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I am from Hong Kong and noticed that in the article some Americans use "Dear Sir:" at the start of the letter. From what I was taught in Hong Kong (and it was a bilingual education), the colon is considered very wrong and should not be used. It was emphisised because in Chinese letter writings it should always be using colons instead of comma and was a common mistake for Hong Kong students to mix up. I wonder if this is the same in the UK as well (I am currently studying in the UK, but I never have asked anyone regarding this matter as nobody uses colon anyway)?
What about the tendency in colloquial American English to use object pronouns as subjects, e.g. "Me and my girl went to the movies" instead of "My girl and I went to the movies." ? Shouldn't that be mentioned in the grammar section ? I understand that British speakers also sometimes do the same (e.g. in expressions like "Me too!"), but the change seems to more advanced in the US where, in certain uneducated dialects (e.g. certain varieties of African-American English), evem "him" or "her" may be used as subjects.
Is it worth mentioning that while both Americans and British say the time is "five fifteen", the British will more commonly say it's "a quarter past five", while Americans if they don't say "five fifteen" may sometimes say "a quarter after five"? Joe D (t) 22:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Is there any variation in how English speakers of varying dialects would interpret an indication of time such as "half three". In Australia, this would normally be considered "3:30" (with an implied "past"). I know that in German, the equivalent "halb drei" would be interpreted as "2:30" (with an implied "nach" ["until"]).-- Jeffro77 09:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Durova's edits just raised an interesting issue. In the United States, most postsecondary schools (with the exception of trade or vocational schools) have general education or breadth requirements so that students are forced to take a minimum number of courses outside of their major or concentration. Usually these are set up so that the student must take one course from several different areas; for example, the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley has a seven-course breadth requirement [1]. Is there a similar arrangement in any other countries? If not, this fact should be noted in University and possibly in Education in the United States. -- Coolcaesar 22:49, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I moved this to the end of the paragraph, and expanded it:
In my experience (I am English) "on" is only used of major roads, so I felt this needed further explaining. It also needed reordering to make sense. I also clarified "actually in the street" to "in the middle of the road" as I felt the previous wording was US-biased and rather awkward. Hairy Dude 05:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Thrive-throve-thriven is definitely not standard American English. In fact, having never heard those conjugations in my life, I would have guessed they were Britishisms. Neither are the previously given examples of mixing of the preterite and past participle forms good ones. It may be true that Americans do such a thing, but not with those verbs. Spring-sprang-sprung and shrink-shrank-shrunk are the only common usages by people that aren't young children making mistakes or people speaking Ebonics. Shrunken is used exclusively as an adjective.
Regarding the recent addition:
+ Whereas a speaker of British English might say "Wotcher, mate. Mind loaning us a few quid till Sunday, love?", a speaker of American English would say "Yo ma homies! Gimme ten bucks until Sunday, K?".
I think this falls into the so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh category. Surprising that it was added by an admin, User:JIP; kudos to the anonymous user 152.78.98.1 for removing it after it was on the page for two days. ProhibitOnions 20:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I've just removed this section:
Only for County Durham among the English counties does the word County come before the name. In Ireland it's everywhere but that's an Irish custom. In Great Britain, the widespread use of 'shire' as a suffix is the equivalent of 'County'. Shire is not used as a suffix on some counties (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northumberland) normally because there is some aspect of the way they were named which was different, eg. "Middlesex" = "Land of the Middle Saxons". David | Talk 18:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
One difference between American and British English I have often encountered (working in a US-based company) is that when Americans say something is "quite interesting" a Brit would normally take that to be damning with faint praise, whereas the American actually means it is "very interesting".
