What passes for journalism at the BBC. (Not devolution)

[Heid the Ba]

This page seems to involve the public telling the BBC what "Americanisms" are creeping into UK english. The BBC then publish them without checking anything. Off the top of my head:
1, 6, 34, 40, 42, 48 and 49 are expressions I have heard all my life, generally things I was strongly warned not to say.
5. Like "debus" a UK military term with origins in the Great War.
10, 11, 17, 32, 33 are all words that have been used in the UK all my life.
12 I have heard both pronunciations all my life.
13, 27 and 47 are all UK but archaic.
21 UK military term going back to the 19th century.
39 How is being Scots - Irish not possible?

Some of the others are very US and abominations but I very rarely hear most of them.

[Lianachan]

Regarding #39, many in the UK make the mistake of calling Scottish people "Scotch" too. Not to our faces, though. Not twice, anyway.

[Мастер]

Some of the others would be, let's say, quite regional in the US. I don't think you will ever hear someone form Massachusetts use #40, for example.

I would take issue with #37 - the phrase that is suggested as an alternative to the alleged Americanism is definitely not equivalent.

#34 inspires me to comment on a Briticism that I find odd. "What time is it?" "It's half six." This usage would simply not occur in American English, but more to my point - someone please ask Arneb what time "half six" is.

[Enzo]

#40 is one that is often said tongue in cheek, just as I might use the word "ain't" in a senetence just for variety. There would be places they use it for real, but I suspect most us it more as an overt thing.

#15 As I understand it, gotten is the older form. The Brits have evolved to simply got, while we still use the older form.

#29 Fortnightly? Well if we used the word fortnight, and if any Americans knew what a fortnight was, we might say that. Tell us what it means and we will start telling our weight in stone. Or is it stones? We do seem to have some confusion between biannually and semiannually.

#46 As a kid I was into short wave radio, and listened to people all over the world talking. I used to hear Canadians and some others occasionally use the word "zed" and for the life of me never could figure out what a zed was. many years later...

#47 even bugs me. Americans love to turn nouns into verbs.

#50 What can I say, we are idiots.

#49 That came from immitating the New Yawk speech patterns.

[Enzo]

And there are Americanisms that we ourselves are sick of. Lake Superior State University here in Michigan annually publishes a "Banished Words" list. These are words or phrases submitted and chosen each year to go on the list. Words we never want to hear again.


http://www.lssu.edu/banished/


I have submited some suggestions, some of which made the list. So others must agree with me. I recall being sick of "(____) is the new (_____)" Brown is the new black, 50 is the new 30, whatever. And 24/7.

[MM_Dandy]

39 How is being Scots - Irish not possible?

Perhaps it was not possible for said person - take myself, for example.

[Superluminal]

I'm tired of hearing, "How's that working out for you?".

[Heid the Ba]

And another one: "This is Lindisfarne, high up on the north coast of Britain . . ."

[tubeswell]

..., high up on the north coast of Britain . . ."

Is that because its up the top of the map? ;-)

[Lianachan]

And another one: "This is Lindisfarne, high up on the north coast of Britain . . ."

Is that because its up the top of the map? ;-)

When I used to live and work in Caithness (non-Heiders, that's the very north of mainland Scotland and Britain), an English guy who worked at the same place as me had a big map of Scotland up on his wall. Across the Scottish Borders, he had written (in massive text) "THE NORTH", with an arrow pointing down off the bottom of the map.