BH: Nice use of your (AmE) blinkers! (=BrE indicators)In AmE, the more formal term for blinkers is turn signals.
Me: Nice (BrE) indicating! (=AmE signal(l)ing)
Is dialect accommodation the definition of true love?
BH: Nice use of your (AmE) blinkers! (=BrE indicators)In AmE, the more formal term for blinkers is turn signals.
Me: Nice (BrE) indicating! (=AmE signal(l)ing)
- CLIVE (playing an interviewer):
- Erm, I think it can be truly said that the Americans have, er, their soul singers, and we English have ars-oul singers. And, er, Bo is one our leading, er, soul singers.
- DEREK (playing 'Bo Duddley'):
- Arsehole singers, yes.
- CLIVE:
- Bo, I-, I wanted to ask you first of all, erm, .....
- DEREK:
- Yes.
- CLIVE:
- This is obviously a sort of, er, boogie, er, .....
- DEREK:
- This is a boogie, erm, .....
- CLIVE:
- What? Jive stuff, is it?
- DEREK:
- Jive boogie woogie song, erm, and, erm, it is-, it is a, a story of ..... well, shall I, shall I sort of go through it?
- CLIVE:
- Yes, I-, I-, I was thinking that some of the lyrics for, er-rm, English speaking audiences might be a little obscure.
- DEREK:
- Absolutely. Well let me .....
- CLIVE:
- I wonder what the-, what-, what-, what it really is all about?
- DEREK:
- Well, let me-, let me just go through it, erm, for you. Ah: (sings and plays piano:) "#Mamma's got a brand new bag!" Er, "Mamma's got a brand new bag", er, this means, erm, that the-, the Harlem mother has gone out into the bustling markets of Harlem .....
- CLIVE:
- Yes.
- DEREK:
- ..... er, to buy a gaily coloured plastic bag. Erm, and there's a certain amount of pride in this: Mamma's got a brand new bag.
- CLIVE:
- I-, I suppo-, I suppose a gaily coloured plastic bag is, er, a bit of status symbol in Harlem.
- DEREK:
- It certainly is. Certainly is. Obviously, er, you know, sign of a birthday or something like that.
Now, when I was a 12-year-old reading British novels, I liked to read them out loud, in my best "English" accent, probably gleaned from Dick Van Dyke's murder of Cockney. One of the unfortunate effects of this was that I pronounced Hercule Poirot as something like "Ercule Pirate" (never mind that he's Belgian—he was in England and so must speak as my 12-year-old self believed the English to speak). But another effect was that I believed that when British people paused in speech, they made sounds that rhymed with my American pronunciations of her and worm. And for much of my life, I continued to believe that there were millions of English-speaking people somewhere (or somewhen) pronouncing /r/s in their hesitations.
But then I had a baby, and the penny dropped. I regret to say that this is not because motherhood has made me smarter/cleverer. It's because you spend a lot of time watching tv with the subtitles on while trapped under a baby. Watching in this way, I've become addicted to Eggheads, but when it's not 6 p.m., I often end up watching Friends or Scrubs, since one or the other seems to be on at all times. And it was only when seeing er and erm in the subtitles for American characters in these American sitcoms that I reali{s/z}ed: it's not that the British put different sounds into their filled pauses, it's just that they typically spell those pauses er and erm instead of uh and um. Since many BrE dialects do not pronounce the /r/ after vowels in such contexts, the /r/ here is just to indicate that the vowel is not a proper 'e' but a long schwa-like vowel. And before any of you complain that I should not have been allowed to have a doctorate in Linguistics if it took me this long to figure out something this basic, let me tell you: I've thought the same thing myself. I think the technical term for this is: Duh! When I mentioned a few posts ago that I'd be covering er/erm/uh/um soon, reader David Up North (as I'll call him to differentiate him from the other Davids I've mentioned before) wrote to ask:
I was interested to see in the comments to your latest blog that you were planning an article on 'er' and 'erm'. I wondered if you'd be covering 'eh?' as well? It's often pronounced (or possibly replaced by) 'ay?' (or something like that – rhymes with 'hey', but I don't recall ever seeing anyone writing either as 'eye dialect' representations of the sound, they usually use 'eh?'). It came to mind because I've occasionally seen Americans transcribe the sound as 'aye?' – which is obviously wrong.
I can't imagine why an American would transcribe eh as aye (pronounced like I in every dialect I know) and haven't seen it happen, myself. I speak a northern AmE dialect that, like Canadian English, ends many sentences with eh? (Famously parodied by the Great White North sketches on SCTV: How's it going, eh?) And when we write that, we spell it eh and pronounce it to rhyme with day. (I was happy to discover upon moving to South Africa that SAfE has the same kind of interjection, but it's pronounced hey. It was very easy to adjust to. Much better than when I moved to Massachusetts and was mocked relentlessly for the ehs that I'd never noticed myself saying.)
