Mark Liberman at Language Log has saved you from the rant that this weekend's post was to be. Oh, thank you, Mark! His post from earlier today does what needed to be done about journalist Matthew Engel's BBC piece "Why do some Americanisms irritate people?" (Yes, people.) The Language Log post starts by pointing out that only one of the first five 'Americanisms' cited by Engel is, in fact, American in origin. The only fault I can find with Liberman's piece is that it is not entitled "Why do BBC language features annoy linguists?"*
So, instead of a turgid rant about the BBC's continued knack for employing non-experts** to spout nonsense about language, I give you:
babies!! kittens!!! dental maiming!!!!
Today's topic was suggested by American-in-Scotland @dialect and inspired by her (first?) visit to a UK dentist. And, actually, it's rather a simple one. But just to make it more complicated, let me throw in a technical term I've just learn{ed/t}: deciduous teeth. Americans tend to call them baby teeth, and the more common term for them in BrE is milk teeth. For those who like numbers, the Corpus of Contemporary American English has 100 baby tooth/baby teeth and 18 milk tooth/milk teeth. The British National Corpus (which is much smaller) has 15 milk tooth/teeth and 3 baby teeth (two of which should actually be Babyteeth the name of an album by Therapy?) and no baby tooth. When I was a child in the US, I only knew milk teeth as a term for kittens' first teeth.
A milk/baby tooth isn't forever, of course, and before it goes it is a loose tooth, but in BrE one also hears wobbly tooth a lot. As far as my Grover is concerned, this is the only term for a loose tooth, since she was first exposed to the concept through the Charlie and Lola episode "I do not ever, never want my wobbly tooth to fall out". Checking the corpora for loose/wobbly/wiggly tooth, we get 25/1/1 in COCA (AmE) and 3/1/0 in BNC (BrE).
The tooth fairy tradition is alive and well in both the UK and the US. Reading about how much money the tooth fairy tends to leave these days has left me depressed and fearful for a completely spoil(ed/t) generation.
And as a final public service before I go: Parents, if your (orig. AmE) teenager's dentist ever suggests removing a baby/milk tooth in order to "encourage" the permanent tooth to come forward, say "NO", or else your child may spend most of her most awkward years awkwardly trying to hide the big gap where a bicuspid should be. She will have no chance of being invited to (orig. AmE) the prom and you will endanger her respect for medical/dental/parental authority for evermore.
* Very occasionally, the Beeb does allow experts on (rather than just famous users of) language to grace its broadcasts. For example, I was once on a program(me) about Scrabble. It was good fun, and I thought it great that they involved a Scrabble-playing linguist in the production. But the best part? They spelled my name wrong.
** At one level, we're all experts on the language(s) we speak--in the sense that we use the language expertly. (This is for the most part subconscious knowledge--and science is only a very small way toward(s) understanding that knowledge.) There are a lot of accomplished users of language out there, and that's who the BBC likes to ask for opinions (God help us, not facts!) about language. I would like to point out that I am an accomplished user of time and space (taking up more of it every year!). Therefore, I would like to be considered for a central role in the BBC's next program(me) on physics.
So, instead of a turgid rant about the BBC's continued knack for employing non-experts** to spout nonsense about language, I give you:
babies!! kittens!!! dental maiming!!!!
Today's topic was suggested by American-in-Scotland @dialect and inspired by her (first?) visit to a UK dentist. And, actually, it's rather a simple one. But just to make it more complicated, let me throw in a technical term I've just learn{ed/t}: deciduous teeth. Americans tend to call them baby teeth, and the more common term for them in BrE is milk teeth. For those who like numbers, the Corpus of Contemporary American English has 100 baby tooth/baby teeth and 18 milk tooth/milk teeth. The British National Corpus (which is much smaller) has 15 milk tooth/teeth and 3 baby teeth (two of which should actually be Babyteeth the name of an album by Therapy?) and no baby tooth. When I was a child in the US, I only knew milk teeth as a term for kittens' first teeth.
A milk/baby tooth isn't forever, of course, and before it goes it is a loose tooth, but in BrE one also hears wobbly tooth a lot. As far as my Grover is concerned, this is the only term for a loose tooth, since she was first exposed to the concept through the Charlie and Lola episode "I do not ever, never want my wobbly tooth to fall out". Checking the corpora for loose/wobbly/wiggly tooth, we get 25/1/1 in COCA (AmE) and 3/1/0 in BNC (BrE).
The tooth fairy tradition is alive and well in both the UK and the US. Reading about how much money the tooth fairy tends to leave these days has left me depressed and fearful for a completely spoil(ed/t) generation.
And as a final public service before I go: Parents, if your (orig. AmE) teenager's dentist ever suggests removing a baby/milk tooth in order to "encourage" the permanent tooth to come forward, say "NO", or else your child may spend most of her most awkward years awkwardly trying to hide the big gap where a bicuspid should be. She will have no chance of being invited to (orig. AmE) the prom and you will endanger her respect for medical/dental/parental authority for evermore.
* Very occasionally, the Beeb does allow experts on (rather than just famous users of) language to grace its broadcasts. For example, I was once on a program(me) about Scrabble. It was good fun, and I thought it great that they involved a Scrabble-playing linguist in the production. But the best part? They spelled my name wrong.
** At one level, we're all experts on the language(s) we speak--in the sense that we use the language expertly. (This is for the most part subconscious knowledge--and science is only a very small way toward(s) understanding that knowledge.) There are a lot of accomplished users of language out there, and that's who the BBC likes to ask for opinions (God help us, not facts!) about language. I would like to point out that I am an accomplished user of time and space (taking up more of it every year!). Therefore, I would like to be considered for a central role in the BBC's next program(me) on physics.