This very week I had a, um, discussion with someone online (a Brit, of course) who dismissed American English ("not really English") and claimed authority by saying "we [the Brits] INVENTED English". Uh-huh. Too bad I didn't have this to send to that person.
As an Englishman, I am sorry to hear this sort of thing. Clearly there is no 'correct' English, just many dialects of the same language. I dare say that there are more dramatic differences between dialects with the British Isles than there are between British and American English.
PS an interesting question is how non-rhoticity got established in a few North American dialects, since clearly American English broke off (so to speak) from British English before r-lessness went wide in British dialects.
As a matter of fact, this is exactly the topic of Saturday's issue :) But, long story short, American port cities who traded with the British picked up more than just goods...
On that note... it isn't just English that is changing.
I watched a TV program here in Japan that discussed new dialect words in Japanese - where, for example, the sentence ending "yone" (std Japanese) is being replaced in Nagano prefecture by "shinai" with the new ending spreading from one small mountainous corner where it seems to have been a standard to more and more of the prefecture over the last 40 or so years (and probably after this program to other places :) )
The broad A thing - northern English tends to use the short version for some words anyway. For example Bath is short "oop North" in my experience.
Somewhere there's a set of recordings of people saying the lords prayer in various British dialects in the early/mid 20th century. The vowels in "Our Father" alone were amazingly varied.
Yes, I'm from the North of England and now live in Ireland. Yes, the very flat, open A sound in 'bath' is the same sound as 'cat'. By coincidence, it's closer to the Italian A in 'pasta' than to the 'plummy' short A in received pronunciation (the 'King's English'). Also, some English dialects are more rhotic, so I tend to pronounce the R in words like 'more'. Moving from York to Cork was definitely an eye-opener. Corkonians wince when they hear Southern Brits say 'cawk'.
this is a very nice article. There are some inaccuracies . Americans say fall, but we also say autumn quite frequently. For us, they are synonyms. Also, Americans will say both I’ve got and I’ve gotten. I’ve got has the same meaning as I have. I’ve got a car means I have a car. I’ve gotten a car means I have obtained a car.
One curious thing about being Canadian is that Americans often see you as British and Brits often see you as American! :)
Both of the points you make are 100% correct — and apply to Canada too. The fact that one variant (e.g. fall) is not used in Britain doesn't mean that the variant used in Britain (e.g. autumn) is never used in North America.
The "got" vs "gotten" distinction is very interesting, and I wanted to talk about it in this article but it got left on the cutting room floor for reasons of length — perhaps in a future article.
I know that Americans use ‘autumn’ because Bob Dylan rhymed it with ‘bottom’, and Eminem with ‘you must not have got ‘em’. This feels odd (but very creative) to an English ear. But I was told by an American poetry reviewer that ‘fall’ is a more demotic/neutral register while ‘autumn’ is more poetic. The reverse is true of a word like ‘atop’. This exists in English but people would think you’re John Keats or something. In the US it’s just an everyday word, apparently. I do love these differences!
"Vase" an interesting word — the Oxford English Dictionary lists the pronunciations rhyming with "face" or "graze" as the older ones. Jonathan Swift rhymes "vase" with "face" in 1734, for instance.
Another exception is the broad ah in pasta, which is of course how it’s pronounced in Italian. The British often pronounce it with the same vowel that Americans use in the words cast and fast.
That always makes me cringe when I hear it. Though perhaps America had more Italian immigration before pasta became a big deal.
Both Britain and North America are terrible at French words, though. I've known many Canadians who are fluent in Quebec French, and get asked if they're speaking English. Or at least get their accent shuddered at and made fun of.
But then the French hate anyone but them speaking French, right?
America had so many Italian immigrants 100-150 years ago that their pronunciation of several Italian dishes reflects the southern Italian dialects spoken by many of the immigrants, rather than standard Italian
I don't know about often: I'm over 60 and have only heard someone say vaaze if they're kidding. Or if they're trying to be pretentious. "Ooh, so fancy, m'lord!"
That's a good question! We've actually lost many of the -en endings in English verbs over the years. Sing used to have the form "I have sungen", for instance. I think "gotten" => "got" is just one among many of these.
We didn't, I promise! It's still 'I have forgotten' in British English. Got/gotten is the only one where we diverge, I think. Even then, we still use it in some phrases. 'Ill-gotten gains' is one example. In a curious reversal of the trend, 'ill-got' is an archaism. I only know this because it cropped up in this week's Listener crossword!
Thanks for this very informative and interesting post. Of course, there are many dialectal variations in Britain. I (as a northerner) would never say 'Bath' as 'barth' or 'grass' as 'Grarss'. In Somerset and the West Country the 'R' is always very distinct and rolled. The need for some form of 'you' plural has led to 'yous' in Ireland, Liverpool and Glasgow, but is shocking elsewhere. 'Gotten' is certainly considered un-British, as is 'pled' instead of 'pleaded'. I am interested in the spelling variations of words such as 'clerk', pronounced either as 'clurk' or 'clark'; and 'university' as either '-vursity' or '-varsity'. This change in Britain seems to have happened in the last 100 years.