The problem we're seeing here is that these interjections are usually spoken and generally only written when one is trying to represent natural speech. Since they're not part of the written language (since they're not needed in the same way when the language isn't immediately interactional), people aren't used to spelling them, and thus the spellings have been slower to become standardi{s/z}ed than the spellings for nouns and verbs. Even within AmE, I find that the informal version of yes is spelt in different ways (yeah, yeh, yea, ya) by different people. To me, yeah is informal 'yes', and yea is pronounced 'yay' and is a positive vote, yay is what you say when you're giddy and ya is what South Africans say instead of yeah. I believe that my spellings are the 'standard' spellings for AmE, but, as I say, I've seen a lot of variation and it's hard to 'correct' such spellings, since the 'standard' is not as well-established for these mostly-spoken sounds. It's worth noting that all of these discourse particles have meanings, though they can be hard to put into words. My favo(u)rite quotation from the OED's entry for er is:
1958 Aspects of Translation 37 The really astute Englishman..must feign a certain diffident hesitation, put in a few well-placed — ers.The interjections' meanings are generally the same in AmE and BrE, but what may differ, as indicated by the above quotation, is how often and why people use them. One reason to use er/uh is to feign hesitation—to make it seem like you're reluctant to say something. Another reason is to hold your place in the conversation—to indicate that although you're not saying anything at this very second, you intend to finish your thought, so no one should interrupt you. It may be that people in different places from different backgrounds use these sounds for these purposes at different rates and in different situations. I believe that the stereotypes would have it that the British use er/erm to hesitate--not to rush into committing themselves to any proposition--and that Americans use um/uh because they're inarticulately rushing to commit themselves to all sorts of opinions. Nevertheless, both American uh/um and British er/erm have the potential to be used in either way by individuals.
In your 27 June 07 blog entry, you discussed the differences in British and American university positions.
What you didn't mention -- and I need to figure out, for reasons too lengthy to burden you with -- is how university-level academics are addressed.
I'm aware, for instance, of the reverse snobbery among British doctors that leads to GPs being addressed "doctor" while specialists are addressed as "Mr/Mrs" (you also wrote about this). Is there something similar at work among academics?
1) Do British academics with Ph.Ds go by "Doctor"? I ask because I ran across this web page. A corresponding US university web page would refer to all these people as "Dr. XYZ" instead of "Professor XYZ." Part of this is, of course, because every lecturer at a US school is a professor, but it's also because Ph.Ds here seem to jealously guard the privilege of being called "Doctor."
Me at Sussex graduation. For some reason, our UK academic-gown (BrE) hire company thinks US doctorates wear tams instead of mortarboards |
2) If the answer to #1 is "no" or "it depends," what are the rules?Well, the answer wasn't 'no', so I feel a little silly including this question. But I need it in order to have a 2 between 1 and 3.
3) If graduate students at a UK school are called "post-grads," what are graduate teaching assistants called?Their positions are called Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) at my university, but this term is limited to positions that are part of a means to recruit students to a (post-)graduate program(me). In other words, you're a GTA if you're getting some kind of (AmE) tuition/(BrE) fee remission. Otherwise, you're a part-time tutor like other part-time tutors, and at my university, as of a few years ago, the title of that position is Associate Tutor. Such people would be called Dr(.)* So-and-so if they have a doctorate and Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss So-and-so if they don't.
4) Are post-grads going for their doctorates addressed differently than post-grads studying for their masters?Everyone's just addressed by their names. If we needed to put their titles in something in print, it would be their regular non-academic titles (Miss, Mr, etc.). In the UK we do make a distinction between research degrees and taught degrees, though not in the terms of address. Most masters students are on taught degrees, which like bachelor's degrees, involve taking courses and possibly writing a (BrE) dissertation/(AmE) thesis at the end. A research degree is one that doesn't involve taking courses--just researching toward(s) a (BrE) thesis/(AmE) dissertation. Many British universities are now heading away from the tradition of research-only doctorates and looking toward(s) American universities for models for partly-taught doctoral program(me)s. I must say, I think this is a good thing. Graduates of North American doctoral program(me)s (orig. AmE) have a big jump on many British graduates in the job market, because we were forced to study much more than the narrow area that we wrote our dissertations/theses on. So, even though I'm a semanticist/pragmaticist, I had to take doctoral-level courses in all areas of linguistics, and it's allowed me to confidently say in interviews "oh yes, I could teach that, if you needed me to" (and to even have some ideas about how to teach it). But the doctoral program(me) that I entered took me five years to complete, which is a normal amount of time in the US. In the UK, research-only doctoral program(me)s are three years, and most of the newfangled teaching+research doctorates that I've seen are four years.
