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"The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw once said: 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language'" As a non American english speaking Briti

"The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw once said: 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language'" As a non American english speaking British person, the americanisation of our language continues to irk me. It's a constant situation of scrolling down localisation dropdowns triyng to find out if my locale or language, is 'English (UK)' or 'British' or 'Great Britain' or 'United Kingdom'[1], or simply not even there with just 'English' listed (which of course is US English). Then to add more salt to the wound, I'll find a dropdown that is in Alphabetical order, except for 'United States' which for some reason is pinned to the top. Because we Brits share a language with the US, and because most software is written by americans, or by people who learnt american english as a second language, our language is being steadily eroded. If it were any other language being abused, there would be campaigns to stop it happening. --- [1] No, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom are not the same, and are therefore not interchangable.

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the_af 6y ago
> No, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom are not the same, and are therefore not interchangable. My first encounter with this came from "How to be an Alien" by George Mikes: > "You must understand that when people say ‘England’, they sometimes mean ‘Great Britain’, sometimes ‘the United Kingdom’, sometimes the ‘British Isles’ – but never just England." :P
blunte 6y ago
Only because you are looking downstream do you complain, but as an American trying to learn Dutch, I now see just how screwed up English is thanks to all the mixing of powers and cultures (and isolated non writers) of England over time. But let's talk about "bin". That is the second word of "rubbish bin" I assume. So why adopt the general, non rubbish word as your standard trash container name? Because of that odd choice, now you have to explicitly state what kind of non-rubbush bin a bin is else it is confusedly assumed to be the trash.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  "Trash" for Americans is short for "trash can," which traces its roots to "ash can." When my parents grew up, people in cities still burned their trash in their backyards, or in special cans on their balconies. The ashes were put in an "ash can" and put out for the "ash man" to collect. When burning became illegal, people started throwing garbage in their ash cans, and the word transformed into "trash can." At least that's the story as related to me by my parents and grandparents. The ones who are still alive still refer to it as an "ash can" for this reason.
eldaisfish 6y ago
>our language is being steadily eroded. If it were any other language being abused, there would be campaigns to stop it happening. I disagree and vehemently. The strength of the English language is its ability to change and absorb words from other languages. Your proposal to have campaigns restricting change leads to the decay of a language and to oddities like "courriel" instead of email in Quebec French which - mind you - tries to keep itself free of English borrowings. See also the needlessly long compound words in languages like Dutch and German. Even Finnish has "speaking box" instead of telephone. This is a road you won't like. I think you should accept that English is no longer "your" language. It belongs to everyone now.
- rswail 6y ago
  tele-phone... tele, greek for "far", phone, from the greek for "voice". German for telephone: Fernsprecher, or "far speaking" So how is that better or worse than "speaking box". Finnish is a weird outlier that is similar to Hungarian but different to most other Germanic/Latin/Greek derived European languages.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    I completely agree with your point against the GP that compound words are not at all seen as "needlessly long" by speakers of those languages. But with regard to Finnish, while Finnish is a Uralic language and not an Indo-European one, the Finnish language today is replete with calques on Swedish and German, because those were the prestige languages in the region when the modern Finnish literary standard was being created and new words coined.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    das Telefon is much more common than Fernsprecher in my non-native experience
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      Most people would probably not even understand "Fernsprecher" at this point. It's really old-fashioned.
rswail 6y ago
United Kingdom is 4 countries, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales (and a bunch of minor additions). Great Britain is the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales. A citizen of the United Kingdom is British, even if they live in Northern Ireland. What you're complaining about is basically about spelling, not usage or "language". Many of the so-called "misspellings" in en_US vs en_GB aren't if you look at the OED, for example, the -ise and -ize. Having "u"s in spelling (eg colour) is a left over of the French influence on English in the UK. A lot of the changes in spelling are because Noah Webster, when creating the first US dictionary, simplified things, eg axe vs ax. Some of the word usage, eg "gotten" came over to the US but faded out in the UK. Oh, and it's spelled "americanization" :)
iainmerrick 6y ago
Speaking as a mostly recovered pedant, I heartily recommend giving in and just working in US english (all the time when coding, as needed in emails and discussion threads). It's so much easier just to use "color", "center" etc, and generally stop fretting about it. Keep speaking and writing proper English at home, of course! Because we Brits share a language with the US, and because most software is written by americans, or by people who learnt american english as a second language, our language is being steadily eroded. I'm not sure there's any solution to that, unfortunately... Possibly building new software from scratch, and putting in place a strict style policy that code and comments must be in British English?
627467 6y ago
Non-native english speaker who has worked on both sides of the pond and which mother language is known for being regulated by an Authority: I prefer the flexible approach of most anglo world. I find anglospeakers much less pedantic. While I appreciate the importance of formality and precision there's way less time wasted (most times) when people don't get hung up in pedantic ortographic or even (relavitively) common signifiers. I do insist in britishisms when I write to American colleagues but obviously have to fallback to en-US when coding. The cost is: I have struggled a bit with grey/gray in stylesheets in the past.
reaperducer 6y ago
the americanisation of our language continues to irk me It goes both ways. Especially on the internet, a lot of Americans pick up wonky spellings and phrases from your end of the ocean. It's just a fashion that comes and goes. For example, back in the late 17th/early 18th century, England went through a wave of Francophilia which altered the spellings of a number of common words. By then, the United States was becoming more independent and because of geography wasn't part of that craze, so some of the legacy spellings remained here. In the early 20th century, American newspaper publishers pushed for simpler spellings of some words ("thru"), in order to save money on newspaper and ink. They became common in the United States, but less so in other English-speaking countries. Don't let it irk you. It's not worth it. Humans are messy.
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ssss11 6y ago
English is always changing you just don’t like the current changes. Go read medieval english and see how you like it. I’m sure as it became popular Latin speakers despised it.

