Rules of Usage: The English Language

[Doitnow!!]

Has anybody heard 'H' pronounced as 'Echh'( or etch) so the 'E' is actually an 'a'.

Looks like we need to ask about this to a traditional british english teacher and a researcher on language change who tracks modern usage.

For example a misil was a misyle(missile) earlier so i think these changes are ok( because 'A apple is harder to say than an apple') This way the americans have brought ij totally new pronounciations.
Very popular in India right now is the Skedule( rather than the Schedule) Peol\pla accept it well enough.

The complexity itslef is the beauty of english language.
For example 'Finite' is fynite but ad 'de' to it and it becomes definite( say it understand what i mean)
As humans we can change language which suits us better.
But theres a lot of difference between Insure and Ensure, accept and except.
We cant expect people to make out the differences just by the usage and location in the context.
Im sure u'll find some britisher who would pronounce historic as istoric and add an an in front.

Clubbing ensure and insure would mean reducing a word from the gigantic and (universe set) pool of words to use. Words should increase i think with time and not decrease. Other languages will dry out over long periods.
In the meantime I'll asksome experts around me and get backsoon.

Bye for now

[Michele Zone]

Maheep (what would you prefer to be called?),
I generally do not make a big deal out of such things for the reasons you cite. My first love was always language and I originally wanted to be a simultaneous translator. I took an introductory linguistics class in collge (a long time ago), as well as 4 quarters of French and 2 of Classical (ancient) Greek. My mother is German. While she did not teach me German as a child, I did develop an ear for it and I always knew some German. This allowed me to become rapidly fluent when a close friend of the family got married when I was 16 and many of their German relatives came for the wedding for 2 or 3 weeks. Some of them spoke no English and I was suddenly immersed in a language to which I had long been exposed. I have also picked up a smattering of Spanish and Russian and my husband was shocked at how much of his Latin textbook I could decipher based on my knowledge of some of the Romance languages descended from Latin and on studying Latin prefixes, suffixes, and root words in order to do well on the SAT.

A language that is in daily use by a large number of people is genuinely alive and growing. Just as nature dictates that physical creatures are either growing or decaying, when language ceases to be adaptable, it begins to die. This is why you cannot have a published dictionary that is up to date and why it is difficult to learn the idioms and slang of foreign language: these things exist mostly in the living body of spoken language and any published source is guaranteed to be somewhat behind the times. "Proper usage" for written work is always an archaic form of the spoken, living language.

However, that is true of many things, not just language. Proper formal attire is generally "behind the time" as well. Women generally do not wear long dresses anymore -- unless it is an important occasion and then they dress as if it were 100 years ago. Uniforms of all kind also follow that rule. In the American Army, there is a very formal uniform called "Dress Blues" which are considered to be fancier than "Dress Greens" and are usually only owned by officers -- my husband has a set because he was a recruiter for a time. "Dress Blues" have a jacket that is a much darker shade of blue than the pants. This is a historic reference to the Civil War in the US, something which occured about 140 years ago. In the Civil War, soldiers of the North would wear their pants everyday but store their jacket in their sadal bags most of the time and only take it out for very cold weather or formal occasions. Constant exposure to sunlight and more frequent washings bleached out the color of the pants, especially since there were no synthetic materials at that time. Later, the uniform was intentionally made to look like that.

As a general rule, the more formal an organization is, the slower it changes and, therefore, the more out of date its formal attire and customs will be. For example, the uniforms of the guard at the Vatican are hundreds of years out of date in comparison to the dress uniforms of the American Military which are only 140 years out of date. That rule applies equally to formal language. The formalized, respectful language of the U.S. Senate requires members to address one another as "The Distinguished Gentleman" (for male members -- it is a historically male organization and still largely male-dominated). Again, this is language that has not been in daily usage in at least 100 years and sounded very "funny" (as in "odd") to me when I first learned of it.

