Are you becoming more British?

As promised on this pre Burns Night celebrations here in Scotland to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland's National Poet, Robbie Burns - or Rabbie, as he is known here in his own home country.

His words (in a fashion) are sung all over the world now on many different kinds of occasions courtesy of "Auld Lang Syne", and recited in some of his well known poems of love and affection, as in "My Luve is like a Red, Red Rose".

He was born on 25 January 1759 in a wee cottage in the village of Alloway, just south of Ayr. This cottage is now a national shrine, open to the public, and the exact location of his birth is a Christlike manger which has to be artifically lit as it is a tiny wee cubbyhole hidden away from any daylight.

I will be with friends up in Dunblane, just north of Stirling, for our Burns Night supper this evening and it promises to be a great occasion, as ever. Dunblane happens to be the home town of our national tennis hero Andy Murray - I just thought I would get that one in.

A Burns Night supper tradtionally consists of:

The Selkirk Grace

Cock-a-leekie soup
Haggis, with tatties and neeps (potatoes and either swede or turnips or both)
Clootie Dumpling and Tipsy Laird (puddings - or sweets or desserts - which ever word you prefer)
Cheese and bannocks (which are a form of oatcake)
Tea or coffee and then whisky, whisky, whisky, whisky - followed by whisky, whisky, whisky and ale or wine or diet coke if you are of the fragile and wimpy kind.....

BURNS NIGHT

HRH The Prince of Wales reading: "My Heart's in the Highlands"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/works/my_hearts_in_the_highlands/

Brian Cox, a Scottish actor from Dundee, Scotland, reading "My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/works/my_luve_is_like_a_red_red_rose/

Robert Burns - born on 25 January 1759

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/biography/early_life.shtml

Burns Night celebration 24 January

http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/burnsnight/running_order.shtml

Happy Burns Night to all my Scottish compatriots

The Selkirk Grace is also known as the Burns Grace at Kirkcudbright.

In true Scottish style the name of the wee town (and former county) of Kirkcudbright, down there in Galloway, in the south west tip of Scotland, is pronounced as "CURR-coo-bree", with the "Rs" clearly prominently rolled....in true Scottish style.

This thread has been dedicated to things British by the OP, but right now I am reserving it for things Scottish on this great night in the Scottish Calendar, second only to Hogmanay.

Let's raise a wee glass of guid cheer....a reet guid willie waught.... in honour of our beloved Scottish Bard whose own brand of the Scottish version of our beloved English Language is legendary.

The UK currently has the dubious "honour" of having the presence of the American RB heiress Paris Hilton on these shores....apparently she is here to find a "British Best Friend" (to quote her own words) as well as to help promote her husband's new show here in this country.

Apparently, so the news reports say, she appeared on GMTV this morning - arriving, ever so predictably and ever so drama queenerally, twenty minutes late for her schedued interview slot on this TV show which is geared almost entirely to a female audience....well, let's face it, all the men are out at work, or on their way to work, at that hour of the morning, are they not? Anyway, she apparently messed up the stations schedules more than just a tad but what does that matter to the likes of her.....

She is reported to be constantly saying how much she (quoting PH): "Adores the British accent - it's so cool, SO sexy.....I just lurve it"!*

So much so that she is now learning commonly used expressions and words here in the UK - words like "minging" (which is actually a Scottish word meaning something less than lovable - a wee bit on the dreich side) and also "fit" in the sense of being in top physical condition - healthy and glowing and toned and indicative of ten or more tough sessions down the gym each week......and when a bloke says he is "well fit" then he is just as I described, and good on him I say. I can only manage about two sessions, or perhaps three in a slack week.

Maybe it's one of those she wants as a "British Best Friend". The only problem she may have is getting understood by any prospective BBF - if her accent is anything to go by....to most Brits it's pretty dire.

Bitchy? Well - of course! ;-)

The poor girl was asked if she knew the name of the British Prime Minister.
"Oh sure!" she drawled. "It's Gordon Ramsay".

Well, the Ramsay Gordon certainly has a more colourful vocabulary than does the Brown version! It probably equals her own, which is why she probably got confused, poor wee lassie.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4365549/Paris-Hilton-Gordon-Ramsay-is-Prime-Minister-of-Britain.html

*She obviously hasn't yet been to Glasgow or to Liverpool or to Birmingham or to Camberwell or to Hackney or to........... ;-)

I'll have you know that 'mom' is not American at all, it is used in the West Midlands and always has been.

