Too many Americanisms!

[baratron]

After reading Kay & John's Britpicking guide for fanfic, I am horribly aware of all the Americanisms in my speech that have crept in since I've been online. I am now going to make a conscious effort to eradicate them ;) I'm terrible for this sort of thing. When I had a Scottish boyfriend for two years, I acquired huge amounts of phrasing from him, though I've lost most of them since we split up. I pick up word patterns from people terribly easily - even word patterns I don't like! I used to know a guy who said "fair enough" all the time, and it's taken me years to get rid of it!

Anyway. English is a bastard of a language at the best of times, having acquired words from all over the place. And I'm amused, rather than offended, by the differences between American and British English (and between British and Australian, and English and Scottish, and Northern vs Southern English...). However, I prefer to speak my own language wherever possible. So I am going to try to stop borrowing other people's words unless they really are the best tools for the job. Let's see how long this lasts :)

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Interesting list. Actually I think some of the "Americanisms" mentioned either aren't specifically American - some of them are used in Scottish English, for instance - or are now sufficiently well-established that they count as standard English. "Faculty" gets used to mean "staff" in the THES, for instance.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Oh, indeed, which is why we have to sprinkle the list with caveats. We can't possibly list all the regional variations of English even within the British Isles, let alone throughout the English-speaking world, so we've tried to go for a generally acceptable standard; if anyone wishes to play a character who speaks "regional", all we can say is that we would enourage them to do their own research. As to terms gradually becoming more acceptable in Standard English, this is also true; however, we reasoned that the Magical tend to rather more socially isolated from the majority culture, and so are less quick in general to adopt new speech-habits.

[ias.livejournal.com]

Humph. Still think you're wrong about sick, it is used to mean feel ill in some parts of the country (definitely is in Ulster) as well as vomiting, and the OED agrees with me ;)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I think I've heard British people say "I am sick" to mean "I'm ill", but never "I feel sick" to mean "I'm ill" - that means "I feel nauseous". Does this tie in with your experience?

[ias.livejournal.com]

Aye, I'd agree with that. Also you are 'off work sick', have 'sick leave', 'sick bed', 'sick man of Europe' etc, so I don't think it can be claimed that sick exclusively is related to vomiting or nausea in British English.

(I did try to get John to change the 'sick' entry with a long and copious quote from the OED, but to no avail, but did manage to stick my oar in on a couple of the other entries)