American English in the UK?

<<Of course people love to hate Americans; if the English and Europeans could set up concentration camps to murder all 300 million Americans, they'd do it in a heartbeat.>>

"Ignoring the stupidity of this comment, just a point for future reference.. "British" means English, Welsh and Scottish - and sometimes Northern Irish, depending on your view.

Referring to the population of the UK as "English" quite rightly infuriates Scots and the Welsh.

Also, the British are European - no need to make a distinction!"

English was meant as English. Nobody in the British Isles despises and detests the smell of Americans like the English. Bastard sons, I suppose they consider them. And the UK is obviously a part of Europe, but not really -part- of it, you know?

Hilda Ogden, the OED contains many words that don't exist in the real language, because it is a non-judgmental compilation of words that have been used. You might try looking up "ideational". I once read a book where the author tried to draw distinction between the meaning of ideological and ideational, but I don't accept ideational as a real English word. There are words made up by academics with a poor feel for the English language. In fact, I would support a proposal that academic dissertations all be subedited by an outside agency, charged with the task of improving linguistic standards.

You moron. You absolute moron. You admit in your post that "sociolinguistics is a social science, so it is largely based around opinion and interpretation". In other words, you do not have a leg to stand on. PLANTLIFE! You then go on to refer to how academic linguistics has declined as a discipline. I might refer you to one idiot, a former professor at University College London, who has tried to get himself in the press by calling for the abolition of spelling. Yet, the job of an academic linguist is to study languages, not to engage in language planning. Yes, I will agree that academic linguists today largely support dropping standard languages and dropping spelling. In fact, I once read in the UK press that one university English department runs a course analysing the English used in bus tickets. Hmm. Just the right level for Hilda.

The fact that the UK higher education system engaged in dumbing down does not justify it. There is no form of research that one can engage in that would prove or disprove what is ultimately a political point of view on whether linguistic and other academic standards need to be maintained. But I am casting pearls before swine by even telling you this.

David Crystal's books? You utter idiot! You complete cretin! His books are just journalistic in style. Have you read his encyclopaedia of the English language? On one page a few snapshots of British newspaper articles are given, with the word "billion", and he comments that the word "billion" is used to mean "million million" in the British press today. Yet the articles he uses to illustrate are from the recent press and demonstrably do not use "billion" to mean "million million". There is a traditional usage that does so use it, and I would love to see it restored, but the idiot you referred to (one idiot supporting an other), that Crystal idiot, didn't even realise the articles he was citing as proof that the UK press still maintains the traditional usage were proof of the opposite. PLANTLIFE! THE PAIR OF YOU!

Your message just proves you to be a typical low-IQ female. The prescriptive vs. descriptive debate is ultimately a question of political views, and no academic has a locus standi on the issue. If they produce an academic study of a particular dialect, eg spend their life studying the dialect of Wick on the north coast of England, then that work is properly descriptive, as it describes that dialect. As far as "socio" linguistics is concerned, however, that is a pseudo-subject along with media studies and all the rest. It is not up to an academic in university to decide whether national policy should be to maintain a conservative linguistic standard.

↑ Is this guy for real, or an American (or Continental European) posing as British, to make them look bad?

Hilda (and AJC and George) you are absolutely right about one thing: most of my conclusions have been based on a few incidents viewed through the lens of my presuppositions. They really are generalizations; as such, they aren't valuable taken to the individual level.

Why have I reached this conclusion? Matt. We Americans always thought the British--despite their other eccentricities--as unusually polite, but Matt's rude enough to be a New Yorker. This all only proves the inherent unfairness of generalization.

<<Is this guy for real, or an American (or Continental European) posing as British, to make them look bad?>>

He could be both a wind-up and British. There are a few clues that he isn't - "Stores in London", "You may HAVE what you have want.", "Wick on the north coast of England". The last one, though, is so unlikely that it looks like a deliberate mistake. To what purpose, I neither know nor care.

Just for the record - there is no such thing as a "north coast of England". It doesn't exist because what is geographically termed as the northernmost bounds of England is actually the land border with the southernmost bounds of Scotland. Sure enough there is a north east coast of England - bordering onto the North Sea, and there is a north west coast of England - bordering onto the Irish Sea.

As for a place called Wick - there are in all 13 places going by the name of Wick in the UK (none in Northern Ieland at all) - 10 of them are in England, 2 in Scotland and 1 in Wales. None of them are coastal apart from the two in Scotland and one of them is a tiny wee hamlet on the Shetland island of Mainland (appropriately named). All the other Wicks are either very small villages tucked away in the countryside or suburbs of towns or metropolitan districts.

