Daily Mail article on Americanisms ruining the English language

I can never get used to the way Brits say pasta!  It sounds awful to me!

Words like 'taco' -- I hear this all the time and it also drives me crazy.  I know it's just the difference in the way the 'a' is pronounced, but still.  I always hear people say Carlos as 'car-loss' instead of 'car-lohs' and it sounds so strange.  I took many years of Spanish and it really bothers me!  I guess it's just the flagrant disregard of how the name is actually pronounced that gets me.  I mentioned this to my boyfriend at the time and he said (in an American accent) 'Los Angeles.'  Point taken..

I get the same thing with my own name...very frequently...and it is annoying.  My name is Shannon (Sha-nin) and I get that "OH, you mean Shah-nun".  I think it's because As are often pronounced differently between Americans and Brits.  We tend to just say a whereas Brits seem to pronounce it as ah. 

Don't get me started on my name.

My name is Marcia, pronounced Mar-sha.

In the US, if someone say my name written down, they would ask me "Is that pronounced Mar-sha or Mar-see-a?", because the name, as it is spelled, can be pronounced either way.  I would say "I prounce it Mar-sha", and they would call me "Marsha" from then on. Simple.

In the UK, if I tell someone my name is "Mars-ha", they will call me "Mar-see-a" anyway. Sometimes when they haven't even seen it in writing.  Even people who I have known a long time, whom I am sure have heard me pronounce my name more than once.

I can mention my name, "Mar-sha", and a minute later someone who just heard me say it will call me "Mar-see-a".

I've even been asked WHY I call myself "Mar-sha". - Because that's what my parents named me  

I can understand if you've only seen my name written down and pronounce it the other way because you haven't heard how I pronounce my name.

But I don't understand why someone would pronounce my name differently after I've told them how I pronounce it.

I just give up and let people call me "Mar-see-a" because it's just too difficult to deal with.

I'm constantly called out for pronouncing Aaron and Erin the same way (my nephew in the US is named Aaron). My BF always reminds me that there's a different pronunciation over here for the male name. I guess we're just uncivilised in Ohio.

But I really think the English should be more worried about Chavs ruining their language rather than Americans... "Am I bovvered?"

Am I the only one who noticed he used the NA convention of putting expressing dates month, date, year (middle endian) rather than the convention used in the UK (little endian)?  He also implied he's been around for 200 years, bemoaning the import of Americanisms.  As such a staunch defender of the "British" language, he should learn to use it.  It's not like he's posting a diatribe on a forum or in his personal blog.  It's a newspaper...

It's one of the Mail's regular news cycle topics.  Bins and councils. Chavs out of control.  Americans (knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing and their so called "culture").  Women drivers.  Famous woman shows too much skin.  Bad plastic surgery. The immigrant menace.  Old pensioner cheated out of something.  Health and safety. Government crossing the line. Cancer caused by or cured by something in your own house.  Blah blah blah.  This guy (<<<<OMIGAWD AMERICAN) just could have drawn the short straw.

Ha, I never noticed that he wrote 'May 11' near the beginning of the article there.  Weird.  Especially because he then goes on to write about '11/9'

It did occur to me once that referring to '9/11' might be a little weird for some people in the UK, but really, I think everyone's heard it referred to as 'September 11' so much there wouldn't really be any confusion.  At least I'd hope not.

I've never heard anyone refer to it as '11/9,' though -- that'd be a bit rich.

But I really think the English should be more worried about Chavs ruining their language rather than Americans... "Am I bovvered?"

Agreed here and I was going to mention this earlier.  At least the Americanisms are just expanding the vocabulary (with words like talented, reliable and lengthy) as opposed to completely destroying the language.

There's also the fact that some of the original English grammar, usage, and syntax was preserved in the US and other parts of the former empire when it changed here.  I suppose I could point that out in the comments with some examples, but if it got through the censors, it would probably make some of the web commenters' heads explode with confusion.

ETA:

Ha, I never noticed that he wrote 'May 11' near the beginning of the article there.  Weird.  Especially because he then goes on to write about '11/9'

It did occur to me once that referring to '9/11' might be a little weird for some people in the UK, but really, I think everyone's heard it referred to as 'September 11' so much there wouldn't really be any confusion.  At least I'd hope not.

I've never heard anyone refer to it as '11/9,' though -- that'd be a bit rich.

One of the cardinal rules of style is to pick a convention and stick to it, especially in the same piece.  Such a stalwart defender of English standards as Mr Engel probably knows this, and he was just upping the irony factor.  Or something like that.

There's also the fact that some of the original English grammar, usage, and syntax was preserved in the US and other parts of the former empire when it changed here.  I suppose I could point that out in the comments with some examples, but if it got through the censors, it would probably make some of the web commenters' heads explode with confusion.

I find this really interesting!  I remember a few years ago, the Globe Theatre did a production of some Shakespeare play where they tried to recreate the accents as they would have been in Shakespeare's time.  The people running it said they sounded a little like American Southern accents.

My mother is from the South and I've found that a lot of the older people in her family use words I'd previously only heard in English -- the boot of the car, spring onions instead of scallions, 'I reckon,' &c.  I'm cataloging examples -- it's my little project..

Here's a place you can start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English#English_words_that_survived_in_the_United_States

Wikipedia also has a lot on the reason why some accents in English have vowel merger and shift, mentioned above.

Am I the only one who noticed he used the NA convention of putting expressing dates month, date, year (middle endian) rather than the convention used in the UK (little endian)?  

As an aside, in Canada, at least for governmental things, dates are usually written in year/month/day format. Otherwise, it is acceptable to write the date in any of the three main formats: YYYYMMDD, MMDDYYYY or DDMMYYYY.     

I don't know whether you should rhyme taco with tobacco because I don't know how you say tobacco... I say taco with a more or less Spanish accent, which is how most Americans say it.

Well, I speak reasonably good Castilian (Iberian) Spanish with what I have been told is a Madrid accent, and I have a very good friend from Zaragoza called Paco, and we would both say "taco" so that the 'a' sounds like the a in English RP cat, pack, man, had, bad, sad, etc, and the 'o' like the final syllable of "hello" or the 'o' in "no". However I do understand that some of the Spanish spoken in N. America is pronounced somewhat differently. (I have seen some N. American "guides to pronunciation" that just don't match the way they speak Spanish in, er, Spain.)

In the UK, if I tell someone my name is "Mars-ha", they will call me "Mar-see-a" anyway.

This is what I like about Brits.

Tremula- it's "tah-co." It's said the same way in Spain, but it means something different there in general (since they don't exactly eat tacos there. They say them. )

When I lived in England, the people I lived with were always asking me to make "tah-choes." It drove me crazy. I would say "do you mean tacos?" and they'd still pronounce it tah-choes!

When I lived in England, the people I lived with were always asking me to make "tah-choes." It drove me crazy. I would say "do you mean tacos?" and they'd still pronounce it tah-choes!

A British friend's mother came with us to My mother was over and asked for "ger-notchie" at an Italian restaurant, the waiter said "gnocchi" all'Italiana and she said "yes, ger-notchie". I think you have to realise that, irrespective of what a person might say that's wrong, correcting them is seen as very rude indeed, so rude, in fact, that the correction can be safely ignored!