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A book claims that Americanisms will have absorbed the English language by 2120
- Fej 9y agoMisleading title, author equates "English" to "British English".
- melling 9y agoAnyways, irregardless, that was understood. We are “killing it”.
- elthran 9y agoNot a misleading title - necessary for the last sentence in the first paragraph. And should the non-clarified form of the language not automatically be assumed to be the original form of it? Compare Spanish Spanish vs Mexican Spanish, it feels an unnecessary clarification
- skywhopper 9y agoThere is no "original form" still spoken today. Why would the version that happens to be currently socially accepted as "correct" by most native speakers in England be the "original" form? The vast majority of English speakers don't speak British English.
- krzyk 9y agoI don't have any good argument why, besides the one that in non-English speaking countries, English == British English. Same for Spanish, when I'm talking about that language it doesn't even cross my mind that someone might think Mexican Spanish. But English is not my first language so it may be different e.g. for Americans.
- clort 9y agoWell ok, but British English is composed at least of Scottish English, Yuppie English, Townie English, Farmers English, Northern English, Black Country English, The Queens English and also I'm not sure about Newcastle-upon-Tyne if thats related or a completely separate language.
- Walf 9y agoInternational English. Supposably, Americans could care less that other English-speaking countries are closer to en-GB than en-US, despite the relentless onslaught of inconsiderate software defaults.
- yesenadam 9y agoHehe.. I set my wordpress site to Australian English, but one look at my new edit page with its permanent "G'day" made me change it immediately back to GB-English.
- clort 9y agoI always think that the way that is written, is irrelevant to the way that it is spoken. I don't want to read it like it is spoken (Irvine Welsh I dislike your books though have no problem with the films), I want to read the words that communicate the concept.
- petepete 9y ago> Americans could care less So they do care?
- Walf 9y agoOnly the ones that care about English, generally.
- bigal67 9y agosupposedly ;) Sorry... being slightly facetious :)
- petepete 9y agoI think supposably is a valid word and makes sense in this context. The meaning overlaps a lot with supposedly, which is much more-commonly used, so it sounds a bit odd.
- rando444 9y agoWhy would you expect the BBC to refer to "English" as "British English"? To assuage American readers? That's a rather condescending attitude, don't you think?
- yesenadam 9y agoIt's something I'm getting used to on here. That attitude. Doesn't surprise me your comment was downvoted. The very word "American" is presumptuous. Imagine if the Chinese referred to themselves as "Asians" and their country as "Asia". I've taken to using estadounidense until something better comes along in English. ..or Spanish becomes the main language in the US :-) Australian English has/had the rather pungent seppo - rhyming slang for septic tank = Yank. But estadounidense is at least accurate.
- mattnewport 9y agoUnqualified, it is not unreasonable for 'English' to refer to the language spoken in England by the English people while 'American English' refers to the variant spoken in the United States of America by the American people, just as Canadian English refers to the variant spoken elsewhere in North America in Canada by the Canadian people. It is especially reasonable when used this way by an English writer writing for a British publication.
- IIAOPSW 9y agoNo one has done as much damage to English as the English. Maybe its time to let someone else carry the torch for a while. We can't do any worse.
- Santosh83 9y agoJust another special case of erosion of all kinds of diversity as we become globally connected. Biological, linguistic, cultural etc. If you want to do something about it, and you aren't an American, then preserve what's unique to your place and people. Don't get swept up mindlessly in the global consumerist culture. Merely lamenting is not going to save vanishing diversity.
- dmitriid 9y agoHow can you "kill" something that constantly evolves? A hundred years ago modern-day "britishisms" would be viewed as "killing the English language". Also, what's "British English"? These two are British English: - received pronunciation with it's "proper English": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIemPxHSb6Q - Glasgoans (??) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_uNGdpa4c with "bubblin' and greetin'" and other weird stuff
- bencollier49 9y ago"Glaswegians"
- dang 9y agoOf course, but anyone who loves the English language will cut the British some slack here.
