I was interested to see the BBC News magazine article on 50 of the most noted examples of Americanisms in common usage. It is a select list featuring the kind of phrases that grate on English language traditionalists…. until the point we actually use them too. You don’t? You mean you have never said 24/7, ordered a regular americano ‘to go’, asked where’s it at, can I get a, I’m good? If you’ve read those and thought, Mmm where’s the catch, then, you’ve probably gotten caught ‘already.’ These are some of the examples on the list and quite frankly, if you are a purist, you read down and find yourself gasping, nodding in agreement, tutting just a little bit and feeling slightly pleased that there are at least a few people around the country who feel the same way you do! Infact, unpurse your lips, deraise your eyebrows and relax for one moment and let’s try and unravel this just a little bit.
When I was studying languages, it always used to fascinate me that the French had what was called l’Academie francaise, an organisation that existed to weed out invading foreign words, particularly English and American words like le week-end, le hamburgeur, le pullover. It was an official way to try and keep the language pure. Some would say this is perhaps a good idea. But what they were up against as you can see in this example, is that, ‘La fin de semaine’ uses four words to descibe what ‘le week-end’ does in two and so it turned out to be pretty impractical and therefore unenforcable. To me it is powerful stuff when a nation such as France starts using words that are ‘ours’ but then you have to remember how many languages go to make up the richness that is the English language too. I’ll give you an example for every language that follows – Italian (piano, batallion), German (Zeitgeist), French (table, boulevard), Greek (acrobat) Latin (status quo, et cetera) – obviously there are many more contributing countries and factors. Wars, shifts in population and trade have meant that this is an ever evolving situation. But somehow an influx of words is easier to swallow when the word is foreign and we don’t actually understand it at first. However, when it sounds very similar to what we already say and yet doesn’t, I think that is where we get upset. American phrases tend to fall in to this category. In fact, oftentimes they do.
Traditionally there has been a fair amount of snobbery in using foreign words to descibe things in every language (think about the language of cookery – does that annoy you too? It does me and I love French!) Most of it is of course French and people like to use it to add an air of ‘mystique’ to their conversation. We use a huge amount of French words and phrases everyday – rendez-vous, reunion, joie de vivre, and they are accepted. Were they accepted when they first became popular, when they first crept in? Were they regarded as highbrow? The word ‘jus’ is of course French and is used in cookery to describe the juice or gravy on a dish. Necessary? Probably not, but does it add an air of mystique to the uninitiated? Yes it does, and so therefore it ticks the box of snobbery and an elite few until the point it becomes mainstream.
We must remember, however, that additional words do enrich and embellish our language, as they allow us to describe nuances that a lack of words would impede us to do. Maybe a ‘rendez-vous’ has a slightly different meaning to the word ‘meeting’ for example. Fashion, music, your circle of friends, your age, your workplace environment, travel, your background, and your willingness and unwillingness to move with the times, will all contribute to, if not dictate which words and phrases you incorporate in your speech. I don’t know if this organisation still exists in France but I would rather guess it doesn’t. An image of someone trying to stand infront of a tidal wave with one hand in the air saying ‘go back’ comes to mind! In the end how can you legislate against what people do and do not say on a national basis?
A point to note here is that English is considered to be one of the richest languages in the world and to put this in context it has at least double the amount of words used in the French language. Some of you may recall that in French there is no word for the number 70. You must say sixty-ten and 80 is four twenties, which used to confuse me no end when I had to think what 99 was. The lack of words can lead to an inflexibility in language and when you think about it, much of our English humour is based around the ability in our language to ‘play on words’ as we have so many ways of saying things. These things make English a hugely power and influential language.
So, the reason we perhaps feel slightly repelled by our Atlantic cousins’ barbarisms is that we have this overriding belief that we somehow ‘invented’ the language and therefore have rights on how it should or shouldn’t develop. Do you think we could ever legislate against the use of certain americanisms in this country? Hardly. The only thing that can be done is to highlight them so that people are aware of the differences. In the end it is down to personal choice and fashion. Words go in and out of fashion – this has always been the case. For example how many people would say ‘stone the crows’ now? It’s a question of how you want to come across. Do you want to sound fashionable, emulate your peers, appear widely travelled, more extrovert, then perhaps you will use more americanisms than others. I make the point that the word schedule is often pronounced in the american style with a hard sk sound (eg) skedule and most people don’t bat an eyelid or realise the difference. It is the ‘not knowing the difference’ that is the thing that perhaps we should address. The rest is down to personal choice.
A friend’s personal favourite is the perceived misuse of the word transportation as opposed to transport. In this example there really is no gain in extending the word with an additional 5 letters and two extra syllables, normally they are shortened for ease and through lethargy, so you cannot help but wonder how this has come about.
A personal ‘favourite’ of mine (iron.) is when people say I’m good, rather than I’m well. Any teenagers reading this will no doubt have already fallen in to this trap and let’s be honest won’t care too much, but what you are actually saying is I AM WELL BEHAVED! In fact, it has got to such widespread proportions that it is unusual to hear anyone say I’m well at all! So, not only is it sloppy, but it is also grammatically incorrect. This is where I draw the line. I could probably just about forgive or even use phrases like ‘it is what it is’ as actually I think that is quite a reasonable thing to say.
Personally, I like originality, in the use of langauge, so speaking in a new way, is interesting to me. I do not go for the idea that change for changes sake is necessary. No, such a word as normalcy is plainly annoying and so too is specialty and aluminum (even the spelling changes)
But you can ‘bet your bottom dollar’ that somewhere in America they’re using our phrases too. But the day you hear your relatives saying things like ‘you do the math’ and Zee instead of Zed and ‘deplane’ that’s when you really have to put your foot down for the purity of the English language. Period.
