Is the word “whilst” commonly used in the US outside these forums?
I never hear it around here or on television or radio, but I read the word quite frequently in posts on the SDMB by american posters.
Peace,
mangeorge
I started a Pit thread once about its use here. I find it jarring and I don’t really see it anywhere else.
Definitely Brit, Brit wannabe, and hopeless romantics.
Forgot to subscribe whilst I was composing the OP.
This is an international forum though. I use it without thinking about it. Certainly without trying on an affectation. It’s just a word which has survived in some English-speaking countries, and not in others. The US has retained its own bunch of archaic words as well. In any event, I tend to think there’s a subtle difference between “whilst” and “while”: “Whilst you listen to music while you drive, I do not.”
Definitely in the “just another word, and I don’t pay it any special notice” category to me.
I use it occasionally, and I’m pretty sure I’m none of those.
sometimes it just “feels” right to use.
though, it rarely occurs and it’s usually just to help me with the flow of a sentence or something
I tried using it in poetry once to look like a pro, got a few laughs, but it was fun nonetheless 
Occasionally I hear it, and occasionally I use it. It’s an affectation, sure, but I don’t think a British one. It’s slightly archaic and with an air romanticism that adds playful color to your monologue (and I’ve only ever heard it in monologues, never in conversation), but it doesn’t set off any “British” flags to me.
It’s a word that would feel at home in speeches using the abbreviation “'tis”. Very high on the self-aware mock-pomposity scale. I don’t know how well it would translate to text, though. It may come off as the regular kind of pompous there.
“Both while and whilst are ancient, though while is older. There’s no difference in meaning between them. For reasons that aren’t clear, whilst has survived in British English but has died out in the US. However, in Britain it is considered to be a more formal and literary word than its counterpart. I have a small weakness for it, for which I’ve been gently teased in the past.”
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:-Vp86071ZawJ:www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-whi2.htm+whilst+british&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
Correction: Definitely Brit, Brit wannabe, former “This Year’s Model,” and hopeless romantics.
OK, that works.
When I was a kid government buses here always had a sign saying “Do not speak to the driver whilst the bus in is motion”. I thought it has something to do with whistling to get him to stop at the next stop.
I’m afraid I don’t follow your argument. If a Brit uses the word in place of “while”, they’re trying to evoke a more formal image, but if an American does the same, they’re merely copying the British?
I’ll concede that the British may use the term seriously more often, but hardly think that makes it a Britishism. More “snobism” than anything.
Right. Because it’s used in Britain nowadays, and not in the United States. That’s why it would be called a Britishism in the U.S. Are you confused by this?
I don’t find “whilst” jarring in writing anymore, since I’m used enough to reading stuff written by Brits, but I would certainly find it weird hearing it in speech. How about among/amongst? Is “amongst” also particularly British? Because I’ve used it without thinking for years, but I may be inadvertantly sounding like a pretentious idiot.
But it is used here, otherwise this thread asking whether this board is representative of it’s use here wouldn’t exist. 
Again, I’m not saying it isn’t an affection or that it’s at all a word heard everyday, but I don’t see how using it in the context of “I’m saying something serious and important” (whether truly or, as has been my experience with the word, jokingly) suggests anything of the British or points to anglophilia in the speaker. I just see it as pretentious.
Is using “ergo” in place of “therefore” a Romanism?
Well, it’s a normal (if slightly pretentious) phrase in Britain. In the U.S., it’s so rare that I didn’t even know how to pronounce it until fairly recently. So if someone’s using it here, it implies - to me - that they’re trying to sound British. I don’t think Americans particularly use it to sound formal or momentous - British people do that. Americans just do it as a pretention of Britishness.
At least that’s how I’d interpret it. Like I said, I never even hear it around here.
All I know is, since reading this board regularly I am much more apt to call an annoying person a “git”. It just has the right feeling to it.
I never saw ‘whilst’ actually being used until I hit these boards–and I’m Canadian. I had to ask my Australian co-worker to explain how it is pronounced to me. (“While-st”? WTF? I look at it and see “will-st”)
‘Git’ I am familiar with, thanks to assorted English relatives.
I would never use it seriously, but I do like to use it when (whilst) I’m being sarcastic. There’s something mocking about it that makes me giggle. Never associated it with British English though.
Strong Bad used it in his last email. I played it twice to make sure I heard right. Not the first time, either.
Like most unfamiliar words, I wouldn’t expect you’d notice them until they’re pointed out. Then you hear them everywhere.
(And I do know the difference between “its” and “it’s”, even if I don’t appear to…)