I think everywhere has dialectical variations. There's a difference in accents, speech patterns, and vocabulary between Northern and Southern California, for instance. Torontonians don't sound like Vancouverites, particularly as regards the famous "eh".
I'm fondest of "y'all" and the extended form "all y'all". We really do need something better than saying "you, plural".
"Yous", from what you (singular) say, seems to be an Irishism. Which possibly explains "youse" in New York City too.
I think pronunciation is what we should be discussing because it is the only marker of level of education and social class. The richest vocabulary cannot compensate for improper pronunciation.
I love how wonderfully complicated this is, and how different varieties of English end up developing
when there is a significant amount of isolation. And sometimes isolation isn't required. Speech can change as a cultural marker to show affiliation, and also the absence of affiliation.
I remember being told when I was an undergraduate that English as spoken in Appalachia was the closest thing to Elizabethan English that now existed. It sounds like this has been pretty widely rejected, but there are remnants like "afeared" and "yonder" that made it seem plausible in the first place. You also see "a-" as a prefix for verbs in both "I'm a-goin' to stay in this holler" and Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" in "a-flying" and "a-getting."
I played a video on English as spoken in Manchester (Mancunian) to help my American students get a better feel for Nadsat when I was teaching *A Clockwork Orange*. (Nadsat has as much to do with Burgess's youth in Manchester as it has to do with Russian.) We had a fun moment when we got to the soft "a" sound. The woman providing the received-pronunciation baseline said something like "lahst." The woman from Manchester spouted out a very American-sounding "last" even though she previously had sounded--not American.
Another fine post. You do such a great job of showing that English isn't made up merely of nouns and verbs and interjections. It's also a vast collection of histories and stories.
This very week I had a, um, discussion with someone online (a Brit, of course) who dismissed American English ("not really English") and claimed authority by saying "we [the Brits] INVENTED English". Uh-huh. Too bad I didn't have this to send to that person.
Clearly I need to move up the publication schedule!
As an Englishman, I am sorry to hear this sort of thing. Clearly there is no 'correct' English, just many dialects of the same language. I dare say that there are more dramatic differences between dialects with the British Isles than there are between British and American English.
PS an interesting question is how non-rhoticity got established in a few North American dialects, since clearly American English broke off (so to speak) from British English before r-lessness went wide in British dialects.
As a matter of fact, this is exactly the topic of Saturday's issue :) But, long story short, American port cities who traded with the British picked up more than just goods...
Ok, ONE FINAL comment, omg. You probably know Lynne Murphy's book "The Prodigal Tongue" — ?
I haven't read the book but I've read many an article on her blog!
Yikes! Sorry about that... from a Brit.
Tis all fascinating especially when you realise language has changed IN YOUR LIFETIME - so of course it has over 400 years!
On that note... it isn't just English that is changing.
I watched a TV program here in Japan that discussed new dialect words in Japanese - where, for example, the sentence ending "yone" (std Japanese) is being replaced in Nagano prefecture by "shinai" with the new ending spreading from one small mountainous corner where it seems to have been a standard to more and more of the prefecture over the last 40 or so years (and probably after this program to other places :) )
The broad A thing - northern English tends to use the short version for some words anyway. For example Bath is short "oop North" in my experience.
Somewhere there's a set of recordings of people saying the lords prayer in various British dialects in the early/mid 20th century. The vowels in "Our Father" alone were amazingly varied.
Right, this is one of the big differences between Northern and Southern dialects in England!
Yes, I'm from the North of England and now live in Ireland. Yes, the very flat, open A sound in 'bath' is the same sound as 'cat'. By coincidence, it's closer to the Italian A in 'pasta' than to the 'plummy' short A in received pronunciation (the 'King's English'). Also, some English dialects are more rhotic, so I tend to pronounce the R in words like 'more'. Moving from York to Cork was definitely an eye-opener. Corkonians wince when they hear Southern Brits say 'cawk'.
this is a very nice article. There are some inaccuracies . Americans say fall, but we also say autumn quite frequently. For us, they are synonyms. Also, Americans will say both I’ve got and I’ve gotten. I’ve got has the same meaning as I have. I’ve got a car means I have a car. I’ve gotten a car means I have obtained a car.
One curious thing about being Canadian is that Americans often see you as British and Brits often see you as American! :)
Both of the points you make are 100% correct — and apply to Canada too. The fact that one variant (e.g. fall) is not used in Britain doesn't mean that the variant used in Britain (e.g. autumn) is never used in North America.
The "got" vs "gotten" distinction is very interesting, and I wanted to talk about it in this article but it got left on the cutting room floor for reasons of length — perhaps in a future article.
I know that Americans use ‘autumn’ because Bob Dylan rhymed it with ‘bottom’, and Eminem with ‘you must not have got ‘em’. This feels odd (but very creative) to an English ear. But I was told by an American poetry reviewer that ‘fall’ is a more demotic/neutral register while ‘autumn’ is more poetic. The reverse is true of a word like ‘atop’. This exists in English but people would think you’re John Keats or something. In the US it’s just an everyday word, apparently. I do love these differences!