Are there more examples of intensifiers or other types of modifiers with this sort of variation of meaning? DrJohnBrooke 15:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm... I'm not entirely sure of your reasoning there - look at the programme QI. I think it depends on the tone of voice rather than phrase used. -- Boothman 16:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I have a sense that periods between each letter of an unpronounceable initialism (e.g., U.S.A., U.K.) is more of an American practice than a British one (although today even in America it's somewhat uncommon). Ideas? — Casey J. Morris 00:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
60.240.88.48 - Would you please tell me why you've added stops to "US" in my recent addition? I notice that throughout the article usage seems to be "U.S." (with stops) but "UK" (without stops). Why? US = United States, UK = United Kingdom - why should one have stops and not the other? I agree that both forms (with & without stops) are acceptable, but I would have expected consistency with both abbreviations in the same format within a single article. It seems to me odd to use one form for one abbreviation and a different form for another very similar abbreviation in the same article. This seems to be borne out by Jack Lumber's citation from Pam Peter's Cambridge English Usage Guide above. TrevorD 16:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Boothman - You have added "It is worth noting however, that Merry Christmas is far more common in Britain than the Happy version." Really? Do you have any evidence? I'd say exactly the opposite. Snalwibma 21:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The article says: Largely related to differences in pronunciation, there are differences surrounding whether to use "a" or "an" before words beginning in h-. For example, the British would say "an hallucination", whereas Americans would say "a hallucination". This follows the British rule that "an" should be used if the first syllable of an h- word is unstressed. As far as I am concerned, this is simply untrue. I'd say "an hotel" is in fact more AmEng than BrEng; and BrEng dictionaries (e.g. Collins) say that "an" before H is obsolete. Permission to delete this paragraph? Snalwibma 21:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I'll delete the paragraph in question, then. Incidentally, haitch is a regional thing. It's the standard pronunciation in Hiberno-English, for instance, and I suspect also in some parts of Britain. Does the different Am/Brit pronunciation of herb get mentioned in any Wikipedia article, I wonder... Snalwibma 23:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
The Oxfordshire accent used to pronounce ask as aks, too, (and perhaps still does.) Flora Thompson in her depiction of late nineteenth and early twentieth century life in rural Oxfordshire records this pronunciation. For example, in "Still Glides The Stream" she writes: "The man smiled good-naturedly. 'Ah! now you're axing me summat,' he said... 'He'd got a better and bigger place at t'other end o' th' village and had put some of his workfolks into th' old un.'"
From the spelling, it's clear that she's trying to represent the pronunciation of the accent and "axing" shows that the "s" and "k" of "ask were reversed. It would be interesting to know whether the accent was taken to the Caribbean from England or whether it evolved there separately. Adrian Robson 08:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I am from Hong Kong and noticed that in the article some Americans use "Dear Sir:" at the start of the letter. From what I was taught in Hong Kong (and it was a bilingual education), the colon is considered very wrong and should not be used. It was emphisised because in Chinese letter writings it should always be using colons instead of comma and was a common mistake for Hong Kong students to mix up. I wonder if this is the same in the UK as well (I am currently studying in the UK, but I never have asked anyone regarding this matter as nobody uses colon anyway)?
What about the tendency in colloquial American English to use object pronouns as subjects, e.g. "Me and my girl went to the movies" instead of "My girl and I went to the movies." ? Shouldn't that be mentioned in the grammar section ? I understand that British speakers also sometimes do the same (e.g. in expressions like "Me too!"), but the change seems to more advanced in the US where, in certain uneducated dialects (e.g. certain varieties of African-American English), evem "him" or "her" may be used as subjects.
Is it worth mentioning that while both Americans and British say the time is "five fifteen", the British will more commonly say it's "a quarter past five", while Americans if they don't say "five fifteen" may sometimes say "a quarter after five"? Joe D (t) 22:29, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Is there any variation in how English speakers of varying dialects would interpret an indication of time such as "half three". In Australia, this would normally be considered "3:30" (with an implied "past"). I know that in German, the equivalent "halb drei" would be interpreted as "2:30" (with an implied "nach" ["until"]).-- Jeffro77 09:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Durova's edits just raised an interesting issue. In the United States, most postsecondary schools (with the exception of trade or vocational schools) have general education or breadth requirements so that students are forced to take a minimum number of courses outside of their major or concentration. Usually these are set up so that the student must take one course from several different areas; for example, the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley has a seven-course breadth requirement [1]. Is there a similar arrangement in any other countries? If not, this fact should be noted in University and possibly in Education in the United States. -- Coolcaesar 22:49, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I moved this to the end of the paragraph, and expanded it:
In my experience (I am English) "on" is only used of major roads, so I felt this needed further explaining. It also needed reordering to make sense. I also clarified "actually in the street" to "in the middle of the road" as I felt the previous wording was US-biased and rather awkward. Hairy Dude 05:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Thrive-throve-thriven is definitely not standard American English. In fact, having never heard those conjugations in my life, I would have guessed they were Britishisms. Neither are the previously given examples of mixing of the preterite and past participle forms good ones. It may be true that Americans do such a thing, but not with those verbs. Spring-sprang-sprung and shrink-shrank-shrunk are the only common usages by people that aren't young children making mistakes or people speaking Ebonics. Shrunken is used exclusively as an adjective.
