It’s time to dip into the search engine questions that lead unsuspecting souls to Notes from the U.K. and see what it is they want to know about this green and pleasant land. The questions are in boldface type and I’ve reproduced them in all their oddity. And because my goal in life is to enlighten the ignorant world, I’ve done my best to provide the information they wanted. Even though the people who asked the questions will never wander back to find the answers. It keeps me occupied and mostly out of trouble.
CULTURE & LANGUAGE
good manners of britain
Yes, Britain has good manners. So do other countries, but no one notices because we’ve all been trained since early childhood to think British manners are good manners and other countries’ manners are rude flaming ignorance. We’ve also been trained to think a British accent is classy and other accents need a bath. This is all rampant bullshit, of course, and a hand-me-down from the British empire, but good luck convincing anyone of it.
When I say “a British accent,” what I really mean is an accent the listener can identify as British, which won’t come anywhere close to the full range of British accents. And when I say “no one” and “we’ve all,” what I really mean is the group of people I happen to be thinking about. I’m not quite silly enough to think I’m talking about everyone.
why do americans say derby instead of ‘darby’
Because that’s how it’s spelled. D e r b y: derby. Americans are naive like that. In spite of all the evidence that points the other way–and, boy, does the English language point the other way–they still think that if a word’s spelled with an E it gets pronounced as if it had an E.
Silly people.
brits think americans are too loud
THEY DO? WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME?
swear words england vs american
If you have to look up swear words, they won’t work for you. Swear words are very particular about who they’ll work for. Stick with the vocabulary you understand. It’ll have more impact.
should word anglophile be capitaluzed?
Capitaluzed? No. Some people capitalize it, though. Others don’t. Because I’m retired (I used to be an editor; now I’m just an everyday fussbudget), I’m not going to chase down definitive sources. You’re probably safest capitalizing it, but you could defend either choice.
Which isn’t much of an argument. People defend all kinds of stupidity. That doesn’t make it right.
POLITICS
should all male mps wear a jacket in the commons
Oh, absolutely. Otherwise British politics would degenerate into the kind of farce where people who support staying in the EU throw all their weight behind leaving because it keeps them in power for another twenty minutes; where people argue against a second referendum in the name of democracy; and where amateurs run the government. Heavens to Betsy, we wouldn’t want that.
stockings in the house of commons
It’s not smart to make guesses about anything as improbable as the British parliament, but I’m about to: I’m fairly sure Christmas stockings don’t play much of a role there. The MPs are too old to believe in Santa Claus, although a few still claim to. On top of which, they go home over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, so if Santy exists, he has to look for them there.
mps are not allowed to wear armor
This is as shocking as it is true: They are not allowed to wear armor in the House of Commons, and it’s a stain on British democracy.
On the other hand, they (like everyone else in the land) are allowed to wear armor outside the House of Commons. On the train going home, say. At the corner store. It’s heavy, it’s expensive, and they’ll get some odd looks, but I’ve never heard of a law that prevents it.
BRUSSELS SPROUTS
If search engine questions are a fair representation of what the world’s interested in, the world is obsessed with brussels sprouts. I could turn Notes into the leading (and only) brussels sprouts blog and make a real success of it. Depending, of course, on how we define success.
Here’s a sampling of the brussels sprouts questions.
why do we eat sprouts at christmas
To make sure we’re on Santa’s good list.
why do we have sprouts at christmas bbc
Good question, BBC. The world’s waiting to hear from you on this important topic. Why are you leaving it to amateurs like me to fabricate answers? This is the height of irresponsibility.
the tradition of why we eat spr54otes
The truly traditional Christmas dinner doesn’t involve spr54otes, it involves plain sprouts, of the brussels variety. The 54 was added in recent years as people became aware of how important fiber is to a healthy diet. And the U? It still feels bad about Americans having dropped it from so many words and it’s sitting out this round to make a point about how much it has to contribute.
why do cross a sprout
To get to the other side?
plumpudding brussel
No, people. There is a limit. Never put brussels sprouts in your plum pudding.