As for -ize, yes i do use ize! Is you're going to insist on spelling colonise like that, then why contradict your self and spell size like that? surely sise is more appropriate?

I say we need a universal English language council to decide a uniform spelling structure

I put forward using the American -ize (instead of -ise)
The American -er (instead of -re)
And using -er instead ouf -our/-or (eg coler, neighber, harber)

"Lurve". A strange Briticism that always makes my skin crawl. Because when I say it in my head, it has the full R, sounds nothing like "love", and sounds more like some sort of unpleasant disease, possibly involving the skin.

I'm not too sure how we adopted the "lurve" interpretation......some kind of innate pisstake I reckon (for which we are famed - or notorious - take your pick). I suppose it does conjure up some horrible kind of skin disease which obviously accounts for your imagined dermatological condition, Uriel.

Paris Hilton has apparently met her first four legged "British Best Mate" - a bulldog. How appropriate! This "British Best Mate" quest of hers is now a bit of a joke over here....all sorts of characters are popping up in TV programs, all dressed in a variety of perceived traditional British styles of dress and all speaking in various regional accents....a posh lady in a posh Ascot gavotte hat with a posh accent "taking tea" in a posh Ye Olde Worlde Tea Roome....a chav (or a ned as we call them here in Scotland) dripping with bling and Burberry and talking incoherent Stella lager induced chavspeak...and a hearty "Northern Lad" speaking in an earthy Northern English accent, and wearing a droopy moustache offering to show Paris all the pleasures and delights of "The North" - that being those parts of England north of a line from the Mersey to the Humber.

Apparently London is Paris' (quote): "Favourite city in the world - there is so much fun going on here!"

I have to agree with her on that one, and that's from a lad from Edinburgh. ;-)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LgyZRriYTd4

As this particular snippet of information I am about to impart relates to a British radio program (on BBC Radio 4 which is a nationally broadcast channel) then this is the most appropriate thread in which to post it.

The regular weekly program (with repeats on later days) called "Just A Minute" has been running on BBC Radio for about 40 or 50 years I believe and it is still as popular today as ever it was with all those who love the English Language and its verbal usage, a program which clearly proves the skill (or otherwise) of panel members (usually four people with the chairman and "judge" Nicholas Parsons in charge of them).

The purpose of the game is to determine whether or not a panel member can speak continuously for one full minute on a set topic, announced by Nicholas, without any hesitation of any kind, and without repeating any word other than those in the topic heading (The Last Resort being the topic in the YT clip below) - excluding of course the definite and indefinite articles and the usual conjunctions of everyday speech) and, very importantly, without deviating from the relative topic in any way at all.

Every time another panel member suspects the speaker has broken the rules by repetition, hesitation or deviation then s/he will press a buzzer and Nicholas will have to adjudicate on the validity of the challenge based on the evidence of what he heard. Complete concentation is required, by the listening pannellists, and, most importantly, by Nicholas himself as it is so easy to miss out on a slip up especially if the speaker is rattling out his/her words at a rapid rate of knots, which most do -except perhaps for the more sedate elderly gentleman member called Clement Freud, who was once the Conservative MP for the Isle of Ely consituency in Cambridgeshire - and who you will hear in the link below in his spiel on "The Last Resort" - which, as he clearly indicates, can have different meanings. Quite frequently this kind of "play on words" element comes into use quite a lot in Just A Minute.

Usually each interruption is followed by a heated discussion on the validity of a challenge, as you hear in The Last resort.

JAM is broadcast every week as I say, and usually from a different location right across the UK each time, so members of the public in all these various places can go along and watch the show being recorded and hear all the fun. When it is recorded in London it is usually from the Theatre Studio in the BBC's Broadcasting House itself - just up along Portland Place from Oxford Circus.

I have a feeling the show in this link was broadcast from Tunbridge Wells, a very sedate, very conservative and higly affluent spa town in Kent, South East England, and which is often the butt of jokes simply because the famous "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" sends his letters of complaint and protest and ire and rage to newspapers on a regular basis...more especially The Times.

