Talk:American English/Archive 3

message: I've moved these words to the discussion page because it's not obvious why they're in the section for words derived from French.
; jambalaya : rice cooked with herbs, spices, and ham, chicken, or seafood
; zydeco : a native Louisiana style of music
(In the case of zydeco, there's a suggestion that it comes from a song beginning, "Les haricots...", but the Wikpedia article says this is contested and it certainly seems a long way from les haricots to zydeco.)
If someone can provide good sources for the derivation of these words, perhaps they could put them back in an appropriate section with the source. Adrian Robson 08:33, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources needed for these derivations 

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" in the USA!--Mais oui! 20:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Public school 

message: The few lines about mid-west english being closer to 17th century english than modern times is a bit brave and certainly inaccurate!? -max rspct 00:28, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's probably too strong a statement; as the following discussion shows, there are many ways in which American English is more conservative than English English, but there are also many innovations AE has gone through, and in those respects EE is more conservative. But even if the statement is too strong, I don't see that there's anything "Americo-centric" about it. --Angr/ 07:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be a brazen-sounding statement, but the fact of the matter is that Webster would likely have advocated abandoning "unnecessary r"s, if they were not pronounced in that day and age...  Since he was one of the strongest advocates of retaining only "necessary" letters [and indeed, would have liked to have seen the abandonment of a great many that remain in American English spelling], I think that it would serve us best to give the benefit of the doubt to scholars who insist that General American, and the Midwest American English from which it stems, is the closest reflection of the pronunciation of that time, rather than some entirely contrived pronunciation that developed as a rebellious reaction to 17th century English imperialism...  Tomer TALK 06:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Americo-centrism]]/[[Amerigo-centrism]] 

message: Where has the statistic "As of 2005, it is estimated that more than two thirds of native speakers of English use various forms of American English" come from?  It seems about correct but it really needs some kind of reference.  Especially given a substantially population of India and other countries have Commonwealth English as their mother-tongue... Deano 20:37, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably someone has vaguely calculated that the USA population is approx 2/3 of the total populations of all countries that are "English speaking". I agree that this figure appears to be unsubstantiated.  For example, if my quoted method of how this figure is arrived at is correct, then this would be to ignore the substantial number of the population in the US for which English is not their first language, and also to ignore the large number of people in other countries, for example, Sweden, Jordan and India, who speak English perfectly albeit as a second language (and which, by and large, tend to favour a non-American English flavour of English).  What, after all, is a "native speaker" - the term seems rather ill defined, and is only being used because of common usage in the US educational community, where presumably it is equally ill defined if people were to think--jrleighton 15:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Native speaker is a very clearly defined technical term of linguistics. The statement is based on the same information as this chart, whose source is a British council report (PDF file, see page 10), whose source is David Crystal's 1997 book English as a Global Language (Cambridge University Press). These sources estimate that there are 337,297,000 native speakers of English, of whom 226,710,000 thousand live in the United States. (They estimate only 320,000 native speakers of English in India.) There may a problem identifying "native speakers of English who live in the United States" with "native speakers of Ameican English". After all, there are native speakers of other dialects of English who live in the United States, and there are native speakers of American English who live in other countries (like me!). Nevertheless, the vast majority of people are pretty stationary, so the estimate probably isn't too far off. --Angr (t·c) 15:28, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Blimey 226,710,000 thousand! Rich   Farmbrough 18:10, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am still suspicious of this statistic.   Think of all the native English speakers in England, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, India and other places that were formerly English colonies.   It is hard to believe that they don't add up to more than 110 million native English speakers?  --Ssilvers 04:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Two Thirds?

message: I'm really enjoying this article - nicely done! I would like to put a vote for doing a pass throughout the article to ensure that easily understood examples of the often arcane characteristics discussed are present. These really help make the article readable by anyone (with a bit of skimming over the scary looking technical bits of it by us mere mortals) when given, and I would love to encourage more! An example of this might be in the:
English words obsolete outside the U.S.
:The subjunctive mood is livelier in North American English than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts in American English. British English has a strong tendency to replace subjunctives with auxiliary verb constructions.
Here, I was a little unclear (after reading the subjunctive mood link) on just what this was in the end - an example would be great for who are unfamiliar with this. 
Again, those portions of the article that provide simple examples of the issue being discussed are just golden, and make the article enjoyable for anyone to read. Dxco 23:25, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Assorted Comments

