Americanisms and the art of proper speech
Over lunch, I came across a highly amusing piece at the Beeb's website, Americanisms: 50 of your most noted examples.
A large number of them, of course, aren't Americanisms at all, but simply archaic usage of the language that has survived on this side of the Pond despite falling out of favor in its land of origin. Reading through some of the 1,295 comments highlights this, and is fairly entertaining in and of itself.
The so-called "Americanism" that particularly caught my eye was #40, "that'll learn you", from poor Tabitha of London -- to whom, funnily enough, the phrase could easily be applied (it's been over a quarter of a century since I took Anglo-Saxon in college, but I still remember my professor discussing that particular verb's evolution, and its archaic meaning of "to teach").
All of which got me thinking back to how much I enjoyed R. MacNeil's presentation of The Story of English on PBS (which was also about a quarter of a century ago), which in turn spurred me to go perusing Amazon's catalog to see if it was available on DVD. I've had the companion book since it was originally published, but would really enjoy watching (and listening to) the tv series again. Sadly, it does not appear to be in print...or in encoding, or in press, or whatever one says of a television production that is no longer available for purchase in a home-viewing format1. Dangit.
1The closest Amazon comes is $55+ for a used copy of the VHS boxed set, which is far more than I would be willing to pay for a format that, well, archaic (*grin*).
A large number of them, of course, aren't Americanisms at all, but simply archaic usage of the language that has survived on this side of the Pond despite falling out of favor in its land of origin. Reading through some of the 1,295 comments highlights this, and is fairly entertaining in and of itself.
The so-called "Americanism" that particularly caught my eye was #40, "that'll learn you", from poor Tabitha of London -- to whom, funnily enough, the phrase could easily be applied (it's been over a quarter of a century since I took Anglo-Saxon in college, but I still remember my professor discussing that particular verb's evolution, and its archaic meaning of "to teach").
All of which got me thinking back to how much I enjoyed R. MacNeil's presentation of The Story of English on PBS (which was also about a quarter of a century ago), which in turn spurred me to go perusing Amazon's catalog to see if it was available on DVD. I've had the companion book since it was originally published, but would really enjoy watching (and listening to) the tv series again. Sadly, it does not appear to be in print...or in encoding, or in press, or whatever one says of a television production that is no longer available for purchase in a home-viewing format1. Dangit.
1The closest Amazon comes is $55+ for a used copy of the VHS boxed set, which is far more than I would be willing to pay for a format that, well, archaic (*grin*).