It really is difficult to talk for one full minute on a topic which has been chucked at you without any prior warning at all - and do it without any repetition, hesitation or deviation whatsoever. Try it sometime.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFucBNbKJQ

Comedy and a sense of humour have always been a very important feature of British life. Having a welll developed sense of humour is a pre-requisite for living here.....without it you are pretty much a pariah....or a German ;-) Ach...Gruss Gott! - only joking, mein Herr!

Tim Vine is one of our best comedians and he appears on TV very often and he holds the UK record for the number of jokes cracked in one hour...they just seem to roll off his tongue* so effortlessly and with such ease even on topics hurled in his direction one after the other....he will come out with a relevant joke inside one millisecond.

Snowstorms have currently buried much of the UK under a disruptive thick blanket of white and appropriately, on TV, he told an audience that he had sent his girlfriend a huge amount of snow as a gift (as if she didn't have enough already where she was). The next day he rang her up to discuss a totally separate issue, making his points of view as clearly as possible, at the end of which he asked her if she had got his drift.

*The word "tongue" - it is pronounced quite differently in various parts of the UK. Most of us (including us in Scotland) say "tung" - this is the case in Southern England most definitely.

In practically all of the North of England, though, they say "tong", and in Lancashire it seems as if they also voice the hard "g" quite noticeably.

Just a wee point of interest for those who care about these linguistic trivialities.

I understand that "gotten" it today almost exclusively AE but it was originally used in BE before AE ever existed. Can it really be considered a "true" Americanism in BE or just archaic?

Pete - if it has been 'reintroduced' by way of American media then I would definitely class it as an Americanism. But that is just my personal opinion.

It is exactly the same with the re-introduction of -ize. Technically this sort of spelling has never gone away - if you listen to the Oxford dictionary but in practise schools never teach this form. But it is getting used much more frequently now anyway.

I'm not sure whether 'gotten' every really went away from here anyway -more its usage just declined.

Personally I only ever hear 'gotten' in one instance and that is when people say "I have got used to it". For some reason, in my neck of the woods the 'got' is almost always replaced with gotten. Weird.

Righty-ho, matey! What a lark! By Jove what, I say!

<<There are plenty of examples of modern Americanisms infiltrating the modern British lexicon (Mom, gotten, the use of -ize etc) but are there any examples of modern British words coming into use in modern America?>>

None of the examples you give are Americanisms, in the sense of originating there. As said above, 'mom' is from the West Midlands; I imagine it's just a phonetically faithful spelling for that region, just like Robbie is spelt Rabbie in Scotland.

'Gotten' has just changed to 'got' in the UK (but persists in the phrase "ill-gotten games").

Both -ize and -ise endings have always been acceptable in Britain, but -ise has become far more popular. Not universally so, however. For example the OED, the UN and plenty of British scientific journals use the -ize endings: Indeed, it is now often called the OED spelling. Perhaps they have retained this style as they don't wish to move towards something that might alienate an American reader, although the Times, which obviously is aimed at a British audience, only recently adopted the -ise style.

The -ise style is convenient for lazy spellers, as some words can't be spelt with -ize for example 'advertise', so spelling them all -ise removes the need to remember which can't be -ize. This has perhaps 'tripped up' the Americans, in that 'analyse' was never spelt with a z, but is now in the US. The spelling 'analyze' is still seen as incorrect in the UK.

I can think of plenty of words which have originated in the States, but even though the examples you gave didn't originate there, they don't appear to even be on the increase in the UK.

These questions can be a bit like saying "humans evolved from monkeys". While there is some truth behind the statement, the reality is that both humans and monkeys evolved from some common ancestor which is now extinct.

@GEORGE

Thankyou very muc for you respnse George but I tried to make it clear in the first posting that I was aware of the origins of these words, with the exception of 'mom' (I always believed that to be a true Americanism).

My request was to find out which words, in modern times, have moved across from the UK to America, regardless of here they originated.

I think that the American spelling is becoming more universal than the British one. I was taught British English at school and -ize was wrong, but now I use the American spelling because it's the most used in books, magazines, the net, etc...

<Technically this sort of spelling has never gone away - if you listen to the Oxford dictionary but in practise schools never teach this form. But it is getting used much more frequently now anyway.>

That should be "practice", not "practise".