So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Hercule]

Wife is delivering son to California for Stanford's summer session for HS students. She'll stay about a week. She better NOT come back sounding like a valley girl!

 

[Zombie_61]

There’s also ‘No worries’ when said by non-Australians. It sounds false, shallow and dare I say it … common … on British lips. When Aussies say it, it sounds laidback and cool...

"No worries" has somehow become a part of my personal lexicon and will occasionally slip out of my mouth, but in my American accent and as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Wife is delivering son to California for Stanford's summer session for HS students. She'll stay about a week. She better NOT come back sounding like a valley girl!

I haven't heard that dumb ass "valley girl" accent in a long time, and most of the young women who I heard speak with that particular accent seemed to be doing it as an occasional affectation rather than their regular patterns of speech, so I'm pretty sure your wife will be safe from that particular peril.

 

[Trenchfriend]

2022 and driving people are still unable to navigate themselves to our lokal hospital at the hill.

Man, I got my good old Navi since 2007.

 

[Ticklishchap]

To continue the accent theme, the age of “BBC English” is dead. In Brexitland there is an East German style obsession with “working class” culture and making everybody “equal” - while real inequalities of wealth and income rise to new heights (again as in the DDR). The version of “working class” culture promoted is not working class at all but lumpen.

Result: British TV, apart from two arts channels which still have some quality, consists of stereotypical “working class” people in “loungewear” jumping up and down and screaming in incomprehensible dialects. At least half are female because of another DDR-type obsession: interchangeable gender roles. Radio is the same except that we don’t see these people, just hear them. I only listen to foreign radio stations these days.

Criticise any of this in Britain and you are called ‘elitist’, but that’s a cap I am happy to wear.

 

[BobHufford]

Man, I got my good old Navi since 2007.

Navi? We don't need no stinking Navi.

 

[Ticklishchap]

It is a very real and particularly obnoxious manner of speaking that can be hard to get past, particularly to my mid-western ears. The dean of students at my son's school speaks/spoke that way and I initially found it very difficult to appreciate her because of it (I know, I know, I look bad, but I'm fickle). Every sentence ending in a rise almost as a question. She has since redeemed herself in my eyes (that's another story) and I don't even notice it anymore.

The ‘rise almost as a question’ has come into British English as well. It’s known as the Upward Inflection, or as I call it the Upward Infliction. It’s seriously cringeworthy.

 

[tonyb]

I’m going to introduce another linguistic bugbear: the increasingly generic use of the singular ‘they’ and ‘them’ and the attempt at both governmental and corporate level to force this on us.

This morning, I was in contact with a private sector company I work with sometimes and was told by a female PA there: “I’ll get them to give you a call.”
“No,” I replied. “You will get him to give me a call because he is a man.”

On another occasion recently, I was speaking to a department at our local National Health Service hospital about arranging an appointment for a friend, as he is hard of hearing. When I asked for a specific person (female), I was told: “They are in a meeting”. I said: “You mean that she is in a meeting”.

I work in the real estate sector and employ an agency to draw up tenancy agreements. A few weeks ago they produced a document that referred to the tenant as “they” and “them”. I sent it back and asked them to write “he or she” and “his or her”.

This is Orwellian and dehumanising. It reduces us to the level of livestock or machines. Also, as a gay man, it makes me feel erased. It took years for my relationship to be recognised fully in law as ‘he and he’; ‘Mr and Mr’. Absolutely no way are we going to be “They and they”. The implication is that we should all be bisexual: it is like a sinister religious cult or a form of “conversion therapy”.

In fact this erases all of us: male, female, heterosexual, homosexual. It takes away everything that defines us as human in a manner reminiscent of totalitarian societies.

I share your sentiments on this matter, but I fear it may be an already lost cause.

Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist for whom I have great deal of respect, insists on being referred to as “they.”’ I wish “they” wouldn’t do that. Masha is a biological woman whose gender is, to my eye, anything but ambiguous.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as accents go, I adamantly refuse to adopt "standard American TV announcer English" in my everyday life. I'll use it playing a character, but when I'm me, I was born Northeastern Non-Rhotic, and I will die Northeastern Non-Rhotic. And if some tourist can't understand me when I tell them the place they want is "rate up byta ahhhht gal'ry," that's just too friggen bad.