The ramaining Wick is a comparatively sizeable town on the "north coast of Scotland" - as Scotland truly has a north coast, unlike England.

I suspect our controversiaL friend Matt was thinking of that Wick, because in the UK whenever anyone mentions the name Wick everybody assumes it's that one, and it really does have a dialect - the Scottish Highlands and Islands dialect, with absolutely no connection with a "non existent north coast of England".

I further suspect that Matt is not in fact British. Too many other clues suggest otherwise.....the use of the word "stores" (American) instead of "shops" (British) is but one, as indicated above. He is also quite offensive in his manner, but that in itself does not preclude him from being British, of course.

I suspect Matt spends a lot of time on his own. Bless him.

Is 'Matt' cockney rhyming slang?

New Yorkers are probably the nicest people in the US. They hold doors for you, they give you directions when you ask them. The only people who say "New Yorkers are rude!" have never actually lived there. The only rude people there are scared tourists from the Midwest.

↑ Perhaps I've fallen prey to another generalization, Guest, but the belief that New Yorkers are rude is very widespread here in the heartland.

"Plantlife"? That had me rolling!

I have to agree with the guest at the top of the page when he/she talks about the use of "English". When I say English, that's exactly what I mean. If I intend to include the inhabitants of the rest of the place, I'll say British. People shouldn't just assume it's always being used incorrectly by non-Brits.

Considering it only costs about $100 to visit NYC, people out in the "heartland" should actually go and travel for once in their lives. Unless thems there cornfrields is all thems lurnein Is be needin.

<Is 'Matt' cockney rhyming slang? <
Rhyming with what?

$100 to NYC? That wouldn't even pay your cab fare from the airport, from what I've heard. Nor would it make much of a dent in hotel bills, food, etc. And who says people in the rest of the country don't travel, anyway?

Dear people,

I meant Wick on the north coast of Scotland. Stores? Well, I was referring to someone buying a BigMac in a McDonald's STORE. Or would our British self-proclaimed experts claim that in the UK McDonald's stores are referred to as SHOPS?

This is ridiculous.

The key drawback of this site is that many people posing as native speakers appear to be foreign learners who think their English is equivalent to a native-speaker level. Then there are native speakers who, owing to their left-wing political views, do not believe there should be a standard language, and even think that sociolinguistics (a discipline that should be closed down, along with media studies and all the other non-subjects) "proves" that there should not be a standard language. So their answers by way of helping learners are not really as helpful as they think.

Learners want to learn the rules of good English, not be told that anything goes by someone who does not believe there should be any rules. The poor learner asks, "how do I form the negative of 'he is'"?, and instead of the expected "he is not", we have these clowns encouraging learners to say "he ain't". Well, that is an example I just made up, but it is a direct equivalent of the sorts of things that happen on this list. The learners don't realise that the socio-"linguisticians" (recte: sociolinguistics students) are not actually trying to help them at all!

An academic could study how the language is really used on the ground. An academic could also study just how far apart real language use is from any proclaimed standard. He could also study the social effects of a standard language (but that is getting into sociology and politics, and they should really stand for election if they want to get into some of this stuff). But there is nothing any academic "knows" in terms of linguistics that entitles him to grandstand on the subject of whether or not there should be a standard language at all. That UCL clown quoted in the newspapers recently may think that years of study of phonetics make him an expert on whether spelling should exist or not, but anyone who can read and write is an expert on this subject too.

Gramsci explained how the left could "capture" institutions, and this "march through the institutions" has taken place. Academics who do not tow the left-wing line on a host of subjects find themselves sacked in the UK - we do not have academic tenure in the UK. Political correctness is very extensive. It does not just include support for multi-racialism, multi-culturalism, women's rights, homosexual rights, but extends into environmentalism and now into the campaign against spelling. I think there is not enough of a review of the academic standards of PhD theses. What we have is left-wing extremists abusing their positions, using public money to fund their anti-nomian causes, reviewing rubbish written by other left-wing extremists. In fact, I believe there was a paper written a while back (towards a hermeneutics of something or other) written as a spoof that totally fooled the academic world, until the academics involved were shown to be the fools they are! There should be an outside body reviewing theses, and rejecting all theses that seem to be left-wing grandstanding, as well as all those that contain errors in logic and poor English.

Oh dear, Hilda and the rest would be out of a job!

Ah, so you have a political drum to beat. I see.