Baby has a snackAt least the juxtaposition of BrE mummy and AmE rack is amusing...
from her mummy's rack.
Toast racks are evil. The entire point of toast is that it should be warm. That way, the butter melts into it and it's yummy. The toast rack is the most efficient way to make toast cold fast.Now, I endeavo(u)r to maintain a descriptive rather than prescriptive attitude toward(s) language on this blog, but I have no hesitation in being prescriptive about toast. I have a toast-based lifestyle. I have at least one friendship that is built on toast. And now I've thought of a linguistic angle on the toast rack issue, giving me a legitimate excuse to cast blame on toast racks again and more.
The American way is to serve toast piled up, sometimes wrapped in a cloth napkin in a basket, so that the heat is retained. Many British people find this horrible. They say "but the toast gets soggy!" I do not understand this fear of soggy toast--and I believe that the sogginess of piled-up toast is much exaggerated. (I like it soggy with butter, after all.)
But cold toast, that is something to be feared!
Alpha Stock Images |
I grew up in England, but have lived in the US for the past 12 years. I have a question for you that I wonder if you might ponder. I've noticed that in the US "middle class" is used very differently than in the UK. Here it seems that middle class refers to what would be often be called "working class" in the UK. I do hear "blue collar" to describe someone who has a non-office job, but it seems that you could be blue collar and middle class, whereas in England, somebody like a mechanic would never be called middle class.It's taken me a long time to get to this because it's a big, hairy topic. But to make it small and simple: in America everyone believes they're middle class. In Britain, among people my age, at least, it's almost a badge of shame to be middle class:
To be a middle class student just 20 years ago carried such social stigma that many graduates in their 40s recall faking a proletarian accent for their entire university education. --Decca Aitkenhead, "Class Rules", The Guardian, 20 Oct 2007But I'll try to give it a little of the complexity it deserves, starting with the American side. Here's a bit from the book American Cultural Patterns (rev. ed., 1991) by Edward C. Stewart and Milton J. Bennett [p. 89]:
Although sociologists speak of class structure and status obligation in American society, most Americans see themselves as members of an egalitarian middle class. There are variations in parts of New England and in the Southeast [...]; but, generally, in American society, social background, money, or power bestow perhaps fewer advantages than in any other major society. Lacking obligations to class and social position, Americans move easily from one group to another as they shift position or residence; consequently, their social life lacks both permanence and depth (C. Kluckhorn 1954a, 96*).It's lines like that last one that made this book so much fun to use as a textbook at my last university. Tell a group of privileged 19-year-old Americans that their social lives lack permanence and depth and watch the discussion GO! (It was a course in cross-cultural communication, which you might expect would involve learning about communication in other cultures, but the biggest step in understanding why your communication with others fails is to understand the unspoken, subconsciously-held values that underlie your own communication.) Move to another culture, and you start to understand what "lacks both permanence and depth" means. Americans are relatively good at making new friends in new situations because we need to on a regular basis (and because our identity depends on the appreciation of [many] others--but more on that in a post on compliments). Move into a culture with greater geographical and status stability, and you find it can be hard to make new friends. This is because no one else expects to have new friends--they have a complete social support system made up of their families and friends they've had since forever, and you're just not going to fit very easily into their lives. (I'm not particularly talking about my experience in the UK now--I was lucky enough to fall into some very welcoming social circles here. My situation in South Africa was different. But I've heard other American expats in the UK claiming to have had a less easy time of it.) But I'm getting away from social class...or am I?
Running through American social relationships is the theme of equality. Each person is ascribed an irreducible value because of his or her humanness: "We're all human after all." Interpersonal relations are typically horizontal, conducted between presumed equals. When a personal confrontation is required between two persons of different hierarchical levels, there is an implicit tendency to establish an atmosphere of equality. [...] [A] compliment is often made regarding people who are much richer or higher in position or status: "He's a regular guy--doesn't lord it over you." [p. 91]It's a myth, of course, because Americans are not all equal in status, and we know it. But socially it's the "right thing to do" to act as if everyone is.
Just last year, Spitzer had signed a law that lengthened jail time for johns from three months to as much as a year.Maverick had assumed that john meant 'pimp', and so she was led astray, as it actually means 'prostitute's client'. Now, I think this means that Maverick doesn't watch Law and Order or CSI or any of the other 'gritty' American murder mysteries that are on (UK) Channel Five all the time. The OED marks this meaning of john (there are many more that I don't want to get into here) as 'orig. U.S.', meaning that it has made inroads into BrE.
