I have to start by saying I have nothing against Americans (well other then Shrub) nor am I in any way anti-America. I am very pro-NZ though.
I like the funny way we talk. I like those words that are all ours (or ours and the Poms and the Aussies) I want to keep those words and sayings that make NZ English a tad different from other English.
Yesterday the child was in the other room watching the Simpsons. He felt the urgent need to come and share something that had happened. He started with “Mum Homer did” and ended (I wasn’t really paying attention) “Maggies pacifier”. “DUMMY!” I screeched “It’s called a dummy unless you have suddenly become American!”
5 mins later I realised I was a wee bit irrational but it matters to me that he uses Kiwisms (or in that case Britishisms). There seem to be teenagers all over the place doing the “Yo, yo” and the “don’t you dis me” thing. Half of them even adopt a very bad American accent while doing it.
There has been a big movement here in the last 10 years or so to revitalise and protect the Maori language. Language is culture is the reason given. I want to keep my “language” too because it is my culture.
American films and telly programmes are a huge influence so some of the lingo is bound to spread. Am I the only one that is annoyed by the extent of it though?
Long live
Chilly bins
Bachs
Jandalls
Togs
Chips not fries
Chips not crisps
(yes they are both chips and yes it can lead to confusion :D)
Hotdogs that are deep fried sausages on a stick not something in a bun
Lollies
Candy Floss
I love going to other English speaking countries and hearing the differences. Please don’t let us all end up speaking the same.
I hope this doesn’t annoy anyone but I also hope I am not the only one to feel this way. I’m sure many Americans want their regional lingo saved too. I intend to save my lingo by bashing the child next time he says fries
“Pacifier” would sound alien to my ears, too (another proud Kiwi here!) I’ve always known them as “dummies”, although these days that might not be considered PC, and “pacifiers” sound pretentious. As if you’ve got a plum in your mouth, and dead scared if you open the gob wider, you’ll spit out jam.
I don’t get annoyed by transplanted Americanisms, but on the first hearing, they do sound jarring.
While the kiwis are all queuing up to harass the Americans, let me add my little bit.
Things that irk:[ul]
[li]American spelling. I much prefer colour, honour neighbour, Night, Mum etc.[/li][li]New York gang slang – what is it with exporting that? And why are so many kids obsessed with the East Side / West Side thing?[/li][li]“Wassap”. Need I say more?[/li][li]The US is the centre of the universe - especially when it comes to matters that are considered newsworthy. A celebrity flashes at the superbowl or a soldier is taken captive in Iraq and we hear about it in detail for weeks. But let a natural disaster kill a few thousand in China or Turkey and you are lucky if it is even remembered a couple of days later.[/li][li]Kiwi is a bird. Kiwi**fruit **is pavlova topping.[/li][/ul]
Having said all that, I’m with calm kiwi – it’s because I am proud of my country, enjoy its unique culture, and am mostly miffed at kiwis who undervalue what they have and are too easily swayed by what they see on the box.
Bother. Hamsters have gone to sleep. I guess I’ll just have to post this in the morning.
As someone for whom English is not his primary language, I don’t care either way, but could you English-speaking guys please just make up your mind? This divergent idiom is terribly confusing.
As an American with a deeply defined but disappearing regional dialect, this topic makes me smile a bit. I guess this is one of those things that retains detail under magnification, like how people in the rest of the world call all Americans Yankees, and people here call people from up North Yankees, etc. Because it bugs the living crap out of me to hear them say “soda” or “pop” on TV. Especially “pop”. How amazingly obnoxious. It’s a Coke. You ask people if they want a coke and they say yes, and you say what kind? Coke, or Sprite, or root beer, or orange, or whatever.
Dosen’t catch on with the kids, though. Many of my regionalisms have disappeared through, I assume, mass media - there’s really no Southern version of urban speech, and many features of regional dialect are unique to the older generation these days. So I feel your pain, but please understand that American speech is not monolithic and that Mid-Atlantic news-speech and “urban” slang do not represent the linguistic richness of the country as a whole.
OK… from an American who is in love with Enn Zed (oh, wait, that would be Enn Zee in America…) [ul]
[li]I like the “_our” spellings as well, but we are not taught to use them here. We spell it “mom” because we say it “mom”. We spell “night” as “night” for the most part - “nite” really isn’t considered correct, in spite of the marketing-related junk in which you see it.[/li][li] Most of us don’t speak New York gang slang, and I’m not even aware of the East Side / West Side thing.[/li][li]If my daughter said “wassup” I’d lock her in her room for a day.[/li][*]Regarding being the centre/center of the universe, your point is well taken, but that ball’s not in our court. If Enn Zed wants to be the new centre of the universe, it should go for it. ;-)[/ul]
Wait, am I being harassed? As an American, I thought the OP was saying it’s perfectly fine for me to say “pacifier”, but not Kiwi Jr.
I too love regionalisms, and while I know intellectually that language is supposed to change and evolve, I cling mightily to my own way of speaking. Almost 20 years in NYC, and I still say “pop” instead of “soda.” I have a friend (another American) who for some ungodly reason has picked up the whole “ou” thing – this drives me batty. j_sum1 is supposed to write “colour”, but my fellow Americans, COLOR is the way to go. It always strikes me as misguided snobbery when I see another American write “colour” – our forefathers fought a war so that we could get rid of that “u”! (I have also heard it was about tea, but I’m sticking with my “u” theory.)
American spellings do irritate me when it’s Canadians using them. Especially the famous ones, which are mercifully rare (I think most of us still know how to spell “colour”… but are you still spelling “defence” with a c?)
That, and “leftenant.” What’s the point of being a Canadian translator if I can’t be anal-retentive about things like this?
