Shouting at the radio!

The main thing that makes me shout at the radio is when I listen to LBC and the presenters are always trying to hurry the caller along, and interupting them before they finish their sentences and then summing up their points wrongly. The presenters get a 20 minute soliloquy at the beginning of every hour, then talk between each call and STILL insist on doing more than 50% of the talking during each call. Then when a caller does try to insist on finishing the sentence, the presenters start tantrumming and shrieking "It's MY show, we do it MY way".

I enjoy listening to thrillers on audiobook written by American writers but it drives me mad to hear them pronounce ‘lived’ as ‘lie-ved’ (to rhyme with jived!). Aargh!!

Train station is not a new thing. When I was in my early 20s I told my mother I was meeting a friend at the train station. Her response was “how old are you, 8? It’s railway station.” I’m now in my sixties. Maybe I mixed with the wrong crowd??

‘Can I get?’ instead of ‘can I have?’ Is a little grating, I confess and ‘box set’ when the ‘box’ part is surely adjectival and should be ‘boxed’ also makes me double take.

However, I do not mind too much and these differences remind us of the evolution of language under differing circumstances. For example, my DH is currently seething about ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Happy Christmas’ which came about to reflect a variety of festivals all set at the same time of year:- Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year.

I suppose we do not mind English English colonising the world while we are reluctant to acknowledge the cultural behemoth of American English carrying all before it and rendering us parochial.

Exactly what I said in my earlier post Grandma70s

It is quite funny that someone asked if Americans use Englishisms. Their entire language (with adaptations) is pinched from us! It annoys me that it is called English, though. I refer to American English and British English.

I get annoyed by ‘math’. It just sounds wrong and surely the full term is mathematics so the abbreviation needs an ‘s’.

‘Gotten’ is actually the old version of the verb in use before the colonisation of America but it fell out of use here.

Eeek!! 2 of my grandkids are moving to the U.S. next year (8 and 5). I shan’t look forward to the inevitable.

I was having a similar rant about americanisms to my youngest recently, when he pointed out that actually we used to spell colour without the ‘u’ and call Autumn ‘Fall’ etc. before the Pilgrim Fathers set sail and they took all of this with them to America. However, when dictionaries were first compiled, in the eighteenth century, it was decided to standardise spellings, using Latin as the base root of English spellings! So that was me told then!

I don’t like a decade or two decades instead of ten or twenty years.

Americans don't get burgled ,they get burglarized!!!

A big YES to hating the word gotten, I hate it so much that I stopped reading books by modern day a American authors, I was reading one and it had 8 gottens on two pages. Never finished the book. Also when teaching english in SE Asia many of the children/young adults speak english with an American accent and I hate it. I pointed out to my students that to speak business english they would need to speak BBC English and they should use the BBC programmes for english conversation. Also hate the word diapers instead of nappies.

Does anyone go to the Pictures nowadays? It was always the Pictures in my teens and early twenties.

We.ve had movies ever since WW2 no doubt due to the number of GIs stationed here and subsequent visits from the US. We make films but go to the movies (cinema is rarely mentioned).

The only real bugbear I have with the American language is the lack of plurals. I.E. if we used the word 'fixed' they would say 'fix'. It makes little sense to me.
I don't allow dgd to watch certain American programmes aimed at children. I find them too loud and mostly ridiculous. My house my rules after all. She can pull off a cracking American accent though!!!

Words have always crept. We don’t have roast cow with our Yorkshire pudding on Sundays - we eat beef. Political decisions aren’t decided in a moot hall - they are made (ideally) in Parliament. If you live in a single-storey house, you probably call it a bungalow (origin: Hindustani ‘banglā’). Our language has been shaped by the prevailing culture throughout our history - successive invaders brought their own languages with them. Beef and Parliament were introduced by the Normans when they conquered England, and the British in India adopted local words which they brought home with them - I should think the word bungalow might have seemed quite exotic when it was first used by suburban property developers. The words themselves are just words - what makes our hackles rise is when they remind us that things change, and the most annoying are those which make us feel that we are no longer in control of the English language. It is a fact that there are far more speakers of American English than there are of British English, and it’s not surprising that we can feel defensive, as though we are being invaded all over again. But people often comfortably accept foreign words that have more positive associations, for example foods originally sampled on holiday, such as paella, which might be washed down with sangria, or pizza followed by an espresso ... and either of which meals might result in the need for a siesta.

Boolya I agree about the use of Train Station for Railway Station, it makes me cringe as does "oftentimes" why can't they just say often!!

I must admit to using "guys" - it adequately describes the 8 or so members of my over-55s choir or any other mixed group. If the 3 men who sing with us are away, we are "girls". otherwise it's "guys" or occasionally "guys and gals" - no we haven't yet succumbed to "Guys and Dolls", but we don't claim to be old, ladies and gentlemen or any other generic term, so don't know how else to describe ourselves.

I hate ‘two times’ used instead of twice, don’t know if it’s an American usage or not!

OTOH where would we be if we didn't absorb words from elsewhere? For instance, what would we call coffee or pyjamas etc etc without the Persian, Urdu, Dutch input?
Any suggestions for appropriate English names?

As a very English woman living in the States I feel compelled to comment here. When I first settled out here more than 25 years ago I was really annoyed that my son had to now spell words the “American” way at school, and that his accent changed within weeks!! Expressions and different use of words drove me crazy. I have actually never lost my English accent at all, but over the years have stepped down from my high-horse and accepted that this is America and they speak American English here. The fact that these words are creeping into the language back in the UK is unfortunate maybe, but people have choices as to how they speak. I still use all words English over here, and of course, my American friends love it, as they love all things English!

I cringe at gotten and I am not a guy so don’t say guys to me

...... and why has train station replaced railway station? Okay, trains stop there as buses stop at a bus station, but it really annoys me. Rant over

The use of the word “gotten” really sets my teeth on edge.