Subject:
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Re: NOT the Queen's English ('Muricans)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:56:35 GMT
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814 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> My God, header frenzy!:
Okay, there. Pared down. Happy? :-)
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd writes:
> > Hmmmm, well, my father-in-law - who has has multiple degrees in chemistry
> > from Cal Tech and teaches chemistry - spells it aluminum. Nyahh, nyahh,
> > nyahh! :-P
>
> Sure, those Cal Tech boys can rig up an RF unit to screw with
> the Rose Bowl scoreboard, but can they really spell...? It's
> like asking someone with a doctorate in pediatrics (paediatrics
> for the ANZAC/UK crowd) to take out your spleen because, well,
> he or she *is* a doctor...
That depends: engineers can't spell, scientists are better about it.
>
> I thought all chemists simply knew chemical names from the
> two-letter IUPAC-approved designations, anyways. ;) Sr-90
> BAD!
You can call me Al, but you don't need to call me Aluminium?
>
> > And since you note both are listed, it kinda reduces you first comment's
> > meaningfullness, don't it! :-)
>
> Not really--well, at least not the reverse tweak: "Since
> when is it al-YEW-min-ee-um? Did you keep forgetting what
> the third letter is?"
Nothing to make it a long U. The root word is Al-um, not al-yewm.
>
> > Checked the periodic chart over at the micro-biologists' building: Aluminum.
> > More nyahhs!
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> > (of course, since a Brit coined the word...)
>
> Yes, but see, this all gets back to the heart of the matter,
> the implicit assumptions that [rant coming!]:
>
> 1) British pronunciations, having remained on the Ancient
> Mother Soil, are therefore 'correct' by being 'British.'
Actually, the British pronounciations have changed more than the American
pronunciations since the split. Yes, the biggest butchers of English are
the English! :-)
> This
> is true even when they're obviously the end-products of
> centuries upon centuries of lazy slurring by the illiterate, e.g.,
> 'Worcestershire' being pronounced /woostershur/, 'Leicester'
> being /lester/, 'Chiswick' being /chizik/, etc etc (or &c., &c.,),
> ad nauseum, they're 'correct' because it's part of Tradition. [1]
> Same deal with Vincent van Gogh being /van goff/.
See what I mean about the biggest butchers? :-)
On van Gogh: I worked with a guy from Holland (I hear him screaming
"Neiderlands!" somewhere) who assured me it was van Go and only some snob
from Amsterdam would say van Gogh(gutteral ending).
While in Cozumel, I met a very nice lady from the Netherlands. I asked her
how she pronounced it. "Van Gogh(gutteral ending)."
"You're from Amsterdam?"
"How did you know?" :-)
While an amusing story, I readily admit that was all of two people.
>
> 2) "American" ('Muricun) spellings and pronunciations are,
> therefore, the bastardized and internally inconsistent
> leavings of proper English, and not the result of the single
> greatest creolization in history that has created a dialect
> every bit as vibrant and *valid* as that in the United Kingdom,
> yet one that is still *conversant* with it. In short, English
> as spoken in the US--which itself varies regionally--is
> somehow invalid because it's a degenerate child language.
'Murican. Pronounce that R so far in the back of yer throat that ya come
near ta swallowing it! The rest is mere sophistries.
> As the Afrikaners hear from the Dutch, and the Dutch from
> the Germans, "Your language is just a derivative of the
> [implicitly superior] original, which we speak." Hogwash,
> in spite of all the Frieslander jokes floating about on this
> part of the Continent.
Let's not mention Canadian French to snobby Parisians.
>
> 3) The grammar and spelling used in the USA are quite often new
> creations or shortcuts that no proper speaker of English
> would use or has ever used, e.g., 'got' and sticking "z" (or zed,
> if you want to be correct) into things. First of all, 'got' may
> have fallen into disuse (or out of use, as we say in the US) in
> the UK, but it was very common in the eighteenth century
> and before.
Ah, see my point about it being the English that no longer speak English!
> As for -ise/-ize (and -our/-or and the -t and -en
> past tense conjugations [2]), I've been looking through tons of
> official letters in the last two months in the archives of two
> of Britain's most prestigious Learned Societies--the Royal
> Society and the Royal Geographical Society--and the British
> spellers don't have a consensus on these matters as late as 1920!
> I was taken aback to see Lord Aberdeen spelling out 'favor'
> and 'harmonize,' or the Scot Sir David Gill spelling 'polarize,'
> but I suppose that's because of Tradition.
More British confusion.
>
> 4) The above are true even when the practitioners of the
> United States [6] dialect outnumber all other native speakers of
> English in the world. It's part of the old Imperial mind-
> set that still lurks in the national psyche, the idea
> that England's progeny should pay some kind of homage
> and elevate the Mother Country above themselves willingly,
> as a grateful child should a parent.
