What’s your point? That Brits don’t use it and Gringos do? Or vice versa? Or that you don’t like the phrase no matter who uses it?
My point being that I can’t begin to understand what your actual position is. You’ve given us none of your context and only half of your “facts.” If indeed they really are facts.
Ha! I was actually going to start a thread about this! I’ve been reading a book about Augustus Caesar, written by a Brit (Anthony Everitt). It’s a great read, but the author keeps using “will have” where I would use “would have.”
Example: “Gaius was only four years old when his father died. In addition to the sadness of his loss, his premature death will have caused a family crisis.”
This is so irksome I have to contain myself from actually scratching it out and writing “would have” over it. I keep on wanting to yell, “*Will *is the future! Would is the past!”
I read a lot and I can’t say I’ve found this construction anywhere before, but it must be acceptable British English…but damn, it’s annoying!
Well, traditionally it’s “in gaol.”
Sartorial: you put pants on. You don’t buy “a pant” to wear. :mad: Does the British fashion world sell “trouser”?
British people aren’t gringos!? French pronunciation is mentioned, but have you heard what they do to Spanish words? Or Japanese?
I’m the same way, except when it comes from a Yorkshireman: “She’s gone to market.” For some reason, that strikes me as quaint and economical, while a Londoner saying “in hospital” grates on my nerves. The only solution as I see it is for all of the English to adopt a Yorkshire accent.
But the British pronunciation of “restaurant” sounds so French. Here in the USA we say the last two consonants in the non-French way, but across the pond the nasalized “n” sound is used and the “t” sound omitted. What’s up with that?
Thanks – I feel complimented! I like image of self as a rather prissy, old-fashioned, wordy, socially upper-echelon Brit…
The English and the French and their at least a thousand-years-old love-hate relationship – it’s a complicated business.
As alluded to in my OP: all this stuff is basically petty; and its pee-ing off the different language-users, to the extent that it does – doesn’t make sense. But feelings frequently don’t make sense – “they just are”.
Oh, please, no – I’m from the southern parts of England: we and the folk of Yorkshire, “have issues” with each other.
IMHO you don’t *quite *understand what’s going on.
From the POV of the time of death, the family crisis IS in the future. It’s only from your (mistaken) POV in the 21st century that it was in the past.
Constructing a narrative where everything is in the past, but some is more-past and some is less-past is awkward as heck. We don’t have compact words nor grammatical parts of speech for easily denoting those ideas.
It makes much greater logical sense to construct a narrative where the reader is riding along within the timeline as events are happening. Vast amounts of history are written this way.
I have never heard a Brit pronounce it that way. It sounds more like “restrent” to me.
[QUOTE=Sangahyando]
Thanks – I feel complimented! I like image of self as a rather prissy, old-fashioned, wordy, socially upper-echelon Brit…
[/QUOTE]
It was meant as a compliment 
In that case, wouldn’t the sentence be:
“Gaius is only four years old when his father dies. In addition to the sadness of his loss, his premature death will cause a family crisis.”
?
The original sentence sounds awkward as all get out to me too - I don’t think that’s a British construction, necessarily, just wossisname Everitt writes weird.
Whilst on this “saying it like the French” thing, one that really, REALLY gets my goat is when Americans say “naiveté”. Not only does it massively jar as the changing in pronunciation styles makes it stick out like a sore thumb, but the correct word is “naivety”.
Whilst I’m at it, cliché isn’t an adjective, stop using it like one. You’re after “clichéd”
Uh, subjunctive, innit?
That combination is weird as heck… I wouldn’t even use “his death would have caused a family crisis”, it actually did, so it’s “his death caused a family crisis”. The will/would makes it a hypothetical.
In the US, students who continue their education go to college (despite the fact that it could be a university), while Brits continuing their education go to university (despite the fact that it could be a college).
Our safety standards recomend / insist that we use the form “flammable”, because “inflammable” is ambiguous for people who don’t already know what it means.
My dear old Dad was just slightly irritated by the use of the word “fridge” for refrigerator, and by the general australian tendency to abbreviate to the last part of the word instead of the the front part of the word (“reefer”) as he would.
Personally… “schedule”. I know the derivation. I’m not impressed. To my American family, vic.aus schoolmates, teachers, and most of north-east Victoria, that word was pronounced with a hard “k” like “School”. The soft French “shedule” was a pretentious Sydney and bayside affectation. A load, you could say, of schit.
I’ve secretly wished that Canada used a certain Britishism since that would make the company name Rogers Communications also its mission statement.