Regarding the recent addition:
+ Whereas a speaker of British English might say "Wotcher, mate. Mind loaning us a few quid till Sunday, love?", a speaker of American English would say "Yo ma homies! Gimme ten bucks until Sunday, K?".
I think this falls into the so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh category. Surprising that it was added by an admin, User:JIP; kudos to the anonymous user 152.78.98.1 for removing it after it was on the page for two days. ProhibitOnions 20:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I've just removed this section:
Only for County Durham among the English counties does the word County come before the name. In Ireland it's everywhere but that's an Irish custom. In Great Britain, the widespread use of 'shire' as a suffix is the equivalent of 'County'. Shire is not used as a suffix on some counties (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk, Northumberland) normally because there is some aspect of the way they were named which was different, eg. "Middlesex" = "Land of the Middle Saxons". David | Talk 18:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
One difference between American and British English I have often encountered (working in a US-based company) is that when Americans say something is "quite interesting" a Brit would normally take that to be damning with faint praise, whereas the American actually means it is "very interesting".
Are there more examples of intensifiers or other types of modifiers with this sort of variation of meaning? DrJohnBrooke 15:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm... I'm not entirely sure of your reasoning there - look at the programme QI. I think it depends on the tone of voice rather than phrase used. -- Boothman 16:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I have a sense that periods between each letter of an unpronounceable initialism (e.g., U.S.A., U.K.) is more of an American practice than a British one (although today even in America it's somewhat uncommon). Ideas? — Casey J. Morris 00:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
60.240.88.48 - Would you please tell me why you've added stops to "US" in my recent addition? I notice that throughout the article usage seems to be "U.S." (with stops) but "UK" (without stops). Why? US = United States, UK = United Kingdom - why should one have stops and not the other? I agree that both forms (with & without stops) are acceptable, but I would have expected consistency with both abbreviations in the same format within a single article. It seems to me odd to use one form for one abbreviation and a different form for another very similar abbreviation in the same article. This seems to be borne out by Jack Lumber's citation from Pam Peter's Cambridge English Usage Guide above. TrevorD 16:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, Boothman - You have added "It is worth noting however, that Merry Christmas is far more common in Britain than the Happy version." Really? Do you have any evidence? I'd say exactly the opposite. Snalwibma 21:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The article says: Largely related to differences in pronunciation, there are differences surrounding whether to use "a" or "an" before words beginning in h-. For example, the British would say "an hallucination", whereas Americans would say "a hallucination". This follows the British rule that "an" should be used if the first syllable of an h- word is unstressed. As far as I am concerned, this is simply untrue. I'd say "an hotel" is in fact more AmEng than BrEng; and BrEng dictionaries (e.g. Collins) say that "an" before H is obsolete. Permission to delete this paragraph? Snalwibma 21:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I'll delete the paragraph in question, then. Incidentally, haitch is a regional thing. It's the standard pronunciation in Hiberno-English, for instance, and I suspect also in some parts of Britain. Does the different Am/Brit pronunciation of herb get mentioned in any Wikipedia article, I wonder... Snalwibma 23:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
The Oxfordshire accent used to pronounce ask as aks, too, (and perhaps still does.) Flora Thompson in her depiction of late nineteenth and early twentieth century life in rural Oxfordshire records this pronunciation. For example, in "Still Glides The Stream" she writes: "The man smiled good-naturedly. 'Ah! now you're axing me summat,' he said... 'He'd got a better and bigger place at t'other end o' th' village and had put some of his workfolks into th' old un.'"
From the spelling, it's clear that she's trying to represent the pronunciation of the accent and "axing" shows that the "s" and "k" of "ask were reversed. It would be interesting to know whether the accent was taken to the Caribbean from England or whether it evolved there separately. Adrian Robson 08:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)