Sorry, we don't ask the Queen for permission to do anything. We'll leave
that to the Canadians. :-O
(This mindset was
> originally more than just language--the Commonwealth as
> it exists today was in fact less ambitious than the original
> schemes for Imperial Federation, which could not guarantee
> that Britain would remain at its head without making this
> point statuatory or based on the nebulous concept of race--
> which would have destroyed it. Imperial Defence schemes
> had the same basic failings until the really populous chunks
> like India and South Africa were out of the picture after
> 1947/8.) In this category of ungrateful, petulant children,
> who can possibly out-do the original Rebels, the United
> States?
Kicked their candy-(dang, can't complete that here on lugnet) out! No
taxation without representation! I'm half Irish anyway.
> It's not at all coincidence that the joke 'revocation
> of Independence' email floating around was in the form of a
> *royal* edict--imagine if it came with the names of Blair,
> Prescott, and Cook at the bottom instead? It wouldn't have
> touched such a nerve (funny or otherwise) then, I reckon.
> It's an act of high Imperial Britain, not modern bureaucratic
> Britain.
>
> I'm certainly not going to say that everyone holds the above
> mindset. But it exists as an undercurrent in print and on radio
> and TV in the UK--and USians can't help by either turning the other
> cheek and tacitly affirming the beliefs or by becoming combative and
> defensive and thus cementing the image that we're all violence-
> doped Yahoos (as opposed to Huoyhnhnms, who can't get their hooves
> around the trigger anyways?).
Them's fightin' wurds. Argue with the Great Equalizer, Kernal Colt, at yer
peril!
There's no way out against such
> an institutional mindset--we're an easy target, as the biggest
> kid on the block, and we suffer our own inferiority complex because
> we've long held a European sense of history and culture to be ideal,
> yet have no way to get said same (without moving it to the US, like
> the Cloisters on Manhattan Island[3]).
Idunno. Monumentally stupid and evil World Wars instigated in Europe does
not exactly make me feel inferior. But then again, walking across London
Bridge in Arizona and the Queen Mary in Long Beach isn't exactly what I'd
call a firm denial....
> So in a sense, USians
'Muricans. Let's not get confused with the United States of Mexico.
> aid
> and abet [4] the British Imperial mindset by accepting this position
> of cultural and intellectual inferiors we've been assigned--anyone
> seen the Polaner's All Fruit commercials lately? We don't care
> as a general rule because at the end of the day we're still the
> world's single greatest economic and military power and can
> console ourselves with that, at least until our Imperial Age ends.
In other words, we can STILL kick their candy-rear-ends. Nyahh!
>
> Just a little rant on culture and history. It doesn't affect
> in the slightest my strong Anglophilia or my respect for Britain,
> but it does suggest that this whole 'British versus American English'
> debate is wholly farcical, and that it's viewed almost entirely
> through the lenses of pride and prejudice. If we wanted to be
> fair, let's vote [5] among all the native speakers of English in
> the world on whose language standards should be canonical...but
> then, what qualifies a native speaker if we're not all speaking
> the same language? ;)
>
> best,
>
> Lindsay
I hope no one has taken ANYTHING I've said on this matter to heart at all.
Just teasing a bit. ;-)
>
> [1] We won't even get into what Londoners do with the name
> 'Marylebone.' How do they manage to extract all the vowels
> and the 'y' from that word without hurting themselves?
>
> [2] The conjugation issue is a sore one with me, only because
> I rather like complicated conjugations like those for 'shave'
> and 'prove.' Alas, they've become 'shaved' and 'proved' as
> of late--but 'riven' remains 'riven.'
>
> [3] I went to visit Shakespeare's Birthplace on Sunday, just to
> see it--here's the true origin of Modern English, no matter
> whose it is--and I had to laugh upon seeing the impetus for
> raising money to buy the house: a rumour that P.T. Barnum
> wanted to buy it and move it to the United States! The
> horror! ;)
No doubt it would form an unholy triangle in Orange County along with the
other aforementioned British icons.
>
> [4] 'aid and abet' is a colloquialization of legalese that is
> itself redundant--how can you abet without aiding, or aid
> without abetting? But its use implies legal proceeding,
> so I'm using it. Nyah.
I take that back about the English being the biggest butchers of the English
language - I forgot about Lawyers!
>
> [5] But keep the counting out of Florida, for goodness sake.
> This rant is about language, not about the ability to run
> a decent election...:) That's a failing of the US Imperial
> Mindset.
What are brothers for? (gotta get in that dig at the Bush Boyz)
>
> [6] Inserted late, didn't want to recollate: I try to avoid
> 'American' because it implies that the US *is* America.
> Canada, Mexico, and many other countries might disagree.
> But that's part of, yes, the current US Imperial Mindset.
This is half-right. The US isn't America - it could just as easily be
Mexico. That's why we are America and they are Mexico. You somehow think
that North America is the same as saying America, or the Americas (North and
South) is the same as America. If Canadian want to complain, for example,
that they are Americans, they are incorrect. They are NORTH Americans, or
AmericaSians.
_
:-O
-
I hope everyone remembers what I said about teasing...
...even if it is accurate...
...couldn't resist....
...I suppose a case could be built for USAians, but this liberal believes
political correctness can be carried to a fault...
...the San Andreas Fault! And dropped in...
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