I think that’s the thing on here. We all have our ways of saying things in the UK which is really culturally diverse. In my experience MN seems quite London centric. But thank you. I had no idea it was a NW England thing. We’re all learning but I apologise if I offended you.

Oh, that's okay @Differentforgirls , but thank you! It's definitely very normal in the NW colloquially. I used to say it all the time growing up, but I would never have written it because I knew it was informal. I'm actually a dreadful grammar pedant normally, so no offence taken

❤️

But when you spend more time consuming films, TV etc (regardless of what language it's in) than talking with the people around you it's definitely gone too far!

Or footway, as the councils call it, or path.
'Sidewalk' to me isn't a good example of making sense, unless it is to describe what a crab does.

🤣

Well they do in the U.S.

I thought it was ‘hand to mouth’?

It is hand. As in you receive money into your open hand then it goes straight to buy food to feed yourself.