- skywhopper 9y agoI think I just hurt my eyes from rolling them so far back in my head. Cultures in contact with each other share words. It goes both ways. A quarter or more of the words in English are outright copied from French... oh, but that happened a long time ago. As an American, I've noticed certain words I associate with British English creeping into our vocabulary as well. In my mind I associate it with Harry Potter and Doctor Who, but I realize Anglophilia is no new thing--these are just the bits of British pop culture that hit me in my early adulthood. The fact is that British and American English will each remain distinctive, even as they continue to share and evolve together as well. The Internet is definitely making this evolution happen more quickly. But it still goes both ways, and will continue to do so. Some of the changes you'll like and adopt without thinking about, some you will find annoying or crude, some you will hate with a completely irrational passion. It's part of life. Enjoy it!
- kabes 9y agoWhile I agree, the article does cover this: "After all, as a nation we’ve been both invaded and invader, and our language is all the richer for it. Words like bungalow, bazaar, even Blighty, have their roots elsewhere. Heck, go far enough back and isn’t it pretty much all just distorted Latin, French or German?"
- coldtea 9y ago>I think I just hurt my eyes from rolling them so far back in my head. Cultures in contact with each other share words. It goes both ways. Not really, it goes mostly from the direction of the stronger nations to the less strong in the relationship. And cultures and languages do die out in such processes. Now, some might find all this inconsequential, but for some of us those things means something (and the fact that historically things change and die anyway isn't more comforting than it is when its told about one's family dying). What I'm more amazed is how people can lament some latest sequel to a movie franchise "betraying" or losing the spirit of the original or losing its way etc, but at the same time can't understand others that are concerned with whole cultures doing the same.
- posterboy 9y ago
- phillc73 9y ago> Engel says. “A nation that outsources the development of its own language – that language it developed over hundreds of years – is a nation that has lost the will to live”. I believe something similar applies now to Australian English. Many of the words and phrases, developed over 200 years of unique shared experience, and also incorporated from a diverse range of linguistic immigration, are no longer commonly in use. Or at least not commonly in use amongst the younger urban population, which seems to drive much of the national cultural norms today. I think the language is poorer for this loss, but also understand it is perhaps an inevitable consequence of constant exposure to the dominant Western global cultural force.
- duiker101 9y agoI am not sure what is the author trying to convey with the article. I mean... isn't it a feature of languages that they evolve and change with society? I think pretty much every language today is not exactly the same that it was a couple of generations ago so why would we expect it to be what it is now in the future? Or is the complaint just that are the Americas bringing the most changes?
- ascorbic 9y agoThis has been happening to the English language for the entirety of its existence. The process may have accelerated, but it's the same process that's led to the mishmash of Germanic, Latin and panoply of loanwords that we use every day.
- montrose 9y agoThough there are lots of conspicuous imports in e.g. product names, those are just on the surface. It's harder for "supposed to be" to replace "meant to be" than for "ATM" to replace "cash point."
- rumcajz 9y agoAn interesting phenomenon I've noticed is that a lot of people, and often intelligent people, believe that language that have been evolving for thousands of years should, somehow, just stop evolving today. Interestingly, while one would expect it to be correlated with political belief (conservatives would want language as it was in good old days, progressives would embrace the change) my personal anecdotal evidence says it isn't.
- 2muchcoffeeman 9y agoRichard Dawkins once tweeted his rule for accepting something new. If it adds something new to the language, he accepts it. If we already have existing words that do a better job, he rejects it. This begrudgingly forced him to accept the use of ‘like’ the way teenage girls use it because they don’t mean “this person said”, or “I said”. They mean some more like “this person said something to the effect of”.
- rumcajz 9y agoInteresting. One would expect Dawkins, being an evolutionary biologist and father of the concept of meme, to just accept the change. But he probably wasn't speaking of what should or should not be. Rather about what he's doing himself.
- acbanker 9y agoIntelligent people don't necessarily think the language should stop evolving. The perception is that language started "devolving" since about 1950-1970. The same applies to arts, food and many other cultural achievements.