The word I noted as my pet peeve -- spelling 'til as till -- I tell my kids that in a few hundred years, till will be the proper spelling and they will refer to 'til as "Archaic American" or something like that. Of course, that grows out of my assumption that in a few hundred years, the language Americans speak will be formally recognized as a separate language from 'The King's English' of Great Britain. The English spoken in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and even India all have some differences which hinder communication and are likely to continue to grow apart, in a similar fashion to the process that created the Romance languages. The "Romance Languages" of Europe are a hybrid of local tribal languages and Latin (the language of Rome -- Romance in this case refers to the Roman Empire and not to hearts and flowers and being in love). All European languages that fall in the geographic area which was once covered by the Roman Empire are a mixture of local languages and Latin. The Romance languages are more strongly Latin. The Germanic languages have a heavier influence from local tribal languages. Geographically, proximity to Rome is a significant influencing factor.

So, just as Rome had an Empire, spread its language far and wide, receded, and Latin began to differentiate based on local usage, Great Britain more recently had an empire, spread its language far and wide, and now English has begun to differentiate into various subsets. Perhaps the advent of the Internet and a Global Economy will slow the rate at which these localized languages grow apart and differentiate. It would be interesting to see, but I won't live long enough to really and truly know.

Nonetheless, for formal and proper English, those archaic and outdated forms are important. More current usages are rightfully known as colloguialisms or slang or conversational English. There is a practical reason for sticking to the archaic, formalized usages for a time: they are more universally understood than the living language and its many new-born words, phrases, and ideas. Therefore, it promotes communication to a broader audience -- for a time, at least. When it becomes so archaic that it hinders communication, it generally ceases to be seen as "proper" and gets reclassified as "out of date".

Respectfully,
Michele

[passdoubt]

I think that the introduction of "an" preceding words like "historic" in American English is another Britishicism by which Americans have become infatuated/confused. The "H" in "historic" isn't pronounced by some Brits, so using "an" would be appropriate. American culture often heils people with British accents as being intelligent, stylish, etc. If you ever watch a TV segment on fashion or hair care, chances are there'll be some expert with an English accent telling you how marvelous he or she is. I think, subconsciously, a lot of people think "British accent! Ooh! They're smart!"

I'd bet that most Americans spell the color "grey" as well. The American spelling is "gray."

[jresta]

English is a germanic language - most closely related to the languages and dialects of the areas along the North Sea coast between Denmark and the Netherlands. Danish cursing has been almost perfectly preserved in english and Dutch is pretty close as well - the "j" is pronounced as our "y" and the "i" is pronounced as our "ee" as in "bleed".

Kom hier, wat u doet? Krijg je slijmerige vingers van van mijn koekjes en krijg de hel uit hier!
translates to -
Come here, what are you doing? Get your slimy fingers off of my cookies and get the hell out of here!

Latin had an influence on early english when the Romans had colonized southeastern england. But that was an influence of vocabulary (mostly in the legal and government realm) and not of structure. When the normans (norse men - other than language there really wasn't much french about them) took over in 1054 there was a serious french influence on vocabulary and a bit less on structure. Most of our military language comes from french, also animals in the field have a germanic name but when they're on your table they have a french name. Cow/beef (beouf) pig/pork(porc) chicken/poultry(poulet) sheep/mutton(mutton). Really, most of the "latin" influence in english comes from the Norman conquest.

As far as the a/an rule is concerned - it is a "rule" with many exceptions and "historic" is one of them.

One would write "Iceland is a european country"
or "She's a user of our new software"

Using "an" as opposed to "a" has everything to do with the sound that comes after and little to do with whether it's a vowel or a consonant. It's part of the french influence influence on our language, they call it a "liason", when a word starts with a vowel or with an h the last consonant of the previous word gets carried over in the pronunciation as if it were one word.

In french if you were to say Les Arts it would be pronounced "lay zart" and Beaux Arts (which all planners should be familiar with) is pronounced "bow zart"

english speakers, americans especially, do this all the time in conversation whether they realize it or not. "This year" is my pet peeve which most americans like to pronounce as one word sounding like "thishear" as if they were talking about a pair of scissors.