OTHER FOOD & DRINK
what percentage is american beer That depends on what percentage of what. The world’s beer output? what do they call brownies in england Brownies. SIZE why are english roads so narrow / why are english streets so narrow Because of the houses on either side, some of which were there before cars came along. Also because of the fields. And the hedges, and the stone walls. And because, you know, they’ve been that size for a long time and it works, so why mess with it? And incidentally because they take less space. Isn’t it odd how people go to another country, full of excitement to see something different, and then judge if by the standards of the place they left. And find it failed to meet them. why is britain called great britain when it is small Because it has an inferiority complex and needs to puff itself up as much as possible. We try not to talk about it, okay? TRADITIONS yale door company knob throwing contest You can find Yale locks in many American doors. And, according to a quick internet search, also in Australian, Indian, New Zealand (New Zealandish?), and British doors. If the company makes doors, as opposed to locks, they’re keeping the information off the internet. But doors have door knobs, and some door knobs have locks in them, and Yale does make those. So we have a connection here. But the whole thing breaks down after that. The Dorset knob throwing contest isn’t about throwing door knobs, much less whole doors, it’s about throwing a biscuity thing called a knob, which is a bit sweet and, at least as I remember it, too light to throw well, but you shouldn’t take my word on that, you should go and find out for yourself. The next contest is on May 5, 2019. Leave your door at home. Also your door knob. They’ll provide all the Dorset knobs you need. |
I have a sneaky feeling that it was once pronounced derby here too but the Brits went and changed it after the pilgrim fathers left!!
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That would have happened, then, at the party they threw when the ships left. I can imagine how hard they laughed.
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I thought long and hard about sprouts in plum pudding, and I think you probably gave the correct advice.
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I’m relieved. I was afraid folks would argue with me, and you know I hate conflict.
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Thanks for the giggle this morning… My day is off on the right foot now. :D
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Job done, then. Think I’ll make myself a cuppa tea.
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well deserved. Have a great day.
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And much needed. I walked the dogs and got caught in the rain (why should that surprise me?). Have a good one yourself.
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I always thought that we pronounced ‘Derby’ as ‘Darby’ to confuse Americans, as a punishment for stealing, misspelling and misspeaking our language. Heaven knows what they’d make of ‘Happisburgh’ 😉
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Okay, now there’s a challenge: HAPisburg, only I know enough to be sure I’m wrong about it. How’s it pronounced locally?
As for your motivations, they sound pure enough to me.
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It’s hays-burra with the emphasis on the first part. We’re weird, really, whether or not we deliberately confuse others 😉
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Well, of course. Why didn’t I figure that out?
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It’s so obvious, isn’t it? 😂
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Oh, it is, it is.
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Many Americans think people with a British accent are Australian for some strange reason!
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And we’ve been asked in Britain if we’re Australian. In fact, one guy wanted my partner to say “g’day” for him. I write if off to people thinking, That’s not the accent I’m used to and randomly selecting a country it must come from.
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Perhaps some cannot tell the difference between a British and an Australian accent, although to me they’re totally different. Still…hey… no worries mate.
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There’s no end to how strange humans can be.
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Funny as ever!
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Thank you.
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Always enjoy your blog, thank you for th quirky thoughts and smiles!!
My blog https://fairytales.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/the-fairy-tale-dimension/ is in English and I am German. Since I live in Europe I use Britisch English including many “u” and “s” instead of “z”.
When I help my children with their English homework I see that the line between the two languages gets blurred more and more. I don´t like it. What do you think?
Greetings from Hamburg!
Inge
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The line between British and American English? There’s a certain kind of person in Britain who enjoys, I think, complaining about the Americanization of British English, almost as if it were a contagion. Or a lowering of the standards. But languages change. We can approve or disapprove as much as we like, but they’ll change anyway. I find the process fascinating.