- seanalltogether 9y agoI was about to point out how much American TV is broadcast daily in the UK and how that shapes language and culture over here. But I think the complete lack of British online social communities is going to be even more influential. Everyone over here is on facebook, youtube, reddit, etc. Everyone is installing games and apps on their phones with American English phrasing. Aside from reading the bbc, telegraph etc or shopping/banking online, every other bit of online content consumed over here is mostly American centered.
- yodsanklai 9y agoAs a foreign speaker, American English has become the reference. Almost all English sources I use are American. (e.g. movies, tv series, youtube channels...). I try not to use words specific to British English and I set my spellchecker to U.S. English. It sounds wrong to refer to British English as the English language. There are several English languages that coexist and cross-pollinate.
- Spearchucker 9y agoThat's interesting. I'm the other way 'round. Mostly because American English has managed to confused the hell out of me. Pronouncing (or softening) "t"s as/into "d"s means many Americans spell accordingly - Tao becomes Dao. Then there's the impossibility of popular phrases (individual words such as "movie" don't bother me much at all). "What are you hungry for?" simply cannot be. It makes more sense to ask what one feels like eating. Same with "I'm excited for..." Just doesn't make sense. We're excited ABOUT a thing, not FOR a thing. The American propensity to fake it because PR annoys me no end, too. Every time I hear "I'm thrilled to..." I do a little mouth-vomit. There's just NO authenticity behind a statement that starts with those words. Many more such nuances. Like "He disrespected me" instead of someone being rude, curt or otherwise unfriendly to another (respect is earned). There are going to be as many opinions about this stuff as there are people.
- yodsanklai 9y agoI agree. Now that I think of this, I realize that there are lot of americanisms I would never use. Things such as "I'm gonna" or "dude". I feel it doesn't sound right when you have a heavy foreign accent. Maybe the best thing to do for a non-native English speaker living in the "global world" is to target an English free of local idioms, and a neutral north-american accent.
- posterboy 9y agoyou might even say there were as many tongues as there are speakers.
- d--b 9y agoIt's sad to see such bullshit conservatism from someone who has written for bbc and the guardian. This is the kind of arguments that Brexit backers use. "Let's protect the English language! Let's kick all the foreigners out!"
- petecox 9y ago'marvellous' saw something of an ironic renaissance in Australia as a homage to Richie Benaud. The Spanish cognate 'maravilloso' survives.
- phillc73 9y agoBecause cricket is the number one game in town.
- Arun2009 9y agoFrom the perspective of a non-native speaker of the language, it seems to me that the United States is English's killer product. A great deal of the credit for the English language's dominance must go to the US and the culture and technology it exports relentlessly all over the world. Far from killing the English language as the author complains, the US might just have made it prevail over similar contenders like Spanish or Mandarin.
- Spearchucker 9y agoLet's see how this turns out over the next decade or so. Both the US and the UK have and are slowly withdrawing from the world stage, making English less and less important. Without the UK in the EU, for example, why would English need to remain the common language when German is the most spoken language in Europe?
- aquadrop 9y agoMost spoken first language. But much more people can speak English overall. When people from Greece, Sweden, Estonia, Slovenia meet, they will most probably could speak English as common language, not German. Let's all stick to one global language, it would be so much easier for everyone...
- SirFatty 9y ago"Both the US and the UK have and are slowly withdrawing from the world stage..." What a crock...
- Spearchucker 9y agoLeaving the EU isn't a withdrawal? Can you elaborate a little more eloquently?
