Ok, then I’m just misunderstanding - what’s the difference? I’m not trying to be smart, but I thought they kind of went hand in hand.
A language seldom borrows basic vocabulary from another language. Mostly it borrows words for new items. It generally borrows only limited amounts of pronunciations and grammar too. With one rare exception then, a language can’t change into one that’s “derived” from another language. A language can only have a single ancestor. Indeed, the rate of change in a language is limited by the fact that a language can’t change so much over the course of a person’s lifetime that he can no longer understand it.
The one exception is what’s called creolization. Sometimes a “dominating” language will be used in a trading or similar situation (masters talking to slaves is a classic case) where there are a number of other languages being used by non-speakers of the dominating language. The speakers of the dominating language will have to make themselves understood by all of the speakers of other languages. They will use single words, gestures, etc. from the dominating language. They will in this way create a “pidgin,” which is not a full-blown language but a simplified code using items from a number of languages. Sometimes this trading or other situation will last long enough that a generation will grow up using the pidgin and turn it into a full language with a complete vocabulary and grammar. This is called a “creole.” But in any case, no such thing has happened in American English. A fairly limited number of words have been derived from other languages, but it’s still clearly English.
There’s another, and amusing, difference, this one being an expresseion.
My understanding is that when the English say, “I’m going over to knock up Miss Jones.” They mean they are going to her abode and ring the bell, or knock on the door, or whatever, to talk to her. In the US is means to make Miss Jones pregnant.
I wonder how that came about. I can see the English version, but our meaning doesn’t follow any reasonable pattern. At least, not to me.
To my Canadian ears, the British English pronunciation of the words “arse” and “ass” are roughly the same: “ahss”. Does that shed any light on the situation?
According to the OED, “knock up” in the sense of “get pregnant” or “have intercourse with” is first recorded in 1813. There’s an earlier sense of “knock” (without “up”) meaning the same thing first recorded in 1598. There’s an uncomfortably large number of expressions in many languages concerning having sex or getting pregnant which came from terms meaning “strike,” “hit,” “knock,” etc., as though what the male is doing is hitting the female during intercourse, or hitting her hard enough to push a baby out at birth.
The “a” sound is very different. Even though we English don’t pronounce the “r” in the middle, arse is pronounced “ah-s” while ass is pronounced “a-s” (like the “a” in “cat”).
If you look at the pronunciation it makes more sense, in their respective lands both words rhyme with the pronunciation of grass, glass etc.
The real mystery here is why if we spell it arse do we not spell the others grarse and glarse but then English is a most inconsistent language.
Bow down to the bough with the bow!
Thyacine writes;
> If you look at the pronunciation it makes more sense, in their
> respective lands both words rhyme with the pronunciation of
> grass, glass etc.
Well, no, that’s not true. In the U.S., “ass” is pronounced the same way (to rhyme with with the American way of saying “glass”) in both of the meanings “rear end” and “animal sort of like a horse.” In the U.K., however, “ass” in the meaning “animal sort of like a horse” is pronounced to rhyme with the British way of saying “glass,” but “arse” meaning “rear end” is pronounced differently. It’s hard to explain to Americans what the vowel sound is like, since it doesn’t exist in American English, but it’s a slightly broader /a/ with a bit of an /r/ in it.
Well that is odd, here in Australia we say glarse for glass and ass is pronounced completely differently. I was sure Brits were the same.
Wendell; Thylacine:
I’m afraid you’re both wrong about the British pronunciation of ass, arse and glass. Apart from anything else there’s no single way of pronouncing those words in Britain - it depends what region you come from. For example, in the north of England (where I’m from) ass rhymes with glass, but in the south (where I live now) arse rhymes with glass.
Slightly OT, but I was recently arguing over the pronounciation of the British word “twat”. Is the ‘a’ pronounced like ‘shot’ or ‘mat’ ?
Goo - it’s pronounced to rhyme with “mat”.
Just wanted to back up what everton said - there are so many diverse accents in the UK that “British English” is a serious misnomer. I often make the mistake (as I did above) of counting “received pronunciation” (a.k.a. “Southern middle-class”) as “English english”, but it couldn’t be more different to someone from, say, Newcastle. And then you’ve got the Scots and Welsh to contend with.
“Ca ne fait rien” is French for “It doesn’t matter”. This was taken into English as “san fairy ann” post WW1 meaning “oh well, there’s nothing we can do about it”. Having said that, that precise meaning doesn’t make much sense here, but I thought that you might like to know (see WWW).
David: As a Brit, I’ve never heard the expression “to knock up”, but have often heard “knocked up”. So if someone said to me that they were going to knock up Ms Green, it would sound like a nonsense sentence to me, although I’d understand it’s intent. I’d get the joke side, but wouldn’t find it funny.
In fact, it should be pointed out that this example of “knock up” as a significant difference between American and British English is now somewhat out of date, so it should be retired as the standard pseudo-clever example of a way in which Americans and Britons might misunderstand each other. It seems to me that the use of the term “knock up” to mean “to have sex” or “to get pregnant” in the U.S. is now somewhat old-fashioned. I haven’t heard it used regularly for about thirty years. I’m not so certain about the use of “knock up” to mean “wake up by knocking door” in British English, although I lived there for three years, but it seems to me that the term isn’t really that commonly used anymore. Does this agree with other people’s intuitions about these terms?
Yes, I agree that the English version is archaic.
My wife’s cousin Randy had an interesting time when he went to work in England for a year…
Dantheman, I’d agree with the others in saying the American English does not derive more words from other languages than does British english. Sure, there might be a couple words. But consider this…when you’re reading people’s posts on smdb, if you couldn’t see where they are, would you know automatically which were british and which american (apart from content…I’m talking grammar and usage here)? Almost all of the differences are pronunciation. There are some vocabulary differences sure, but then there are between the regions of the states too, though not as pronounced.
That said, I have had some interesting experiences with the vocabulary differences I have encountered. I just got back from teaching English in Calais France, which is right across the channel from England (19 km away). I was teaching a fourth grade class in conjunction with a French student who had been educated in British English. Thus, I was telling the class to use their “rubbers” to erase…this was very amusing and odd for me, since when I hear the word, I automatically think “condom.” The only other major different I noted was the use of “have got” instead of “have” (I have got three brothers, for example). The use of that construction is much much more limited in the states.
Interesting. I need to get out more. My last significant contact with English as she is spoken in Britain dates from 1944. Although the English used to be somewhat conservative, I suppose that’s not true any more either and expressions change with time.
Sivalensis, I’ll concede the point. 
In the north of England there used to be people who were " Knocker Uppers" There job was to go round the streets in the early morning and knock on people’s bedroom windows ( with a long pole) to wake them up and get them off to work. I supposed this was before people could afford an alarm clock.