Talk:Comparison of American and British English/Archive 5

message: 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)?
:Terminating letter salutations with a colon is the common usage in American letters among all educated writers.  As a student of history, I have seen letters in archives from over a century ago (and even older) that conform to this style.  
:American English differs from British English in many ways because of (1) the Atlantic Ocean and (2) the American Revolution.  After the Revolution, the two nations' languages, accents, laws, and cultures began to gradually evolve in different directions.  The colon/comma issue is just one of them.  --Coolcaesar 00:21, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, British people do not use the colon; i was always taught to use a comma and ive never had them mixed up as ive never seen a colon used in that way over here. -- jeffthejiff (talk) 11:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Also, please understand that there are differenences as well when one is writing a personal letter versus the times when one is writing a business or professional letter.  A colon may be used now at the end of the Salutation; however, I have seen this rule change according to the region of this nation several times even in my short life-- a mere 33 years old.  Our languages, both American and the Queen's English, are alive and thriving.  What one person learned and accepted five years ago could easily and likely become outdated  within a year.  Things change and grow that quickly.  Amazing, isn't it? --Nicholas Outland  18:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Letter writing 

message: 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.
:I don't think it is a difference. In the UK "Me and my girl went to the movies" ""My girl and me went to the movies" would be more common than "My girl and I went to the movies", except maybe by BBC newsreaders! -- Chris Q 08:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Personal Pronouns in British and American English

message: 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.  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)
thread_title:  Durova's edits recently 

message: :although this can depend on whether or not the street is closed at one end
I moved this to the end of the paragraph, and expanded it:
:On the other hand, in British usage one might describe a house as being "on" a very long, main road, especially one leading to a particular place, e.g. "on (the) London Road".
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)
thread_title:  "on/in Churchill Road" 

message: 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.
:No sirree. It's a regional thing. Just because those conjugations are not used in your region, or by most so-called educated speakers, or in common/official writing, or in belles lettres, doesn't mean they are not used at all. The article was actually clear. Do yourself a favor and go grab a dictionary. See you around.
::Just dropped in here to see what's up.  At first I thought JackLumber (the writer of the above paragraph) was wrong.  So I looked at my dictionary to look up the word thrive. It turns out that throve and thriven are valid forms of thrive, according to the Random House Webster's College Dictionary.  I learn something new on Wikipedia every day!  --Coolcaesar 07:49, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait-wait-wait- I was aware of both the regular and irregular forms of thrive, but I took the word of the guys who wrote down that section asserting that thrive-throve-thriven is strictly American and thrive-thrived-thrived is the only form used in BrE. But, surprise, it turns out that is not like this, any. The Oxford English Dictionary: quote thrive - Pa. tense throve; pa. pple. thriven. Also pa. tense and pple. thrived unquote. "The spirit of resistance throve the more." --- Charlotte Mary Yonge. I'm coming clean---I thought I sounded kinda Mr. Know-It-All, and I've got to admit that no one among us knows diddlysquat about this. Americans, Britons, whatever. Thanks be to the guy who aroused the question. And, Coolcasear, your not the only one who learns something new every day. In sum, the section needs rewritten (sic). So bad. --JackLumber 11:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Guys, you reading this yet? I got news. Further research shows that, in spite of Oxford's claims, the thrive scenario is exactly the same on either side of the pond---the regular forms are everywhere preferred and "throve-thriven" are obsolescent. Case closed, I'd guess.--JackLumber 12:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erroneous American, and British, verb morphology 

message: 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)
thread_title: Asking for money

message: I've just removed this section:
:In the names of counties of the British Isles, the word county comes before the name e.g. County Limerick (Ireland) or is simply absent, e.g. Glamorgan (Wales) or Kent (England), whereas in the U.S., it comes after the name, e.g. Washington County.
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)
replies: text: Well spotted. There's no need to call it County Nottinghamshire, that would mean County Nottingham's County. -- Boothman 21:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Devon and Dorset used to be Devonshire and Dorsetshire. Jooler 13:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counties names 

message: 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)
replies: text: I mostly agree with John Brooke. In British English, "quite" can have the sense of "very" or "somewhat", depending on tone of voice. In American English (correct me if I'm wrong), I think it exclusively has the meaning "very". Stephen Turner (Talk) 16:57, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, I see this is already at List_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_British_and_American_English#Q. (I'd actually got confused and thought this was on that article's talk page). Stephen Turner (Talk) 16:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And guess who edited that? Of course, JackLumber 21:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Stephen Turner, but not John Brooke. I don't think quite has any more connotation of damning than ny other intensifier does, including very (in the UK anyway). I think it's just a word on a par with "rather" or "fairly". -- Boothman 19:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intensifiers?