As far as "they" and "them" go, doesn't bother me a bit. Been doing that all my life --"I don't know where he is, they'll get here when they get here" -- and it amuses me to hear so many people getting uptight about it now that it has acquired a sociocultural significance that perhaps they find incomprhensible. I have several friends who go by "they" and "them", and while I am admittedly not of this century enough to fully grasp the concept, if that's what they want to do, who am I to say otherwise? It costs me absolutely nothing, and it makes them feel more comfortable with who they are, so more power to them.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I’m not “uptight” about it. People are free to identify any way they wish, but they aren’t free to tell other people how they are to perceive them.

Perhaps what’s needed is a gender-neutral singular pronoun. But, as I already mentioned, the war is likely already lost. I accept it, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I guess what it came down to for me is the realization that I'm just not all that invested in my own definition of other people vs. their own self-definition. I've known non-binary people and I've known trans people, and the universal constant is that they, in every case know themselves better than I know them. So my definition is always of lesser significance, the way I see it, than their own. When I get it wrong, because I will, because I'm old and not as on top of things as I used to be, I apologize and accept the correction. There just isn't any reason I can see to feel otherwise.

 

[Edward]

^^^^^
I’m not “uptight” about it. People are free to identify any way they wish, but they aren’t free to tell other people how they are to perceive them.

Perhaps what’s needed is a gender-neutral singular pronoun. But, as I already mentioned, the war is likely already lost. I accept it, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

It's an interesting lacuna in the English language - perhaps an ironic one, given that, unlike many, other contemporary European, languages, English also doesn't use gendered language for non-living objects. At a time there may have been "it", I suppose - but that has been used in malice in order to dehumanise so often over time that I doubt it could be applied here now. It's been interesting watching "they" evolve in this manner, though. I grew up in Ireland with "they" being very commonly applied as a stand-in where an individual's gender was unknown to the speaker, so it's a short step from that to application on the part of an individual who doesn't subscribe to either flavour of established gender. I can't honestly say I give it much thought beyond that.


Unlike the use of non-words, like "normalcy" instead of normality. I'm all for the evolution of language, but you have to draw the line somewhere!


Accents, though.... those I've long been aware of - not least being in possession of one that until 9/11 got me followed by security round shops and airports in England. The history of RP is a fascinating one too, especially discovering that in origin it is as much a construct as the patois a lot of London kids now affect among themselves. I'd love to go forward a century and hear how people speak then!

 

[Hercule]

Goodness we seem to be sensitive today.

 

[GHT]

Navi? We don't need no stinking Navi.

Did you know that in Brit-Speak a Navi is a labourer? It dates back to the 18th century and the industrial revolution. The first form of logistics in the carriage of large amounts of goods was by canal, using horse drawn canal barges. Those canals were all dug by hand and the labourers that dug them were known as, 'navigators,' or 'navi's.'

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's an interesting lacuna in the English language - perhaps an ironic one, given that, unlike many, other contemporary European, languages, English also doesn't use gendered language for non-living objects. At a time there may have been "it", I suppose - but that has been used in malice in order to dehumanise so often over time that I doubt it could be applied here now. It's been interesting watching "they" evolve in this manner, though. I grew up in Ireland with "they" being very commonly applied as a stand-in where an individual's gender was unknown to the speaker, so it's a short step from that to application on the part of an individual who doesn't subscribe to either flavour of established gender. I can't honestly say I give it much thought beyond that.


Unlike the use of non-words, like "normalcy" instead of normality. I'm all for the evolution of language, but you have to draw the line somewhere!


Accents, though.... those I've long been aware of - not least being in possession of one that until 9/11 got me followed by security round shops and airports in England. The history of RP is a fascinating one too, especially discovering that in origin it is as much a construct as the patois a lot of London kids now affect among themselves. I'd love to go forward a century and hear how people speak then!

One of the things I most enjoy about dealing with old broadcast recordings is finding examples of how actual people actually spoke eighty or ninety year ago -- not cultivated elocution-school speech, or stylized theatrical speech, but the often gritty, often mushmouthed speech that the average person of those times dished out. "Man on the street" type programs, audience participation shows, anything that has people speaking the way they actually spoke I find fascinating. The idea that "English was spoken better" in some idealized past might have been true for those whose business it was to speak that way, but there is plenty of audio proof that Joe Blow's diction was as casual and sloppy a century ago as it is today.