Meanwhile, lads' magazines continue their assault on British women with articles that aggressively blur the line between girlfriend/boyfriend and prostitute/punter relationships. -- Katherine Viner in the GuardianBetter Half and Maverick both protested, "But punter really means 'gambler'." Yes, I've heard that before, but it's a tough word to (orig. AmE) get a handle on (especially as a newcomer to these isles) because its meanings slide all over the place. The first sense that the OED (draft revision Sept 2007) has for it, dating back to the 18th century, is 'A person who plays against the bank at baccarat, faro, etc.' It then was generali{s/z}ed (as early as the 19th century) to mean any type of gambler and from there to mean someone who pays for something, and particularly a man who pays for a prostitute's services. As a side note, in AmE punter is one who (AmE) punts (drop-kicks the ball) in (American) football, and in the UK another kind of punter is one who propels a punt (a kind of flat-bottomed boat) down a river. The latter kind of punter is not marked as BrE in dictionaries, but much more punting goes on in the UK than in the US.
The trio all use a website where "punters" - the men who visit prostitutes - go to discuss their encounters. -- Finlo Rohrer in BBC News magazine
A ponce; the client of a prostitute. slang (orig. U.S.).Now, ponce is another difficult word. But according to the self-same OED (draft revision Mar 2007), it means 'pimp', not 'client':
derogatory slang (chiefly Brit.).But I've only heard it used to mean:
1. A man who lives on money earned by another person (esp. a woman); a kept man. Also: a person (usually a man) who lives off a prostitute's earnings; a pimp.
2. depreciative. An effeminate or affected man or boy; (also) a male homosexual.Searching for ponce + prostitute on Google.co.uk, I can only find evidence of it meaning 'pimp', and not 'john/punter'. So, it looks to me like a bad AmE-to-BrE translation in the OED--they haven't got(ten) to the Js yet in the current revision--but I expect this will be changed!
As she said of one of her younger punters, "I want to rip his clothes off -- but only so I can wash and iron them."Now, they are not claiming that Porter turns tricks, though I originally thought that it meant someone she'd taken home (since they'd just said that "her specialist subject is relationships"), but Better Half was quick to dispel this impression by explaining to me that the 'younger punter' is a member of her audience.
Most people [i.e. Americans] refer to afternoon tea as high tea because they think it sounds regal and lofty, when in all actuality, high tea, or "meat tea" is dinner. High tea, in Britain, at any rate, tends to be on the heavier side. American hotels and tea rooms, on the other hand, continue to misunderstand and offer tidbits of fancy pastries and cakes on delicate china when they offer a "high tea."What the hotels (and my nephew's school) are offering is actually low tea, more commonly (in my experience) referred to as afternoon tea. A particular subcategory of afternoon tea is the cream tea, which involves tea and scones with clotted cream and (almost always strawberry) jam. (We've booked a cream tea after Grover's naming ceremony on Sunday, which seems a little unfair, as she's not yet on solid foods--or even tea, for that matter.) My mother keeps asking if people 'still' have afternoon tea, and I reply "people will take a tea break, like a coffee break', and she'll say that she means do they have cucumber sandwiches and scones and so forth. (My mother seems to be jealous of any culture that fits an extra meal into the day.) Better Half and I have to explain that eating cucumber sandwiches in the afternoon is not something that the masses ever did much.
...and I've been avoiding the question ever since. So feel free to weigh in on the matter in the comments!Here in my area of North Carolina(US) we still use "dinner" to describe the noon meal. When I visited Australia and New Zealand, they also used "dinner", which made me feel right at home. The poor little Northern US children that traveled with us were quite confused since they thought "dinner" was the evening meal, lol.How about it, how common is the word "dinner" now when "lunch" seems to be used more and more.
If you're reading this after scoffing your fifteenth chocolate Santa, don't panic: we humans have been safely enjoying the beans of the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao, for millennia.I wonder how many other readers would find the use of the verb scoff strange here. I only know scoff as meaning 'to deride, mock', and so I assumed that what had happened here was that a BrE-speaking author or (BrE) subeditor/(AmE) copy editor had misspelt the verb to scarf because in their dialect, the /r/ wouldn't be pronounced--and so if they'd not seen the word written down before, they might reason that it's really scoff--a familiar verb that is also onomatopoetic for the action of whipping food into one's mouth. (Some linguists call such errors--where an unfamiliar word is replaced with something that seems to 'make more sense'--eggcorns.)
Another word for your list is "popper"....which is another word that's come to the fore of my experience since Grover's birth. BrE popper is the equivalent of AmE snap, which is to say it's the name for a type of fastener, as illustrated to the right (image from madeinchina.com). Searching for this photo on the web, I found that a lot of dealers in such fasteners call them snap buttons, but to me they're just snaps. The OED, in its definitions for snap and popper, calls them press studs. This counts as a baby-related word since one is constantly doing and undoing snaps/poppers at the crotches of (BrE) babygros/(AmE) onesies in order to get at (BrE) nappies/(AmE) diapers. I don't know why, but I feel silly saying popper, so I've been glad that I seem to be able to get away with snap. (Better Half won't let me get away with diaper, however.)