message: Can anyone provide any insights into the nasalization patterns in American English? I think they're pretty distinctive of Am.E. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.133.51 (talk • contribs) 23:52, 17 January 2006  (UTC)
:Unsourced?  Sure!  Vowels preceding [n] are nasalized most of the time, especicially if they are followed thereafter by another consonant phoneme.  As I've said elsewhere previously, "can" (the modal verb (not the object, which is [kʰæn]), is [kʰən] and "can't" is [kʰæⁿʔ].  Interestingly enough, "cant" is actually usually [kʰæntʰ], my guess is because of the infrequency with which it's used in common speech.  A particular favorite of mine, pursuing this example, is that a sentence in vernacular upper Midwestern such as "You can't help me?" is pronounced as  or emphatically (emphasis on any of the words)  or a positive question "you can help me?"  or emphatically (on the "can")  or emphatically with emphasis on any of the other words, .  Delving further into this (which I find fascinating) will require bringing intonation markers into the IPA symbology as well.  Whereas languages like Spanish and even German bring the emphasized word forward in a sentence, English instead changes the stress pattern of the sentence or phrase in a schema parallelling that of Yiddish and Hebrew.  Tomertalk 09:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  (A couple of irrelevant points. You should be using square brackets, like this: , because you're giving a very detailed account of the sounds, not slashes, which are only used when you're showing phonemes. Also, in the IPA,  is a front rounded vowel, French u or German ü; the glide spelt in English with a y is spelt in the IPA as . The American habit of pronounced "can't" so that it sound like "can" as you mention is very annoying. You should also stop it, and start pronounce "can't" like me, as . —Felix the Cassowary | toːk 14:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: fixZor3d! (I actually knew both those things, but I wasn't um...entirely sober at the time :-p ) Tomertalk 04:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No way, dude. The way Aussies pronounce that word is just way too close a different word altogether. Ick. --Angr 20:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Does not! The colon makes all the difference. And I'd permit you to say  if it pleases you more. —Felix the Cassowary | toːk 14:25, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Didn't say identical, said too close. Especially for those of us speaking dialects without distinctive vowel length. And  already means something else for me. --Angr 14:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah-yeah, the colon's enough to make it not even close. No-one said languages couldn't have homonyms, and considering that a surname and a modal verb are substantially different parts of speech, I doubt any confusion is conceivable. (Ironically, I pronounce his surname , the same as I say the word "cant" as in jargon. It's just as well the spelling gives us an alternative route to the borrowing than just pronunciation and/or said borrowing happened a fair while ago.) —Felix the Cassowary | toːk 16:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I recall a recent article in the Journal of the IPA mentioned that although lexically four and for are homonyms, the latter (and many other function words and pronouns) is more likely to have a reduced vowel.  so "I can dip that" would be  or while "I canned it in June" would be   (notice they aren't stressed) while when both words are stressed they are the same. AEuSoes1 21:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting.  Also, I can't think of a time when "four" is unstressed in a phrase.  In "my" English, for and four are homonyms when "for" is stressed (, ,  or , depending on how you think you hear it/'re listening to—I think the only two that are real pronunciations are  and , the latter probsibly actually being ) but for becomes almost homonymous () with fir and fur () when unstressed. Tomertalk 04:00, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nasalization patterns in American English 

message: Now I live in England, and 'quit' doesn't just mean leaving a location.  We certainly use 'quit' as in an action, for example 'to quit smoking.'  Also, 'to quit a job.'  Certainly not obsolete out side the USA. Shirelord, 2040 GMT 31/01/2006.
:: I just saw that and thought "huh?" as well. "Quit" is definitely used in the context of "ceasing an activity" over here (England). (195.92.168.170 01:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Quit' 

message: Are there really differences in grammar between American English and British English, concerning standard language and not slang? --Abe Lincoln 10:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep. See American and British English differences#Grammar. Nohat 10:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammar 

message: Can someone explain what the following sentence from the article means?
The conservatism of American English is largely the result of the fact that it represents a mixture of various dialects from the British Isles.
I don't understand how "being a mixture of dialects" implies "conservatism". At the moment this sentence looks like a non sequitur. Can someone clarify the original intention of the writer? Adrian Robson 07:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not only is it a non sequitur, but it's wrong as well. Non-central dialects of a language (dialects away from the main cultural hub of a language or from its point of origin) tend to be more conservative, and this goes for most languages; the idea that English has its own special reason for following this very typical pattern needs some strong support. Removed. -Branddobbe 08:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non sequitur 