"Autumnal" is certainly how I describe the weather in Sept-Nov.
Interesting about the absence of the broad ‘a’ in American. An exception is the broad ‘a’ you often hear in ‘vase’,
"Vase" an interesting word — the Oxford English Dictionary lists the pronunciations rhyming with "face" or "graze" as the older ones. Jonathan Swift rhymes "vase" with "face" in 1734, for instance.
Another exception is the broad ah in pasta, which is of course how it’s pronounced in Italian. The British often pronounce it with the same vowel that Americans use in the words cast and fast.
That always makes me cringe when I hear it. Though perhaps America had more Italian immigration before pasta became a big deal.
Both Britain and North America are terrible at French words, though. I've known many Canadians who are fluent in Quebec French, and get asked if they're speaking English. Or at least get their accent shuddered at and made fun of.
But then the French hate anyone but them speaking French, right?
America had so many Italian immigrants 100-150 years ago that their pronunciation of several Italian dishes reflects the southern Italian dialects spoken by many of the immigrants, rather than standard Italian
Yes, it's very Naples and Sicily influenced. Now I wonder how it's pronounced in Rome and Florence.
And of course one could never say 'vaize' in the UK.
I don't know about often: I'm over 60 and have only heard someone say vaaze if they're kidding. Or if they're trying to be pretentious. "Ooh, so fancy, m'lord!"
I love this kind of stories! That's exactly the stuff I try to write about, but not as well as you did here. Kudos!
Thank you, Federica!
I wonder why Britain dropped the -ten ending from 'forgotten"? There are still words in British that rhyme, yes?
That's a good question! We've actually lost many of the -en endings in English verbs over the years. Sing used to have the form "I have sungen", for instance. I think "gotten" => "got" is just one among many of these.
It's stuck around in older/more formal words, like "begotten".
But also in mitten, bitten, kitten, fatten, flatten, smitten... I'm turning into a patter song here!
We didn't, I promise! It's still 'I have forgotten' in British English. Got/gotten is the only one where we diverge, I think. Even then, we still use it in some phrases. 'Ill-gotten gains' is one example. In a curious reversal of the trend, 'ill-got' is an archaism. I only know this because it cropped up in this week's Listener crossword!
Thanks for this very informative and interesting post. Of course, there are many dialectal variations in Britain. I (as a northerner) would never say 'Bath' as 'barth' or 'grass' as 'Grarss'. In Somerset and the West Country the 'R' is always very distinct and rolled. The need for some form of 'you' plural has led to 'yous' in Ireland, Liverpool and Glasgow, but is shocking elsewhere. 'Gotten' is certainly considered un-British, as is 'pled' instead of 'pleaded'. I am interested in the spelling variations of words such as 'clerk', pronounced either as 'clurk' or 'clark'; and 'university' as either '-vursity' or '-varsity'. This change in Britain seems to have happened in the last 100 years.
I think everywhere has dialectical variations. There's a difference in accents, speech patterns, and vocabulary between Northern and Southern California, for instance. Torontonians don't sound like Vancouverites, particularly as regards the famous "eh".
I'm fondest of "y'all" and the extended form "all y'all". We really do need something better than saying "you, plural".
"Yous", from what you (singular) say, seems to be an Irishism. Which possibly explains "youse" in New York City too.
I think pronunciation is what we should be discussing because it is the only marker of level of education and social class. The richest vocabulary cannot compensate for improper pronunciation.
And talking of British vs American - peeling an apple or paring it. Paring seems like a work that British English has forgot(ten)
BTW, I love that lithograph. It's well done with the symbols and gloriously, uncomplicatedly imperial.
Liberty and Britannia seem up to something, don't they?
I love how wonderfully complicated this is, and how different varieties of English end up developing
when there is a significant amount of isolation. And sometimes isolation isn't required. Speech can change as a cultural marker to show affiliation, and also the absence of affiliation.
I remember being told when I was an undergraduate that English as spoken in Appalachia was the closest thing to Elizabethan English that now existed. It sounds like this has been pretty widely rejected, but there are remnants like "afeared" and "yonder" that made it seem plausible in the first place. You also see "a-" as a prefix for verbs in both "I'm a-goin' to stay in this holler" and Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" in "a-flying" and "a-getting."
I played a video on English as spoken in Manchester (Mancunian) to help my American students get a better feel for Nadsat when I was teaching *A Clockwork Orange*. (Nadsat has as much to do with Burgess's youth in Manchester as it has to do with Russian.) We had a fun moment when we got to the soft "a" sound. The woman providing the received-pronunciation baseline said something like "lahst." The woman from Manchester spouted out a very American-sounding "last" even though she previously had sounded--not American.
Another fine post. You do such a great job of showing that English isn't made up merely of nouns and verbs and interjections. It's also a vast collection of histories and stories.
My favorite is possibly "a-fixin' to". It's always seemed to me to be an intermediate step in your process of doing some action.
Interesting note on "Clockwork Orange", thanks!
I knew it once, but it slipped me mind.