In conclusion, there is nothing wrong with saying or writing "an historic." The only way i could give a presentation to our board and still sound like a confident speaker would be to say
30th St. is anhistoric building", (with a very soft h - which is how i would pronounce it anyway) and probably most people from the northeast.

my other options are
"30th St. is uhhistoric building"
or
"30th St is ayhistoric building" which makes it sound like it's without history

[jresta]

I would say that, as long as global television and print media abound english will become more and more homogenized and not divergent as most people suspect. The newspapers and airwaves all across the english speaking world and beyond are full of american syndication.

My australian friend remarked that it was weird being here for a few months. When he went home and turned on the TV the same american shows that he had been watching before he left were on, but when the local news came on he was taken aback because the woman had an accent, albeit and australian one.

Even in the US regional accents are fading quickly. Been to Bahston lately? That accent is more and more a blue collar signifier than anything else. Same thing in New York.

http://www.americancity.org/Archives/Issue1/brook.html

I think my favorite regionalism is the great lakes thing where people pronounce the name of a guy like he has a lot of hair . . .

Harry - hairy

[Wannaplan?]

Originally posted by passdoubt
I'd bet that most Americans spell the color "grey" as well.

If we were really really really suder-duper in love with those Brits, then we'd write, "I'd bet that most Americans spell the colour grey as well."

I'm in love with the Canadians. I prefer to write "cheque" instead "check." But I'll soon probably be aprehended as an Al Queda agent cuz I'm a little cozy wit da Frenchies.

[ilikefish0]

Originally posted by plannerkat
Nothing to add really, except that "an historic" drives me nuts!!!! H is not a vowel people!

The letter "H"'s vowel-ness really does not matter. The choice of "a" or "an" is really a matter of sound. For example, I think that we can all agree that "an hour" is correct usage. In many words that begin with "H," the h sound is not pronounced or barely pronounced. In these cases, an is appropriate. For a nonstandard pronunciation like "istoric," I think "an" is still required to preserve the sound of the language.

Originally posted by MicheleZone
All European languages that fall in the geographic area which was once covered by the Roman Empire are a mixture of local languages and Latin. The Romance languages are more strongly Latin. The Germanic languages have a heavier influence from local tribal languages. Geographically, proximity to Rome is a significant influencing factor.

Ah, a fellow subscriber to the Italian is screwed-up Latin, Spanish is screwed-up Italian, and Portugese is screwed-up Spanish theory. If I could ony figure out where in the world Romanian and French came from, I would have it made.

[SW MI Planner]

Originally posted by jresta
I think my favorite regionalism is the great lakes thing where people pronounce the name of a guy like he has a lot of hair . . .

Harry - hairy

Guilt as charged So how would you non great lakers say it?

[Belle]

Originally posted by SW MI Planner
Guilt as charged So how would you non great lakers say it?

I grew up in the south, and I've been wondering the same thing...

[Michele Zone]

Originally posted by jresta
I would say that, as long as global television and print media abound english will become more and more homogenized and not divergent as most people suspect. The newspapers and airwaves all across the english speaking world and beyond are full of american syndication.

Even in the US regional accents are fading quickly. Been to Bahston lately? That accent is more and more a blue collar signifier than anything else. Same thing in New York.

This is part of why I say it would be interesting to hang around and see how it turns out. I know that is an important influence right now and it is unprecedented: there has never before been such an effective means for spreading a particular speaking style or "dialect" across the entire globe. But I am not entirely convinced that "english" will become more homogenized. Perhaps the English of newspapers, TV, and even the Internet will become the new International language of business and of the priveleged classes but that does not necessarily preclude Canadian, American, and Australian dialects from differentiating into separate languages.

Privileged peoples (who tend to be well educated and well traveled) have long tended to have less of a regional accent. The upperclasses and merchants who deal with import business have long had some kind of international language. Latin served that purpose for a long time. That fact did not stop Spanish, French, and so on from differentiating into separate languages.