Having said that, to the extent that I can I resist my own English becoming Britishized. Not because I think one’s better than the other or anything like that. It’s that as a writer, I need to know where my language comes from. I need to hear the overtones. If I could switch back and forth and keep them separate, I’d have no problem with it, but one set of words seem to shove the other set out of my working vocabulary, so I need the set I grew up with.
I’m not sure that answers your question at all. Does it?
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Interesting! Thank you!
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I had an interesting conversation with a Spanish friend about mince pies.
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In English or Spanish? Is there a workable translation for mince pie? Or is that like asking what the English is for empanada?
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She thought they had meat in them. She couldn’t understand the cream v brandy butter debate.
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Of course she thought that, and of course she’d wonder. I looked up the translation when I read your first comment and got a literal one: minced meat–carne picada. Which is no help at all.
They did start out, I’ve read, being made of minced meat. I don’t remember at what point they wandered off in a completely different direction.
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Note to self…
Stop reading this in the office, you get funny looks when you chuckle out loud!
Note about great Britain…
Not a lot of people know this but there is a teeny tiny island called lesser Britain which is identical in every way only much much smaller (about the size of a jam jar) and has different spots on its tummy…this is known as lesser Britain.
Sadly the location of this has been lost in the mists of time along with the origins of morris dancing and the recipe for Brussels sprout and plum pudding…
(don’t get it confused with Little Britain…this is different)
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My partner, before the unfortunate collapse of her eyesight, was a birdwatcher, and so I have to ask: Are you sure that isn’t the lesser spotted Britain? Or is that a different bird–sorry: island–altogether?
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Ahh yes..damn, my mistake!
The lesser britain is the one with the blue bit around london and unfortunate antisocial tendencies…
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Gotcha. I’ll make a note of that in my Britain-spotting book.
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Marvellous!!
It’s about the size of a pigeon but has delusions of grandeur 😊
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So am I, and I do too.
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Hehehe
Me too 😁
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I learned or learnt (delete as applicable) recently that the American pronunciation of ‘twat’ is ‘twot’. As inexplicable to us as Derby (Darby) to them!
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It wasn’t pronounced that way when we left. How dare they change. (Or, alternatively, are you sure?)
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This has to depend on whether people had heard it in use before seeing it in that otherwise forgettable poem by Browning.
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Okay, I’d forgotten what we were talking about and had to check. Twat in a poem by Browning?
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Canamerican here. (That’s a Canadian usually assumed to be American. Which is all Canadians abroad unless they wear an A4-sized Canadian flag on their backpacks, which is only what Americans do, so it’s tricky). The pronunciation of “twat” in Canamerica is most certainly /twaht/ not /twot/. We thought the Brits said /twot/….
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I asked a British friend how she’d pronounce twat (my friends are used to me by now and scarcely react when I ask things like that. It rhymed with that, not with not.
You’re right about the problem of the Canadian flag on the backpack, and if I can add another problem, it would only be visible from behind. From the front, you’d still be taken for an American. For what it’s worth, though, I’m sometimes asked if I’m Canadian. I have a hunch it’s what Brits say if they want to ask politely. If I’m American, presumably, I’ll be mildly baffled to be taken for a Canadian, but if I’m Canadian, I’ll be offended to be taken for an American.
Or–well, what do I know? If anyone can definitively explain it, that’d be great.
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Argh I have been trying to find the post where I read it and so far have failed dismally. And No we say twat not twot two!
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Say that three time quickly: Twat not twot too, Twat not twot too, Twat not twot too.
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it has a certain ring to it…
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Owning with laughter.
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It should say owling.
Autocorrupt again.
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I love that word, autocorrupt.
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Well I’ve had a google and come up with this, grit your teeth.
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Oh wow. Do I ever feel silly now. I/we definitely had it wrong!! Brilliant video; very educational. 😂😂Thanks for sharing! 🙏👌
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It took me a while to listen to this, not because I wasn’t looking forward to it but because I was earphoneless and in a rare moment of discretion and good taste thought I might want to pick my time and place carefully. I am now much better informed, if not necessarily much wiser. I’m also highly amused, especially about Rober Browning. Many thanks.