I know, it’s an arbitrary little thing, and it doesn’t bother me when Americans use these (obviously), but to me, for a Canadian, it’s like saying they’ll write to their congressman, or complaining about the ban on gays in “the military,” or referring to the soldiers in Iraq as “we.” It betrays a sort of laughable ignorance about what country they live in.
American checking in. I didn’t know we had our own special dialect. I guess because I have never gone to any other county, I never saw how different English is. And most spell night, erm night. not nite. Maybe I should move to another county. I can’t even stand the slang here, and I live here . Those wassups drive me up the wall. And I am a teenager. Strange?
Nah, CK, it’s not offensive. A bit short-sighted and knee-jerkish, maybe, but not offensive. You have to keep a couple of things in mind, though. People, especially kids and teenagers who are still figuring out who they really are, like to try new stuff, especially new stuff that seems exotic to them. Also, people are going to pick up speech mannerisms from those they spend a great deal of time around.
It’s not unusual for Americans to pick up regionalisms from the other side of the country, nor is it unusual for them to pick up Britishisms, Aussieisms, etc. from books, movies, the net, etc. We won’t even discuss the spate of Americans saying things like “G’day, mate!” in a really bad Aussie accent during the Crocodile Dundee era, except to say that it was quite widespread and rather tiresome, and that everybody outgrew it. Odds are pretty good your kids will outgrow it, too.
Of course, it’s also pretty normal for people to pick up sayings and phrases from the people around them. I’m especially prone to doing it with cusswords and insults, for some reason. For a long time, I was very fond of “Fuckin’ waaaah”, which I picked up from a co-worker. My use of it faded, though, when I began spending less time with her, and has pretty much stopped altogether since I left that job. If you want your kid to stop picking things up from the telly, perhaps you should limit the time he spends with it.
Just FYI, I’m assuming you’re talking about things like Doritos here, right? Thin slices of tortilla or potato fried up crispy?
Yeah, we call them chips.
We spell it night 99% of the time, too. Nite is just marketing shorthand. Same with donut (doughnut).
First off, East Side/West Side is just as much LA as NY. As a SoCal native, I can’t let that slide. And nobody every really says that too much anymore. You guys are using American slang from like 5 years ago.
Yeah, sorry. But we stopped doing that a few months after it started. If it’s still around down there, I’m really sorry about that.
That’s funny, you guys heard about that at the Super Bowl?
Another ‘Murkin checking in who isn’ t offended in the least and good for you! Why in the world should you want to sound like anything but who and what you are?
I think many Americans are pretty clueless about exactly how pervasive our popular culture is. I’m still suffer a slight shock when I realize how much of our truly lousy TV is shown abroad. We casually dismiss so much it it’s scary to realize people in other countries see garbage like Springer, Baywatch, etc. Blech.
Anyway, it’s perfectly reasonable to resist being homogenized.
Fight the good fight!
I’m sorry, but “coke” to me means one thing only - Coca-Cola. Which brand of soda had a slogan “Have a Coke and a smile”? It certainly wasn’t Pepsi.
What exactly is obnoxious about using correct terminology? Coke is a brand name. Sprite is not Coke. Mr. Pibbs is not Coke. Crush is not Coke. Should all iced teas be referred to as Snapple?
I personally find all colas (Coke, Pepsi, RC) gross. I’m not really a fan of flavored sodas either. The only soda that I enjoy is ginger ale.
All soda is not coke. How amazingly philistine.
So what would you have Americans do? Edit our programing and not use our own words for things just to make others happy? Shows that take place in the mid-west use the word “pop” for soft-drink (or here in Texas a lowercase coke). It seems very odd to me but hey thats they way people talk there and to change it would be misrepresenting them. The Simpsons ARE Americans, they are not just whatever nationality it happens to air in. To change that would be just as insulting as what we did to the original Mad Max with the voice overs.
If American words for things bother you don’t watch the programing made by and for Americans.
Of course, this cuts both ways. Often what folks abroad consider “Americanisms” are regional within the US. There are fifty different states and 290 million people, after all, and not everyone acts the same way.
Take the old “soda” vs. “pop” debate. Canadians are firmly convinced that this is a defining difference between Canadian English and US English, to the point of denying direct evidence to the contrary. Here’s an actual conversation I had with a Canadian friend:
Friend: For example, here in Canada, we call it “pop.” But in the States, you call it “soda.”
Me: Actually, where I grew up, we all call it “pop” too.
Friend: (confused) No you don’t!
Yet in fact the usage of “pop” is widespread throughout the mid-and-north-western US. The reason why Canadians think everyone in the States says “soda” is simply that the US media emanates from strongholds of soda usage.
(I had a similar problem trying to convince people that, yes, I really had heard of “bigfoot” referred to as “sasquatch” before coming to Canada.)
East side, West side? Maybe you mean East and West Coast rappers? I’m trying to imagine an East/West Side showdown here in NYC in pop culture. All I can think of is the guys of eastern (Spanish) Harlem vs. western (Black) Harlem.
I’m a little confused–all people have to do is not watch these programs, they won’t get ratings, and bingo, they’re off the air and there goes the cultural imperialism. If the populace is watching them more than antipodean ones then maybe the antipodes should make better programs that their folks want to watch.
And, as to the OP question, it annoys me too but not as much as the deliberate import of MacDonalds, KFC and other fast-food commercial rip-offs. I like beetroot on my bacon and egg sanger.
Many of my regionalisms have disappeared through, I assume, mass media - there’s really no Southern version of urban speech, and many features of regional dialect are unique to the older generation these days. So I feel your pain, but please understand that American speech is not monolithic and that Mid-Atlantic news-speech and “urban” slang do not represent the linguistic richness of the country as a whole.