- outsideoflife 9y agoWhen I worked for a multi-national silicon valley based company we got so sick of the creeping Americanisms (to be fair their jargon was worse, they even had a company glossary for it) that we started a game. We had a tally chart on the wall for anyone who slipped into saying one of them accidentally. I survived for weeks until I rang someone to 'touch base'! They seemed to have a group policy (or something) that changed the the dictionary in Office back to 'American English' each reboot. I just ignored the coloured (!) underlines and typed the way I wanted as my own personal battle. I don't actual have a problem with the variant spellings of American English. I have a problem with certain kinds of bad English that happen to seem more prevalent amongst Americans! 1) Verbalisation: "I am hoping to medal in the next Olympics". This sounds to me like they are planning to meddle with it. What is wrong with, "I am hoping to win a medal"? 2) Bi-monthly and bi-weekly. Twice a week or every two weeks? Twice a month or every two months. When you want to hold a meeting every two weeks then perhaps a fortnightly meeting would tell people when they need to be there? 3) Reaching out. To mean making contact. What is wrong with, I wrote to x, I called Y etc. 4) Bootstrapping a business: I get down-voted for this, but this seems to cover everything from, "I'm so rich I didn't need to take outside investment", to "I did this as an add on to my existing business and supported it with our existing funding" to "We started on a server I found in a skip and scaled it up from there until I could quit my job". In most of the cases I have seen it could be replaced with the phrase, "I started a business" without losing any meaning whatsoever. I should stop annoying you all and do some work
- vasilipupkin 9y agoNot a Brit, but agree with you almost 100%. Although I reached out to Y is different than I called Y. It implies are more tentative, weak relationship between you and Y. I would say let me call Y if the juju between me and Y is strong, otherwise I would say let me reach out to Y
- posterboy 9y agoto call is rather objective, so I wouldn't say it expresses a stronger subjective kind of emotional connection, but truly, to reach out implies distance. but once you get in touch, that distance is covered, so its not strictly unpersonal. Not a native speaker, though.
- globcal 9y agoBritish English is no longer appropriate because it was never properly promulgated in its colonies. Around the world from South Africa to Belize and even in Canada varietal bastardizations of the language have been allowed to emerge creating more English that is not British. Both Spanish and English are languages that have become decentralized and there will never be a global standard in favor of the country where the barefoot barbarians claim to dominate it so completely.
- olingern 9y agoNo doubt we "Americans" have changed the language, for better or worse, but this comment is more about journalism. I expect more from the BBC than to let a former Bloomberg journalist make generalizations without anything to back it up. "Awesome" occurring more often than "marvelous" doesn't provide us with anything other than the fact that the author appreciates the latter more than the former. Seems appropriate that I should go write a piece for the BBC on how journalism has declined and how Brits are contributing, and be sure to cite this article.
- mattnewport 9y agoPerhaps it's not obvious to non native British English speakers but the American use of "awesome" to mean something rather different to its traditional British English meaning is very clear and obvious example of 'undesirable' Americanisation of English. Any native speaker of British English would recognize the phenomenon from their own experience but the author provided some actual numbers to back up the reality of this particular linguistic evolution. It's a change I've personally lamented due to the loss of the word awesome to use for its original meaning without a good replacement.
- olingern 9y agoI think what he fails to understand, and many British for that matter, is that the language is not "owned" by anyone. Australians have probably augmented English more than us Americans, but I don't hear or see much complaining about their use of the language. The article comes off as whiny and unsubstantiated. It's a tough time to be an American, and most people realize that. Exploiting that with bad journalism is just throwing gas onto a trash fire IMO. edit: More importantly, if Brits want to preserve the language as they see it in their country, they should consider going the French route [1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise
- mattnewport 9y agoI think you're projecting your own concerns onto the author. Certainly language is not owned by anyone (which is why the French approach is stupid) and languages always evolve (as the author acknowledges early in the article). The article is not trying to change American English, it's aimed at a British audience and drawing attention to something that the author fears the British are losing by adopting American English without thinking about the consequences. I grew up in England but live in Canada and speak quite Americanized English as a result. I've got nothing against Americans or them speaking American English and I don't think the author has either. I do agree with him however that as Brits (and as Canadians in my case) we are losing something valuable by adopting American English unthinkingly and it's worth paying a bit more attention to individually when we use language as a result.
- axiom92 9y agoThis article's giving me the heebie-jeebies.
- gkor 9y agoI think I like the word marvelous more than the word awesome. Would be marvelous if it would make a comeback!