we have Postmortems in this country not autopsy's..
So stop saying it on the bloody news.
IIRC Aluminum was the original spelling; some bright spark decided to put an extra 'i' in it to make it more like sodium, calcium, helium etc. Like cricket, it didn't catch on everywhere...
Oumaninthenorth is the only one on here who actually seems to know what he's talking about. I would suggest the rest go and buy Bill Bryson's books on language, Made In America and Mother Tongue. Many so-called Americanisms are originally Elizabethan English, like Fall instead of Autumn, and 18thC Americans were complaining bitterly about the introduction of [i]Englishisms[/i] into [i]their[/i] language! Cellphone is perfectly correct, despite what elphinsafety might want to believe, so stop being deliberately obtuse. It's a telephone that operates via a cellular network, one of the very first networks in the UK was BT Cellnet, their logo included a hexagonal honeycomb background which represented the network of cells with a mast at the centre of each. Anyway, English is a totally mongrel language that has words from all over the world in common everyday usage. To start whining like little girls about Americanisms makes you sound like the bloody French with their rules about non-inclusion of outside words into their language. To do that is to deny the growth of a language; it's that inclusive nature of English to absorb new words that makes it the living thing it is, that people all over the world learn to communicate with others all over the world. If you want to be insular move to France.
"buddy". Argh.
To quote Eddie Izzard, "you say 'erb and we say herb, because there's a f'ckin 'h' in it."
hood and or trunk , no its a bonnet and or a boot.
Thousand points of light.
Line dancing.
It was only invented to give Morris Dancers someone to laugh at.
"Garden: It is not a back yard."
It depends. If you're growing tomatoes in it, it's a garden. If you're growing rusty pickups, it's a back yard.
I have a friend who emigrated to America from the north east of england, she now goes on vacation...
no sorry love, your on HOLIDAY, how quickly people forget thier roots
oh I raq , nope its iraq.
. If you're growing tomatoes in it, it's a garden. If you're growing rusty pickups, it's a back yard.
What it you pickup a girl with a rusty back yard next to her ladygarden?
I guess growing tomatoes is bad form.
'happy holidays' 😐
fred you're not really brown I saw that "babba shucks tables of sun" loyalty card in your wallet! 😀
Al was originally alumium, then aluminum, then aluminium
It's also another name for a battery
Fail. Battery = multiple cells. It's called a cellphone because it operates on a cellular network ie made up of cells. They are called cells in the industry I believe.
And for you people complaining about the spelling, it's worth noting that there were no standardised spellings way back, and we just happened to standardise differently. Lots of spellings (including ize and ise) in use for many many years here.
And whoever it was complaining about soccer - you're making a fool out of yourself. There were many different games called football before the 19th century played all over. One day a group got together and standardised some rules, creating Association Football. Not the only kind of course, we also have Rugby Football and Gaelic Football. In Edwardian England the fashion was amongst young dandies to shorten words and put 'er' on the end, like 'badders' for Badminton and so on. Soc is a well known abbreviation for 'Society' or 'As[b]soc[/b]iation', which is where we get 'soccer' from. In public schools where both games were played, you get rugger for Rugby and soccer for Association football.
The word is as English as cream teas I'm afraid. That's tea from the far East, you understand.
Incidentally, my wife is American and she uses a lot of words that to us seem really old fashioned English. She calls wellies 'galoshes' for instance.
Oh and 'yard' and 'garden' mean different things. Yard is the area surrounding your house; garden is the bit you cultivate for flowers and vegetables. Makes sense, no?
You people need to sit down and think about exactly why you don't like Americanisms in a language full of latinisms, greekisms, frenchisms and everwhere elsisms - not to mention Yorkshireisms, cockneyisms and the rest.
It's because you feel threatened and defensive, isn't it?
On the subject of football btw, all the various codes (American, Aussie etc) were set down at around the same time, from games played in certain schools and colleges. So they're all as old (and as valid) as each other.
It's a language,it evolves, the US is the dominant cultural force in the industrialised West, ergo Americanisms dominate the language. Tough shit. It's exactly the same as Romanisms and Normanisms forced the language to evolve.
If language hadn't been force evolved we would stil only have seven words in our entire vocabulary.
Molgrips beat me to it damn his eyes.
Don't you mean god dammit?
I could If you feel more comfortable with that, but I have a personal prefence for " Damn his eyes" it's been in the family for centuries 🙂
Sure. Whatever 🙂
Totally agree wilh Molgrips and jahwomble, language is a melting pot, always has been and always will be!
Anyone getting all nationalistic and pious about it should consider all the 'new' words they have acumulated in their lives that they have happily adopted?!