message: During my year in Wikipedia, I've found that the subject of "American English" and "British English" is often disputed in articles. So, I have proposed a solution, why not have (instead of just English) an American English and British English Wikipedia? Please contact me on any comments!
--MasterPayne22 19:46, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not even worth discussing. Personally I think all articles should be written in Canadian English, conveniently splitting the difference between American and British usage (centre and colour, but realize and aluminum). Angr (t • c) 15:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It wouldn't succeed, anyway. Far too much effort for virtually no benefit. Even enthusiasts would soon give up the idea. In a vocabulary of 500,000 words, the differences probably represent 0.001 percent of the total language. In fact, the differences are so few that it's often difficult to tell from their writing where people are from. I couldn't say whether the first two contributors were British, American, Australian or whatever from their writing. I couldn't even see any clues in the writing of the Canadian supporter! Adrian Robson 15:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And if you had, they wouldn't have been the expected ones. I'm American and use American English. But if there were to be one unified spelling on Wikipedia, then I think it should be Canadian by compromise. Angr (t • c) 15:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Angr, the adoption of Canadian spelling would be even better than contriving a feigned "international" spelling system---kind of an unlikely Holy Grail, we better lay out to reinvent the wheel :-) And, as H. L. Mencken put it, it's not to be forgotten that spelling is the least of all the factors that shape and condition a language. (btw, why isn't The American Language a reference for this article? It might be a tad dated and somewhat biased, but contains a heap of still valuable information and can be read online for free.) But vocabulary differences are way more troublesome---remember that "gasoline vs. petrol" squabble? Check out how much bullshit pours off of that talk page! --JackLumber 12:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mencken's quote is an overstatement. I have frequently said (for example on the Reference Desk) that spelling has nothing whatever to do with language, an idea that makes a lot of people angry. As for gasoline vs. petrol, sidewalk vs. pavement, backpack vs. rucksack, I think the Wikipedia policy of "Go with whatever the first editor wrote" should apply. Angr (t • c) 13:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I myself think, but every now and then crops up someone who disagrees. Many people get mad at us about spelling probably because it's the most conspicuous tell-tale sign of the origin of a writer. Many of them indeed erroneously think that differences between American & British spelling were occasioned by Americans only. Add American so-called "patriotism" and British so-called "insularism" and the scenario is complete... --JackLumber 13:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

text: What a truly awful idea!  Moncrief 23:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Those userboxes you've seen on profiles were a response to the ones some Brits wrote first, saying things like "This user does not understand the American 'English' 'language' artificially created by Noah Webster in 1828 for no other reason than just to be 'different', and bloody well doesn't want to." So the question is, why do some Brits feel the need to be so rude, and why would anyone get so upset by the spelling of "color"? User:Angr 11:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The real issue is, many people *really DO believe* that American English was created by Noah Webster.  I hope this very article could help educate and inform the whole mass of the people. ;-)  Oh, Angr, you forgot to mention This user dislikes American 'English' (common grammatical and spelling errors mistaken for dialect).  Btw, people apparently continue to mistake "spelling" for "dialect."  Check this out.  Kinda depressing.  JackLumber.  13:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's it exactly.  Just as in the case of Spanish and Portuguese, New World users of English numerically outweigh those of the UK and its former colonies.  What galls is the suggestion that American English is some sort of déclassé, upstart, bastardized speech.  Fowler's Modern English Usage even stooped so low as to make fun of place names like "Pennsylvania," as if "Weston-super-Mare" and "Woking" were their superiors in euphony.  British English continues Samuel Johnson's late eighteenth century norms, while American English follows Webster's early nineteenth century ones: a piddling difference from this remove, as are the spelling differences themselves.  Smerdis of Tlön 16:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not finding an entry for Pennsylvania in Fowler. Where does he make fun of it? User:Angr 17:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Fowler's mocking "Pennsylvania" is in The King's English, under Neologisms: "With the strictly scientific words, writers have not the power to decide whether they shall accept them or not; they must be content to take submissively what the men of science choose to give them, they being as much within their rights in naming what they have discovered or invented as an explorer in naming a new mountain, or an American founder a new city. Minneapolis, Pikeville, and Pennsylvania, may have a barbaric sound, but there they are; so telegram, or aesthophysiology."  Smerdis of Tlön 18:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't get why people think our two dialects are so different.  So American spelling is slightly more latinized/latinised and British spelling is slightly more Frenchified.  We sound almost the same, we use 99.99% the same words, and my guess is with the world "shrinking" our dialects are going to move closer together.Cameron Nedland 17:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: American English v. British English