deleted 6y ago

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the_af 6y ago

> No, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom are not the same, and are therefore not interchangable. My first encounter with this came from "How to be an Alien" by George Mikes: > "You must understand that when people say ‘England’, they sometimes mean ‘Great Britain’, sometimes ‘the United Kingdom’, sometimes the ‘British Isles’ – but never just England." :P

blunte 6y ago

Only because you are looking downstream do you complain, but as an American trying to learn Dutch, I now see just how screwed up English is thanks to all the mixing of powers and cultures (and isolated non writers) of England over time. But let's talk about "bin". That is the second word of "rubbish bin" I assume. So why adopt the general, non rubbish word as your standard trash container name? Because of that odd choice, now you have to explicitly state what kind of non-rubbush bin a bin is else it is confusedly assumed to be the trash.

reaperducer 6y ago
"Trash" for Americans is short for "trash can," which traces its roots to "ash can." When my parents grew up, people in cities still burned their trash in their backyards, or in special cans on their balconies. The ashes were put in an "ash can" and put out for the "ash man" to collect. When burning became illegal, people started throwing garbage in their ash cans, and the word transformed into "trash can." At least that's the story as related to me by my parents and grandparents. The ones who are still alive still refer to it as an "ash can" for this reason.

eldaisfish 6y ago

>our language is being steadily eroded. If it were any other language being abused, there would be campaigns to stop it happening. I disagree and vehemently. The strength of the English language is its ability to change and absorb words from other languages. Your proposal to have campaigns restricting change leads to the decay of a language and to oddities like "courriel" instead of email in Quebec French which - mind you - tries to keep itself free of English borrowings. See also the needlessly long compound words in languages like Dutch and German. Even Finnish has "speaking box" instead of telephone. This is a road you won't like. I think you should accept that English is no longer "your" language. It belongs to everyone now.

rswail 6y ago
tele-phone... tele, greek for "far", phone, from the greek for "voice". German for telephone: Fernsprecher, or "far speaking" So how is that better or worse than "speaking box". Finnish is a weird outlier that is similar to Hungarian but different to most other Germanic/Latin/Greek derived European languages.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  I completely agree with your point against the GP that compound words are not at all seen as "needlessly long" by speakers of those languages. But with regard to Finnish, while Finnish is a Uralic language and not an Indo-European one, the Finnish language today is replete with calques on Swedish and German, because those were the prestige languages in the region when the modern Finnish literary standard was being created and new words coined.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  das Telefon is much more common than Fernsprecher in my non-native experience
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    Most people would probably not even understand "Fernsprecher" at this point. It's really old-fashioned.

rswail 6y ago

United Kingdom is 4 countries, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales (and a bunch of minor additions). Great Britain is the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales. A citizen of the United Kingdom is British, even if they live in Northern Ireland. What you're complaining about is basically about spelling, not usage or "language". Many of the so-called "misspellings" in en_US vs en_GB aren't if you look at the OED, for example, the -ise and -ize. Having "u"s in spelling (eg colour) is a left over of the French influence on English in the UK. A lot of the changes in spelling are because Noah Webster, when creating the first US dictionary, simplified things, eg axe vs ax. Some of the word usage, eg "gotten" came over to the US but faded out in the UK. Oh, and it's spelled "americanization" :)

iainmerrick 6y ago

Speaking as a mostly recovered pedant, I heartily recommend giving in and just working in US english (all the time when coding, as needed in emails and discussion threads). It's so much easier just to use "color", "center" etc, and generally stop fretting about it. Keep speaking and writing proper English at home, of course! Because we Brits share a language with the US, and because most software is written by americans, or by people who learnt american english as a second language, our language is being steadily eroded. I'm not sure there's any solution to that, unfortunately... Possibly building new software from scratch, and putting in place a strict style policy that code and comments must be in British English?

627467 6y ago

Non-native english speaker who has worked on both sides of the pond and which mother language is known for being regulated by an Authority: I prefer the flexible approach of most anglo world. I find anglospeakers much less pedantic. While I appreciate the importance of formality and precision there's way less time wasted (most times) when people don't get hung up in pedantic ortographic or even (relavitively) common signifiers. I do insist in britishisms when I write to American colleagues but obviously have to fallback to en-US when coding. The cost is: I have struggled a bit with grey/gray in stylesheets in the past.

reaperducer 6y ago

the americanisation of our language continues to irk me It goes both ways. Especially on the internet, a lot of Americans pick up wonky spellings and phrases from your end of the ocean. It's just a fashion that comes and goes. For example, back in the late 17th/early 18th century, England went through a wave of Francophilia which altered the spellings of a number of common words. By then, the United States was becoming more independent and because of geography wasn't part of that craze, so some of the legacy spellings remained here. In the early 20th century, American newspaper publishers pushed for simpler spellings of some words ("thru"), in order to save money on newspaper and ink. They became common in the United States, but less so in other English-speaking countries. Don't let it irk you. It's not worth it. Humans are messy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ssss11 6y ago

English is always changing you just don’t like the current changes. Go read medieval english and see how you like it. I’m sure as it became popular Latin speakers despised it.