 

[Edward]

One of the things I most enjoy about dealing with old broadcast recordings is finding examples of how actual people actually spoke eighty or ninety year ago -- not cultivated elocution-school speech, or stylized theatrical speech, but the often gritty, often mushmouthed speech that the average person of those times dished out. "Man on the street" type programs, audience participation shows, anything that has people speaking the way they actually spoke I find fascinating. The idea that "English was spoken better" in some idealized past might have been true for those whose business it was to speak that way, but there is plenty of audio proof that Joe Blow's diction was as casual and sloppy a century ago as it is today.

Indeed, that sort of thing is really revealing. Here in East London there's a long, popular tradition of romanticising the cockney 'gore blimey' speech pattern, and in some quarters performatively mourning its apparent passing. The reality is, of course, that it was never as common as Mary Poppins would have you believe, and back in the late 19th century here in Whitechapel you'd have been as, if not more, likely to hear someone speaking Yiddish rather than 'cockney'. Oy vey! One of the things that makes this part of town so rich. Not far from here, there's a Mosque on Brick Lane that used to be a Synagogue, and before that it was built as a Hugonaut church. An area always in flux.

 

[tonyb]

My Dear Old Ma survived a more rigorous academic program in getting her high school diploma than many people these days see in obtaining a bachelor’s degree.

She studied physics AND chemistry AND biology in high school, as well as Latin. But that’s been a long time ago. I don’t recall studying any of the “hard sciences” in high school, let alone Latin.

I’m familiar with a young man, an old friend’s kid, who dropped out of high school and later earned a GED. I know I couldn’t pass that exam without putting in several hundred hours of study. And even then it might take a second crack at it.

I’ve heard it too often opined by people my age that these days we’re graduating kids from high school who haven’t learned much. I’ve reminded them that when we were that age, half a century back, they gave us diplomas if we attended with something that might generously be called regularity and didn’t burn the place down. The stuff we got away with would in no way fly today.

 

[Zombie_61]

^^^^^
I’m not “uptight” about it. People are free to identify any way they wish, but they aren’t free to tell other people how they are to perceive them.

I know a few people who are part of the LGBT community, and even they can't keep up with the terms and acronyms and everything else that ever-expanding community wants more recently. I tend to treat everyone I meet with the same general level of courtesy and respect, and as I meet people I'll decide on a case-by-case basis who I'll cater to and who I won't. But for such a small minority (one to four percent last I checked) to start issuing demands to the rest of us is unreasonable in my opinion.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had a year of chemistry in high school and a year of Spanish (which I took only because I already knew how to count to twenty in that language, and figure it would be a head start), but I dropped physics after the first day because I knew I didn't have a chance. I looked at the "advance placement" assignments the kids would bring into work in more recent times., and there is no doubt in my mind that the classwork of today is more rigorous in every way than what I was dealing with in the 1970s. If I were to enroll in high school today I'd wash out before lunch.

 

[Zombie_61]

2022 and driving people are still unable to navigate themselves to our lokal hospital at the hill...Man, I got my good old Navi since 2007.

The problem with that is that there are a lot of people who, for some reason, are unable to read maps regardless of whether they're printed on paper or displayed on an electronic screen. For those people "Navi" and any other GPS systems are pretty much useless.

 

[ChiTownScion]

My Dear Old Ma survived a more rigorous academic program in getting her high school diploma than many people these days see in obtaining a bachelor’s degree.

She studied physics AND chemistry AND biology in high school, as well as Latin. But that’s been a long time ago. I don’t recall studying any of the “hard sciences” in high school, let alone Latin.

I’m familiar with a young man, an old friend’s kid, who dropped out of high school and later earned a GED. I know I couldn’t pass that exam without putting in several hundred hours of study. And even then it might take a second crack at it.

I’ve heard it too often opined by people my age that these days we’re graduating kids from high school who haven’t learned much. I’ve reminded them that when we were that age, half a century back, they gave us diplomas if we attended with something that might generously be called regularity and didn’t burn the place down. The stuff we got away with would in no way fly today.

Latin was pushed at my high/ preparatory school. A few fools told me that I'd need it if I ever wanted to become an attorney, and I was the bigger fool for taking two years of it after believing them.

My gut feeling was to take German instead. I should have listened to my gut. Had I taken four years of German instead I could have pursued my higher education in Germany for a fraction of the cost that I paid, and had a lot of fun consuming good German beer doing so. I can barely manage some conversational German: it's on my bucket list to find a community college to remedy that. In the meantime, it's good to know that if I ever have the opportunity to socialize with students in Hamburg, Heidelburg, or Berlin, I can hold my own with most of the verses of Gaudeamus Igitur.