When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "British accent"...

[Rick Wotnaz]

Maybe they were dubbed? I know America International dubbed the
first version of "Mad Max" that they imported into the US. Then
again, American International is well-know for their quality.

A couple of nights ago, I was amused and amazed to see subtitles
during NBC news interviews with some good citizens of Louisiana. I
don't know what NBC was thinking. I didn't think the accents were
especially thick, either. I had no difficulty understanding the
spoken words except in one stretch where background noise obscured
some bits. I've certainly heard some New Yorkers with harder-to-
understand speech, though without subtitles. I suppose I could be
fooling myself in thinking I understood them.

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Well... are we talking "Ox/bridge", Dales, or Cockney?

And the US Kennedy's have accents I find difficult...
--

 

[Neil Hodgson]

Grant Edwards:

Where exactly did you see all these
sub-titled British TV/movies?

I've noticed this too when travelling but can't recall precise
details. Perhaps it is on the international versions of American
channels such as CNN which are commonly watched by people with less
English and hence less ability to handle accents.

Neil

 

[DaveM]

What?!? I've never seen a British voice (inside or outside of
the movies) subtitled -- with the exception of one of a
nightclub scenes in one movie (I think it was Trainspotting)
where the dialog was inaudible because of the music.

I noticed this watching news footage rather than imported shows. I haven't
seen 'Trainspotting', but I have seen Scottish accents subtitled
(unnecessarily) on English TV, to understandable anger across the border -
so this isn't uniquely a US phenomenon, to be fair.

For example: In British English one uses a plural verb when the
subject consists of more than one person. Sports teams,
government departments, states, corporations etc. are
grammatically plural. In American, the verb agrees with the
word that is the subject, not how many people are denoted by
that word.

In sports (thats "sport" for you Brits):
Yes.

American: Minnesota is behind 7-0. The Vikings are behind 7-0.
British: Minnesota are behind 7-0. The Vikings are behind 7-0.
True.

In politics:

American: The war department has decided to cancel the program.
British: The war department have decided to cancel the program.

Not sure about this one. They may be used interchangeably as neither strikes
me as sounding "odd".

DaveM

 

[Steve Holden]

OK, so how do you account for the execresence "That will give you a
savings of 20%", which usage is common in America?

There aren't any universal rules, except possibly "British people speak
English while Americans don't". Nowadays relatively few people on either
side of the Atlantic even know the difference between a collective noun
and a plural, so there's little hope of them being able to correctly
apply any rule there might be (and yes, I split that infinitive just to
annoy any pedants who may be reading).

Yes.




Not sure about this one. They may be used interchangeably as neither strikes
me as sounding "odd".

Then again, there's room for infinite disagreement about these topics. I
mentioned a while ago that I disliked the English on a bumper sticker I
liked, which read

"Some village in Texas is missing their idiot".

Several people defended this, saying that a village could use the plural
possessive "their". I personally found it odd (and essentially
non-grammatical) not because either the singular or plural forms should
be mandated but because this one manages to mix them up. So

"Some village in Texas are missing their idiot"

would be better (though it sounds like the kind of thing only the idiot
alluded to would say), while my preferred choice would be

"Some village in Texas is missing its idiot".

Then again, what can you expect from a country whose leader pronounces
"nuclear" as though it were spelled "nucular"? I suppose it's only a
matter of time before they change the spelling just like they did with
"aluminium".

tongue-in-cheek-ly y'rs - steve

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

and yes, I split that infinitive just to
annoy any pedants who may be reading

*Real* pedants will know that English is not Latin, does not follow the
grammatical rules of Latin, and that just because split infinitives are
impossible -- not forbidden, impossible -- in Latin is no reason to forbid
them in English.

The linguist Steven Pinker calls the sort of people who claim split
infinitives are bad English "language mavens", and he doesn't mean it as
a compliment. See, for example, chapter 12 in his book "The Language
Instinct".


[snip]

"Some village in Texas is missing their idiot".

Several people defended this, saying that a village could use the plural
possessive "their".

"Several people" being the idiots missed by the villages?

I personally found it odd (and essentially
non-grammatical) not because either the singular or plural forms should
be mandated but because this one manages to mix them up. So

"Some village in Texas are missing their idiot"

would be better (though it sounds like the kind of thing only the idiot
alluded to would say),

Absolutely. "Some villages" would work, but not village singular.

while my preferred choice would be

"Some village in Texas is missing its idiot".

Yes, that's the puppy.

I think where the people are getting confused is that it is (arguably)
acceptable to use "their" in place of "his or her", as in:

"Should the purchaser lose their warranty card..."

Some of the more conservative grammarians argue against that construction,
many accept it in informal speech or writing but not formal, and a few
(like myself!) argue that it is time to get with the 21st century and just
accept it even in formal language. If it was good enough for Willie
Shakespeare, it is good enough for me.