message: E946- Is your addition of the "confusing" box motivated solely by there being many words in the section that you don't understand? I'm not sure that's a good reason to have that particular warning there. --Cultural Freedom talk 2006-06-30 07:00 (UTC)
:I think I can speak pretty well for the common user--I know very little about language and speaking and various terms, and in general, have absolutely no clue what most of this article is talking about.
:Though you can always just link to a term's main article in order to explain what it means, the article becomes very difficult to read when every thid word is a link to a new term.
:One of the best examples is the following bullet from the section: 
:*Laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ before /ɹ/, causing pronunciations like [pɛɹ], [pɪɹ] and [pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure.
:Nowhere above in the article is it explained what any of those mean, now is it clear from looking at them. As a result, I have NO CLUE what that bullet is describing.
:I understand it's difficult to convey differences in pronunciation through text, but I think it would go a long way to clearing the section up by using more general terms. 
:E946 07:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only technical term in the above quote is "laxing". Besides adding a link to tenseness (where the concept of tense and lax vowels is explained), I don't see what else can be done to improve its comprehensibility. Perhaps sound files illustrating the difference between // and //? User:Angr 07:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition of "confusing" box 

message: Some of the words they claim are no longer in common usage in Britain are just plain wrong. Sick, obligate (in its various forms, such as obligated, obliged etc etc), doghouse, rider, pavement, faucet, plat, pillow, night table....all of these are used still and thats at least half the list thats there. --Narson 14:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For starters, obligate and oblige are two different words (kinda like acclimate and acclimatize, or burglarize and burgle) and this is about obligate, not oblige.  Note the restricted meanings---isn't a pavement in Britain what we call a sidewalk in the U.S.?  Pillow is only in the "cushion" sense, not a bed pillow. The very doghouse and tap (valve) articles say doghouse and faucet are American words.  I quickly searched .uk sites for plat and I didn't find any matches. As for rider, the Google ratio bus passengers/bus riders is 5100:1 on gov.uk sites and 0.87:1 on .gov sites! How can you say that rider "passenger" is not an Americanism?  It can be just a regional thing---*all* sources and *all* dictionaries say these words are Americanisms. If you feel they are not anymore, you can consider moving some of them to the minilist of words that "remained as regionalisms or were later brought back, to various extents, especially in the second half of the 20th century."  Catchya on the flipside,  JackLumber. 21:24, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The pavement is indeed what is known as the sidewalk in American English, the equivilant of American English pavement simply being the road. However pillow is used in the sense of bed pillow in English as well as American English Mbthegreat 22:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  No longer in common usage? 

message: This merger originated in Southern American English but is now widespread in the Midwest and West as well.
According to the article on the merger, it has only been observed in certain parts of the Midwest and West, which doesn't count as "widespread" in my book.  I'm going to change the sentence to "parts of the Midwest and West" instead.  Is there any reason for the original language?
--68.0.212.218 04:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pin-pen merger 

message: I made a very small change to this section in the seventh paragraph, sixth sentence.  I changed the terminology from "Jump" a red light to "run" a red light.  The reason I changed this is that in all of my life I have never heard anyone refer to driving through a red light as jumping a red light.  Rather, the normal colloquial use is running a red light.  Maybe the original author lives in an area where this is said...but I have lived in the South, Midwest, Rocky Mountain West, Southwest, and West Coast of the United States and have never heard this before.  It could be an East Coast thing, but I know a ton of Easterners from DC, NYC, Boston, and Philly that have never used it either.  Just my two cents...if someone needs to change it back to jump all I ask is that someone notes what part of the country it's typically used in.  Thanks.  --Tbkflav 03:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No doubt that run has replaced jump _in current U.S. usage_, but that's pretty irrelevant to the sentence you modified, which illustrates some American-born traffic/transportation-related words that are now used *outside of the U.S.*  Run (a red light) is not such a word (yet)---and indeed it's featured on the List of words having different meanings in British and American English (I put it there myself a couple months ago); jump is, and it's American-born too (source: OED).  JackLumber.  12:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: American Lexicon:  Red Light 

message: I came here hoping to find a link to WP's policy page on A v. B spelling - can someone post it please?--Shtove 20:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP policy on spelling 

message: deleted:
:For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and does not occur 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped following  or  when it represents underlying 't'; thus greater and grader are distinguished. 
i've never heard of this; it needs citations if it's to go back in. Benwing 04:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  flapping 

message: How about a sound sample of typical American English pronounciation? -FrostyBytes 12:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about thirty? Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  sound sample