Talk:Comparison of American and British English/Archive 4

message: You know what? The Philadelphia (er, California) lawyer kinda hit the nail on the head in the above posts. The article says squat about "Word order" or "Word choice." I mean, nobody ever wrote anything about differences in word order. As for "word choice," it's not just the chestnut petrol vs. gasoline thing. Many words are standard in both dialects, but the same word may not be equally idiomatic on both sides of the Pond. We gotta take some action. Thoughts?--JackLumber 13:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed New Sections

message: some are wrong for GA.  my GA speech has, and Webster's New World prefers, the "british" variants of diverge and route, and chartreuse ending in /z/ not /s/. Benwing 02:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  misc pronun diffs 

message: Couple has the same meaning in British and American English.  If an American uses couple to mean more than two, she is being imprecise. -Acjelen 20:57, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Couple also has the standard meaning of "a few" in America, according to Merriam-Webster; in the usage note at American Heritage Dictionary, couple of "...has been well established in English since before the Renaissance", although it has been demoted to "informal". SigPig 23:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, let's just stick to what people do and say! This usage is even far from distinctively American, as even Oxford and Cambridge Learner's Dictionaries record it without objections or regional labels. I won't take any prescriptionist guff when uncalled for, will you :-) JackLumber 12:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Couple 

message: The use of dipthongs and ligatures should be mentioned somewhere - e.g. lævo- or laevo- pops up quite often in chemistry-related articles; in American English, it's spelled levo. Similarly, fœtus/foetus -> fetus.
I'm not sure where this would placed in the article, however; in general, the text seems more concerned with pronunciation rather than spelling. (Somewhat odd, considering the textual basis of Wikipedia, but I digress.)
moof 01:27, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please note the separate article on spelling differences. -Acjelen 02:11, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  dipthongal ligatures in British English 

message: The classification implied in the title of this article is extremely misleading in relation to the content. There should be more emphasis on the fact that the classification is only vaguely coherent in relation to written English. As for most of the other points raised, English spoken in Southern Britain and Australia has much more in common with American English than it does with Scottish or Ulster English. Calgacus 17:10, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading Classification 

message: This brings up a different issue than those mentioned in the discussion in Manual of Style archive ("U.S." or "American") in that it refers specifically to the name of the language spoken in the US, not the use of the language to name things other than itself. 
Because the word "American" has multiple uses, referring to either the US exclusively or to what is pertinent to cultures/peoples in either the Americas (North, Central, and South) or North America, its use on pages dealing with language is not transparent because it cannot be immediately interpreted. There are distinctions between American (North American) English and British English. This is a different matter than the differences between US English and British English and Canadian English.
Canadian English (which is distinct on a number of counts from British English and has certain elements in common with US English) is, in a certain sense, "American English," and though the article explains its exclusion, a change of title would remove the need to make this distinction. Since "Canadian English" is a distinct article, one would think that the parallel for the country just south would bear that country's name, not a name that can also refer to the continent.
So, arguably, this article should be titled "US and British English Differences" (and any parallel changes in other articles made) in order to disambiguate the meaning of the word "American" with reference to the English language. This would allow the ability to distinguish without confusion or need for explanation between US English usage and usage that extends to multiple countries in the Americas, which would be useful given the realities of language use.
(n.b. I follow M-W 11th in using US rather than U.S. [i.e., the entry, not the style guide, which contradicts the entry], and am not meaning to raise that issue here.)
Emme 12:43, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
:I disagree with that proposed change.  "American English" is how the vast majority of Americans (myself included) refer to their own language.  Calling it "US English" instead would, as a matter of statistics, create far more confusion than it alleviates.  American English speakers are technically a supermajority of native English speakers at the moment, see English language.  Wikipedia is a reference work that simply documents what is going on in other sources, and is not a normative work in itself.  --Coolcaesar 17:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  When "American" Refers to Language . . . 

message: Public school Public school (UK)
There is a hot debate taking place over at Talk:Public school (UK) and Talk:Public school regarding the differences between language and culture in Scotland and England, with the Scottish definition being in line with the US, Canadian, Australian and the rest-of-the-world. But a small number of English patriots seem to want to keep the various colonies in their place and have the English definition dominate the two articles.
Personally, I'm not even sure that there should be a separate article on English public schools, as they are simply a sub-topic of private schools, but if there must be an article it should be called Public school (England) and not Public school (UK) (sic).
Anyway, we Scots would appreciate some input from our "co-definitionists"--Mais oui! 20:49, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Public school 

message: I've removed this sentence from the article:
"* In American English, "built-in" describes a feature integrated or included in a larger whole. The British English equivalent adjective is "inbuilt" (without a hyphen)."
It's not obvious what this is referring to. The British talk about "built-in cupboards" in their kitchens. They don't call them "inbuilt cupboards". Maybe this sentence refers to some other usage that I haven't thought of but it needs clarification or expansion to make sense of what was intended. Adrian Robson 07:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  OED supports a slightly different interpretation: in some NAm usage "built-in" can be a noun, so a house ad might simply say the house has "built-ins" (presumably implying fittings such as wardrobes etc.). There is no suggestion that inbuilt is sole UK useage, but that it exists as a variant not so commonly found in NAm.Limegreen 23:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Built-in 

message: # On informal occasions, the British would use "have got", whereas Americans would say "have" or just "got". "Have got" is occasionally used by Americans to denote urgency, such as in "I have got to go to the bathroom." "Have" is the only form used in formal writing. Umm... no. As an American, the phrase "I've got", "he's got", etc. is very common in informal speech. "To have got" is very common to mean both "to need to"/"to be required to" as well as "to possess". I've rewritten this.
# In the United States, the word through can mean "up to and including" as in Monday through Friday. This causes little confusion in Britain though it is rarely used by British speakers, who might instead say Monday to Friday inclusive, or simply Monday to Friday. Some areas of the UK also use the term while in the same way, as in Monday while Friday. This is generally a feature of Northern England. What does this mean? What do British speakers think the word "through" means? Why does it cause any confusion at all? I'm deleting this section later if no one helps it.
:Since you ask, UK english uses the word ' through ' to mean passing from one place or condition to another.."through the eye of a needle" . It does not mean ' until '. ..mikeL
::I'm not aware of Australians having any problem understanding 'Monday through Friday'.--Jeffro77 09:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely americans usually ' stand in line ' rather than 'line (up) ' or 'queue'. ..mikeL
Thoughts? Matt Yeager 00:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  and certainly I have never as an Americain used the phrase "on queue"; I would use "in line" or "standing in line".  The verb queue up (or just queue) is a different meaning, for instance, a radio station may queue up a song (meaning get ready to play the next song in the list). --WhiteDragon 20:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not aware of Australian using "on queue" either to indicate standing in line for something. We would more likely use "in line", "in the queue" or "lining up".--Jeffro77 09:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

text:  In the context of radio production, might this not be a different word, as in "cue the next song"? Adrian Robson 08:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To "queue the next song" means to sequentially arrange it as the next song to be played. To "cue the next song" means to give a signal to indicate that the song is to begin.--Jeffro77 09:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I assume the point with "through" is that the British don't use it, and find it quaint/unusual on hearing it (apparently the inverse situation to "queue").Limegreen 00:29, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some unclear points