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You’re very welcome!
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I need a bigger handkerchief to deal with the tears of laughter. Thank you for making my day!
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My pleasure, Frank.
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Maybe there’s not a Darby in America whatever a Darby is anyway… The Derby in America is in Kentucky. Best known prestigious horse race in North America.
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That and the hat were the only derbies I knew of as a kid.
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Yep. Here in Britain they call the derby hat a bowler hat. The only difference is the derby is American and the Bowler is British.
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Now that I didn’t know. I wonder how that came about.
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In the UK, the bowler is known as a billycock, bob hat or bombín. It was designed by Edward Coke to wear to reduce injury while riding his horse. Branches would him in the head while on horseback. He ordered the hat from a London milliner and went to collect his hat he reportedly placed it on the floor and stamped hard on it twice to test its strength; the hat withstood this test and Coke paid 12 shillings for it.
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…while the hatmaker stood in horror.
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Hehehe. Wouldn’t it be easier to stop riding into a tree?
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And spoil all the fun?
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“Isn’t it odd how people go to another country, full of excitement to see something different, and then judge if by the standards of the place they left. And find it failed to meet them.” This explains McDonald’s showing up everywhere – sad.
I’ve only heard ‘derby’ pronounced ‘darby’ in an episode of The Twilight Zone:called “Passage on the Lady Anne”
“His wife died in ’28 uh, no, ’29.
’29, that’s right.
The day Trigo won the derby.
What are you talking about? She died in ’33, the year Hyperion won the derby.”
I don’t know what derby that refers to, and when I first heard it, I didn’t know it was a derby at all. I guess I should have googled and gotten here earlier.
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And you remember all that–name of the episode, dialogue, years, name of the horse? Dan, you’re starting to scare me.
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No, I remembered the scene, but I looked up the dialog – I’m scary, but not that scary. I did remember the “…Hyperion won the derby’ part.
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I’ll sleep better knowing that. I once worked with a couple of guys who spontaneously broke into a long stretch of Monty Python dialogue (all because I happened to bring a couple of very odd matchin hats to work, as people do, of course), so I was willing to believe you might have memorized it.
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You have me confused – where those hats odd or matching? Or is matchin a thing where you come from?
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Matching may be a thing where I come from but it never quite embedded itself with me. They were hats from a neighborhood rummage sale and they had spikes on the top and wide, fake-velvet fringes down the sides. What they were supposed to be I have no idea and I have even less of an idea why I thought it would be a good idea to bring them to work. I’d tell you it made sense at the time but I doubt it did. My two co-workers seized them and broke into Monty Python.
It was an interesting place to work. We did, occasionally, get some work done.
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If it was “The Blues Brothers” “Animal House” or “Caddyshack” – maybe. Also, there are some Twilight Zone episodes that I’ve seen so often, I practically know them by heart.
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There goes my good night’s sleep.
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Sorry
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Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll call you at 3 a.m. if I’m still up.
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Ha ha – thanks.
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I love this series. Thank you for continuing it. :)
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Thanks for lettting me know. I’ve been wondering if I was starting to repeat myself.
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I like to ask people where they grew up after talking to them a few minutes. Most people like to talk about where they grew up .
There are accents in the US all over the place. Different words for thsame things, different pronoucations for the same words.
Most people think the London accent is the way people speak in Britain. I have trouble understanding some British speak. I have trouble understanding some people from different parts of the US.
Keep us informed. These are things we need to know. No armor in parliament. I will remember that. You said Commons, but I took that to mean the House of Commons. Hard to be sure.
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Yup. Commons with a capital C is the House of Commons. Ditto the Lords. I don’t know that anyone thought to ban armor there. My research is incomplete. I think I’ll go walk into the sea. In armor.
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Good idea. Protection from shark bite. Just don’t go in too deep.
Have a good week.
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Good advice. Thank you.