 

[Richie Hindle]

[Steve]

and yes, I split that infinitive just to
annoy any pedants who may be reading
[Steven]
*Real* pedants will know that English is not Latin, does not follow the
grammatical rules of Latin, and that just because split infinitives are
impossible -- not forbidden, impossible -- in Latin is no reason to forbid
them in English.

Your previous post to this thread was chock-full of split nominatives: "The
Hollywood voice", "the specific regional accent", "the English-speaking
world", "the original French". And you call yourself a grammarian.

 

[Steve Holden]

[Steve]

and yes, I split that infinitive just to
annoy any pedants who may be reading

[Steven]

*Real* pedants will know that English is not Latin, does not follow the
grammatical rules of Latin, and that just because split infinitives are
impossible -- not forbidden, impossible -- in Latin is no reason to forbid
them in English.

Your previous post to this thread was chock-full of split nominatives: "The
Hollywood voice", "the specific regional accent", "the English-speaking
world", "the original French". And you call yourself a grammarian.

I am presuming this post was meant to be a joke? No smileys, though, so
you force us to make up our own minds.

Or is "the green tomato" also unacceptable?

regards
Steve

 

[Richie Hindle]

[Richie]

Your previous post to this thread was chock-full of split nominatives: "The
Hollywood voice", "the specific regional accent", "the English-speaking
world", "the original French". And you call yourself a grammarian.
[Steve]
I am presuming this post was meant to be a joke?

It was.

No smileys, though, so you force us to make up our own minds.

Yes.

Or is "the green tomato" also unacceptable?

It ought to be considered unacceptable by people who think that "to
correctly apply" is unacceptable, which is the point that Stephen was
making:

*Real* pedants will know that English is not Latin, does not follow the
grammatical rules of Latin, and that just because split infinitives are
impossible -- not forbidden, impossible -- in Latin is no reason to forbid
them in English.

Split nominatives like "the green tomato" are also impossible in Latin, but
no-one seems to object to their use in English.

 

[Rocco Moretti]

There aren't any universal rules, except possibly "British people speak
English while Americans don't".

I believe you overgeneralize.

A Welshman would likely be offended if you implied he spoke English, and
the Scots are notorious for only speaking English when they have too. (I
remember a news story some years back about a Scottish "lad" who was
fined/imprisoned for replying to an official court representative with
"Aye" rather than "Yes".) For that matter there are plenty of people in
Cornwall and even in London (Cockney) who speak something that is only
called "English" for lack of a better term.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Not sure about this one. They may be used interchangeably as neither strikes
me as sounding "odd".

It could be that both are used in British English and I only
notice the "have" usage. In US English it's always "has"
because "deptartment" is considered singular:

"departement has" and "departements have"

For some reason I find this sort of thing fascinating enough to
have download the entire "story of English" series off Usenet...

 

[Grant Edwards]

OK, so how do you account for the execresence "That will give you a
savings of 20%", which usage is common in America?

Dunno. Like much else in English (both American and British)
"that's just the way it is".

Then again, there's room for infinite disagreement about these
topics.

Which makes it an ideal Usenet thread.

I mentioned a while ago that I disliked the English on a
bumper sticker I liked, which read

"Some village in Texas is missing their idiot".

That would definitely be "is" and "its" in the US.

Several people defended this, saying that a village could use
the plural possessive "their". I personally found it odd (and
essentially non-grammatical) not because either the singular
or plural forms should be mandated but because this one
manages to mix them up. So

"Some village in Texas are missing their idiot"

At least that one is consistent, though it sounds "wrong" to US
ears.

would be better (though it sounds like the kind of thing only
the idiot alluded to would say), while my preferred choice
would be

"Some village in Texas is missing its idiot".

Then again, what can you expect from a country whose leader
pronounces "nuclear" as though it were spelled "nucular"?

Don't get me started on _that_ one. I found it particularly
horrifying that Jimmy Carter pronounced it "nucular" -- he had
studied nuclear engineering at the naval acadamy, and should at
least be able pronounce the word.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before they change the
spelling just like they did with "aluminium".

 

[Steve Holden]

Don't get me started on _that_ one. I found it particularly
horrifying that Jimmy Carter pronounced it "nucular" -- he had
studied nuclear engineering at the naval acadamy, and should at
least be able pronounce the word.

One can only hope that Bush has been control of the nuclear weapons
rather than the nuclear ones.

regards
Steve

 

[Dave Hansen]

At least that one is consistent, though it sounds "wrong" to US
ears.

The Germans have a word for it (sounds "wrong"): Sprachgefuhl,
literally a feeling for the language.

[...]

Don't get me started on _that_ one. I found it particularly
horrifying that Jimmy Carter pronounced it "nucular" -- he had
studied nuclear engineering at the naval acadamy, and should at
least be able pronounce the word.

"I was talking to my daughter, Amy, last night..."

