Is BrE past tense usage going the way of AmE?

Uriel   Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:33 pm GMT
It might only be India that sees common usage of the term. It's not particularly common in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. -- all of which are also outside the UK.
Guest   Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:45 pm GMT
Indians are not typically native English speakers, so they are a poor example.
Guest   Sun Aug 17, 2008 1:14 am GMT
Why are people so obsessed with American vs. British English? People in the US use both forms. Someone would be more likely to say, "have you looked in the drawer yet?" than "did you look in the drawer?" The simple form has connotations of being more direct and a little confrontational and would probably only be used in those instances.

and to the German who thinks Americans are stupid based on one form or another, you're completely misinformed about the English language; it might surprise you, but American English and British English ... both have the same linguistic origins! People are truly uninformed and ignorant when dealing with the United States. nb: The English also despise you for being German, so have fun practicing your English in England.
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Aug 17, 2008 9:28 am GMT
***The English also despise you for being German.....***

Oh wow! - That's a wee bit harsh! It's not so, and the English (the British generally) no longer feel that way. Have you not heard of the expression 'Let bygones be bygones'?" Time moves on and so do people as circumstances change, and what happened in the past is now so long ago, so we must now let it remain in the history books without exactly forgetting completely, much like we still recall and study the historical situations which brought about the conflicts of Hastings, Agincourt, Flodden Field, Prestonpans, Culloden, Edge Hill, Marston Moor, Trafalgar, Gettysburg, Saratoga, Rorke's Drift and all the rest.

The ethos of the European Union is one of unity, not on-going hatred.
During the WW2 blitz on London and Britain generally Noel Coward wrote a song called "Let's All Be Beastly to the Germans" and at that time the sentiments were understandable. They are not any more - as I say, time has moved on - big time, and so have mindsets.

I have stood among the acres and acres of uniform rows upon rows upon rows of the headstones on the graves of British soldiers in the British War graves Commission cemeteries of Northern France and Belgium and felt the total futility and hatred for wars but not once did I feel the same about the Germans. It's a totally different Europe now to what it was between 1914 and 1918 and between 1939 and 1945.

This is 2008 and not 1916 or 1940.
Guest   Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:43 am GMT
"Why are people so obsessed with American vs. British English? People in the US use both forms. Someone would be more likely to say, "have you looked in the drawer yet?" than "did you look in the drawer?""


This is very true. I often find it puzzling how non-native speakers think that Americans *must* speak a certain way otherwise they somehow had learned something other than American English. There is a lot of overlap between what type of grammar structures are considered AE or BE. For example, just because it's typical for Americans to say "have gotten" does mean that they will never way "have got". It is a bad idea to split hairs the way non-natives seem to do. Germans have even gone so far as to define two different areas of English language study called Amerikanistik and "Anglistik" as if they were two totally different languages. There happens to be more linguistic diversity within the English spoken throughout the UK than there is between standard GA and BE itself. When we lean German or Spanish we do not choose among courses with names like "Western Hemisphere Spanish "or Eastern Hemisphere Spanish, or "High German" vs "Bavarian German": we learn "Spanish" and/or "German".

It baffles me when I read a German text that claims to have been "translated from the American" (übersetzt aus dem Amerikanischen) Apparently I am not alone in my irritation. The German magazine "Die Zeit" actually discusses this:
http://www.zeit.de/2003/44/Spitze44
Guest   Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:06 am GMT
-Germans have even gone so far as to define two different areas of English language study called Amerikanistik and "Anglistik" as if they were two totally different languages.-

It's normal. There's Lusitanistik (for Continental Portuguese) and Brasilianistik (for Brazilian Portuguese). French and Italians are even more radical.
Guest   Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:09 am GMT
''The English also despise you for being German''


I don't think so. German bands like Cascada and Scooter are huge in the UK.
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh   Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:20 am GMT
scooter thats what you euro fruitcakes love. im in polish town right now and man, scooter shit's everywhre. techno nutjobs.
Moionfire   Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:03 pm GMT
Someone from the united states of america is not a US-American- they are an american....
Uriel   Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:54 am GMT
<<It baffles me when I read a German text that claims to have been "translated from the American">>

I once read an Italian book on the US that mused that Americans could hardly even be said to speak English. They had been thoughtful enough to translate that thought into English, and it must have been into the American version of English, because I was able to read the whole sentence and comprehend it without my Brit-to-Yankee dictionary....

Seriously, it struck me that this huge perceived divide between proper British speech and the bastard patois that it apparently devolved into out here in the hinterlands after that little revolution of ours is pretty deeply ingrained into the non-English-speaking European psyche. I think mostly it has to do with A) ignorance of the language itself, B) making far too much of certain popular lists of variations in slang and automobile terminology, and C) a certain snob factor. The fact is that you could comb most of the native speakers' posts here for pages before coming up with any telltale variations that might give away a poster's national origins. And they oddly never talk about the vast dialectical differences that must, by their own logic, exist in Australian, Canadian, or New Zealand English ... even though those countries are just as far away geographically and certainly contain just as many unique regionalisms as American English!
Guest   Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:21 am GMT
Well said Uriel, the only way I could tell that you are American (I am British) from your post is from you referring to that fact, and not from the language you use. Maybe if I re-read it I will spot something, but nothing jumped out at me as different to the way I might write it.
Guest   Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:52 am GMT
Although I do think it's assumed that Canadian and American English are much the same.
Uriel   Fri Aug 22, 2008 2:43 am GMT
Ah, but you never hear about Canadians ruining the language. If anything, they are lamented as victims of proximity....;P

<<Well said Uriel, the only way I could tell that you are American (I am British) from your post is from you referring to that fact, and not from the language you use. Maybe if I re-read it I will spot something, but nothing jumped out at me as different to the way I might write it. >>

Little confession: while writing it I also made it a point to avoid the words that have the telltale American spelling changes (color, flavor, etc.). Those are automatic dead giveaways, but have nothing to do with dialectical changes in the spoken language.
Guest   Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:57 pm GMT
>>Little confession: while writing it I also made it a point to avoid the words that have the telltale American spelling changes (color, flavor, etc.). Those are automatic dead giveaways, but have nothing to do with dialectical changes in the spoken language<<

Haha, I did wonder if you might have done that.
Guest   Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:22 pm GMT
You mean to say that Americans can actually write in such a way so as not to be perceived as being American?

Das gibt's doch gar nicht!