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"Why do some Americanisms irritate people?"

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Stefan Blommaert
Stefan Blommaert
Brazil
Local time: 23:01
Member (2012)
English to Dutch
+ ...
It all depends on the attitude Aug 2, 2011

I honestly think that English is growing into the present-day Latin....there was the actual original language, and then came all the variations...variations that eventually grew into really different languages.

I think what we see now (and much faster than 2000 years ago, since communication is much easier and faster) is the second stage of this process; the diversification.

All languages have their value; my attitude is not towards a language in particular, but to who ... See more
I honestly think that English is growing into the present-day Latin....there was the actual original language, and then came all the variations...variations that eventually grew into really different languages.

I think what we see now (and much faster than 2000 years ago, since communication is much easier and faster) is the second stage of this process; the diversification.

All languages have their value; my attitude is not towards a language in particular, but to who uses the language to approach me.

Let me explain: I used to travel frequently to the US and always needed a couple of days to get used to the "sound"...Nothing special, nothing to worry about...

One of the last times I flew into the US (I don't go there anymore; it is far too unpleasant to get into the country now), I entered the country via Atlanta after a horrible flight with lots of delays and with typically no compensation from Delta.
I was "greeted" at immigrations by a fat, uninterested, rude woman who happened to wear a badge and who barked something at me. I was tired and didn't immediately understand what she said. She had to repeat and was so visibly annoyed at my not understandig that she barked even more incomprehensibly....I had to ask her to repeat again...upon which she now in a very loud voice asked me if I didn't speak English....I should have shut up, but didn't and said that, actually, I did speak English, but that I was wondering what she was speaking....I was wheeled of as a criminal and questioned for 3 hours.

Normally, I would have found this situation linguistically rather interesting. Because of the condescending tone of that "thing" (the blob was actually a better word), the situation completely changed....A decent attitude and consideration for what is different, get you a long way...perhaps that is where the sore spot lies with Americanisms, or better with the people who come up with or use them. But, then again, that is also a generalisation...and they are always dangerous...

[Edited at 2011-08-03 08:03 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 
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Michael Grant
Michael Grant
Japan
Local time: 11:01
Japanese to English
Not knocking you, but... Aug 3, 2011

Jenny Forbes wrote:

Please don't knock me - I dearly love the USA, have lived and worked there and have many American relations - but the American use of "bathroom" does make me giggle - as in "A horse just went to the bathroom right in the middle of my lawn". Or maybe it went to the rest room ??


You can giggle all you want to, but the British National Corpus, a "100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written..."(source: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk), cites over 2300 instances of its use in current British English...

MGrant

[Edited at 2011-08-03 05:10 GMT]
 
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"Why do some Americanisms irritate people?"







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