Regards,

-=Dave

 

[Duncan Smith]

I believe you overgeneralize.

A Welshman would likely be offended if you implied he spoke English, and
the Scots are notorious for only speaking English when they have too. (I
remember a news story some years back about a Scottish "lad" who was
fined/imprisoned for replying to an official court representative with
"Aye" rather than "Yes".) For that matter there are plenty of people in
Cornwall and even in London (Cockney) who speak something that is only
called "English" for lack of a better term.

So English is spoken only in the South East of England, except London?
I think you should also disbar the queen (unless she's already
classified as a Londoner), due to her apparent confusion between the 1st
person singular and 1st person plural .

Duncan

 

[Terry Hancock]

OK, so how do you account for the execresence "That will give you a
savings of 20%", which usage is common in America?

In America, anyway, "savings" is a collective abstract noun
(like "physics" or "mechanics"), there's no such
noun as "saving" (that's present participle of "to save"
only). How did you expect that sentence to be rendered?
Why is it an "execresence"?

By the way, dict.org doesn't think "execresence" is a word,
although I interpret the neologism as meaning something like
"execrable utterance":

dict.org said:

No definitions found for 'execresence'!

Cheers,
Terry

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

By the way, dict.org doesn't think "execresence" is a word,
although I interpret the neologism as meaning something like
"execrable utterance":

dict.org said:

however, 'excrescence' appears to be a perfectly cromulent word:

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/08/22.html
http://www.wordsmith.org/words/excrescence.html

maybe dict.org just needs to work on their "did you mean" algorithm?

</F>

 

[Steve Holden]

In America, anyway, "savings" is a collective abstract noun
(like "physics" or "mechanics"), there's no such
noun as "saving" (that's present participle of "to save"
only). How did you expect that sentence to be rendered?
Why is it an "execresence"?

Precisely because there *is* such a thing as a saving. If I buy a $100
gumball for $80 I have achieved a saving of 20%.

By the way, dict.org doesn't think "execresence" is a word,
although I interpret the neologism as meaning something like
"execrable utterance":

dict.org said:

Nonetheless, Google finds 369 hits for "execrescence" and 67 for
"execresence".

My Complete Oxford is still packed in a cardboard box, so I can't offer
any more convincing evidence.

If there isn't such a word, all I can say is there *ought* to be

regards
Steve

 

[Terry Hancock]

[snip]

"Some village in Texas is missing their idiot".

I personally found it odd (and essentially
non-grammatical) not because either the singular or plural forms should
be mandated but because this one manages to mix them up. So

"Some village in Texas are missing their idiot"

"Some village in Texas is missing its idiot".

Yes, that's the puppy.

I think where the people are getting confused is that it is (arguably)
acceptable to use "their" in place of "his or her", as in:

In a Texas dialect, "their" is construed to mean "singular third person
of indeterminate gender". It's considered rude to use "it" to apply to
a sentient, and "his or her" is "PC" (and therefore a great sin ;-) ).

What's going on up above, is that "village" is being construed as
singular, but also sentient, since it's a group of people.

This is a simplification, since the actual grammar fluctuates -- I think
this is in the process of happening as the language evolves. Self-conscious
Texans simply try to avoid using constructs with an indeterminate third
person singular, substituting plurals wherever possible. So it's not
very consistent -- and quite a few of us attempt to assimilate our
speech to what we think is "Standard American English".

But you *will* occasionally hear pronouns here which do not occur in
"proper" English, such as "theirself" -- which shows what's going on
in the speaker's mind. They know the subject is singular, it's just
that you didn't realize that "their" could *be* singular.

You also see there, the tendency to normalize reflexive pronouns to
the possessive + self form:

myself ourselves

yourself y'all's selves

hisself theirselves
herself
theirself

itself

Whereas so-called "proper" English is inconsistent (read "broken"):

myself ourselves

yourself yourselves

himself themselves
herself
his or her self

itself

The same thing happened to "you", of course, ages ago, which is why
we almost never use the ONE TRUE singular 2nd person, which is "thou".
In fact, hardly anyone remembers the correct thou conjugations of verbs
anymore. Or even that it *is* singular. I read an really annoying
book once which kept trying to say things like "thou are" -- if
you're going to use "thou", at least conjugate correctly!
It's "thou art".

Of course, just to keep y'all on your toes, we Texans have not only
construed "their" to singular, but also "you", and added a new
plural "y'all". As in "Why can't y'all get y'all's selves together
and understand that how a person talks is their own business."

"Innit?"

Cheers,
Terry

 

[Grant Edwards]

Of course, just to keep y'all on your toes, we Texans have not only
construed "their" to singular, but also "you", and added a new
plural "y'all".

AFAICT, in many parts of "The South", y'all is now used in the
singular (e.g. "y'all" is used when addressing a single
person), and "all y'all" is the plural form used when
addressing a group of people collectively.