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I’m enjoying this series. As always, another really interesting and greatly entertaining post! :)
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Thank you. My collection for part fourteenish is getting thick enough to convince me that I have to write another.
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No armor in the House of Commons? Well, dilly dilly and forsooth! How could this be? My image of England is forever changed.
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I know, I know. I’ve ruined everything. I’m sooooo sorry.
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We’ve also been trained to think a British accent is classy.
Personally, I’m past annoyed by it. Every American company who wants to make their crappy product seem better than it is hires an actor to speak with a British accent. After a while it becomes more annoying than the Southern Belle.
I have a question about English pronunciation that has always bugged me. Why do the British pronounce SCH as a soft sound, as in schedule? Obviously it should be pronounced hard, like skedule. Is school SCHool or SKool? Personally, I think its to annoy us Yanks.
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Probably not. I suspect we changed our pronunciation to annoy them. Although I’m not sure, and I’m not sure where to look to find a source tracing the changes in pronunciation. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. It’s just a question of finding the right question–which I haven’t. But it’s not a universal thing with SCH. School is skool.
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Yeah, too much of the English language has contradictory spellings and pronunciations. Makes it really hard for foreigners to pick it up, or little kids.
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I remember once–pedantic idiot that I am–telling a (more or less) three-year-old that the plural of goose wasn’t gooses, it was geese. (I wasn’t quite that pedantic, but stil…) She gave me a gorgeous smile and said, “Geeses.”
English. What can you do?
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Read a biography on Benjamin Franklin who was upset with the lack of rules for spelling and suggested a phonetic spelling system, especially dropping sounds that were created by multiple letters, like ch having a soft and a hard sound. Obviously, it never caught on, but you can see it in some of his writings.
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I sympathize with the impulse. Unfortunately, if it had caught on, huges swathes of English literature would be readable only by experts. Or, I suppose, the rest of us could read it after it had been translated from English to English.
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No different than Old English, only experts can read it. The King James Bible has to be translated because of the change in meaning of quite a number of words, terms, and phrases.
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Certainly true about Old English, and Chaucer’s hard going, but an update would mean a whole swathe of more recent work would be out of reach. It’s a problem with no good solution that I know of.
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It’s been over 30 years, but I’m still smarting from the dressing down I received by a Bowdoin College graduate when I mispronounced the name of her college (naturally I said “bow-doyne“). Language is a field of land mines no matter where one lives, I suppose.
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The English one is, at least. It might help if we could all learn to be a little less snotty about it.
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Great exercise and fun answers. I’m surprised that most people’s devices didn’t auto-“capitaluze” more of the first letters in each search phrase. ;)) As an aside, I’m happy to learn the proper British origins of an expression I grew up (in Canamerica) thinking was “Heavens to Wetsy.”
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…to Wetsy? Yes, that would’ve been hard to explain.
I don’t think Lord Google include auto-capitaluzation. When I move the questions to a word processing program, though, they do get capitaluzed and I have to go back and un-capitaluze them. It’s labor intensive but worth it, of course.
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😆
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ROFL.
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Ellen, love this post. I’ve always wondered if the ‘e/a’ pronunciation thing stemmed from French influence, which we have little of here in the US. #EsmeSalon
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I’m not coming up with anything French that’s spelled with an E but pronounced the way the E in Derby’s pronounced in Britain. That may say more about the limits of my French than about the origin of the pronunciation.
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Visiting from Esme Salon and really enjoyed this very delightful post!
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Glad you liked it, and thanks for letting me know where you came from.
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This blog is great, it makes me chuckle about the differences.
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Thanks for letting me know. It really is good to hear.
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Canadians believe we don’t have an accent no matter how many Americans tell us that we do. Everyone I know says “Twat” as in “not”, just to weigh in on this important issue.
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It is an important issue. The Twat Factor is an essential way to distinguish English-speaking cultures from each other. If it weren’t for that, we’d hardly know who we are.
Americans also think they don’t have an accent. People are crazy. It’s taken me 72 years to figure that out.
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