Understanding what you hear or read is far easier than being able to reply intelligibly. Many people who took a foreign language a long time ago can still understand some of it but cannot reply in it, whether spoken or written. TV and newsprint are broadcast media, not interactive communication. The fact that many people understand it does not necessarily mean they will speak that way. I am regularly told that I speak unusually well -- with good enunciation, etc. Yet, when I am tired, I still sometimes apply German grammatical forms to my English -- and my kids laugh at me. My mom spoke English as a second language and when I am tired, I do not sound American. I sound like my mother. I also "exclaim" in German. You are far more likely to hear me say "Ach die leibe Gutte" or "Scheisse" than to hear me swearing or exclaiming in English in surprised reaction.

I think the English of the Internet is more likely to promote a truly International language than any broadcast medium is likely to do. And the English of the Internet tends to not be "standard" English. Nor does being fluent in the written form have much bearing on the spoken form. The written form of a language and the spoken form evolve at different speeds and tend to be different. I speak fairly fluent conversational German. But I can't read it and write it very well. I learned it from relatives and from living in Germany and have never studied it formally. I studied French formally and can still read it and write it some. But I never developed an ear for it, so I really can't follow spoken French and I certainly can't reply in a fluent manner in French.

With the information explosion, I think English will differentiate more, even within countries.

[Michele Zone]

Originally posted by ilikefish0

Ah, a fellow subscriber to the Italian is screwed-up Latin, Spanish is screwed-up Italian, and Portugese is screwed-up Spanish theory. If I could ony figure out where in the world Romanian and French came from, I would have it made.

I think French is a little more to the North and Romanian more to the East. And you left out Catalan.

[jresta]

Originally posted by SW MI Planner
Guilt as charged So how would you non great lakers say it?

I don't know how to spell it phonetically so it would translate

to me the "a" in harry and the "ai" in hairy have always been totally different sounds. I would pronounce "hairy" much the same as you would (but a bit less of the nasal sound).

Well . . . "happened" is a good one. In Western NY people tend to stick a "y" in there like "hyappened" but we say it "haapened" with the "a" sound being more like the noise you make when you stick your tongue out at the doctor's office

http://kyw.dayport.com/viewer/viewer...=kywviewer.tpl

here's a good example - listen to the way the reporter says her name - and other words like "access" - and it's even planning related

[Gedunker]

Originally posted by jresta
Kom hier, wat u doet? Krijg je slijmerige vingers van van mijn koekjes en krijg de hel uit hier!
translates to -
Come here, what are you doing? Get your slimy fingers off of my cookies and get the hell out of here!

jresta: just to be sure -- that quoted above is Dutch and not Danish. If it's Danish, it must be from the Faroe Islands, because I do not recognize it, og jeg tale at laer dansk.

Obscure word history: ever wonder where the term by-law comes from? It is Danish, from "by" (although pronounced 'bou' as in boutique) which means "town" . Dates from the days when my ancestors were wreaking havoc over the UK.

[jresta]

Latin never "diverged" into all of the different romance languages. When the Romans took over western europe they weren't conquering trees

To the northeast of Rome were the Germanic tribes and to the northwest were the Celtic tribes. Basque is an example of a language that is neither germanic nor Celtic that survived Rome, the Church, and Franco and continues to this day.

The conquering Roman soldiers spoke vulgar latin to begin with so what these new roman subjects were learning was already significantly different from what we may have studied in school. The "Latin" produced in Spain and France was then more a language of trade than of household use. The local people put their own words and accents to this "new latin" and what you got was primitive French, Spanish, etc.

Don't forget too that the Moors spent a few hundred years in the south of italy, spain, and portugal and that no doubt had an influence.

Romania was Slavic territory before Rome, was colonized late in the game, and was then ruled from Constantinople, while being surrounded by other slavic speaking people.

France was called "Gaul" in Roman times referring to the Gaelic tribes that lived there. After the fall of Rome it was overrun by the Franks, a Germanic tribe. Still later Norse tribes took over the north of France producing a notable difference between the French of the north and the Occitan, for instance, of the South.

Italian city-states had their own mini-empires that exported their language all over the Meditteranean and for 300 years Catalonia ruled the western Med and the language exists to this day in scattered cities throughout the area.

So i don't think language really mutates over time on its own. Language can become incredibly stagnant when it is isolated.
I don't see a divergence in Australian and American english so much as i see the two dialects being cut off from one another and being influenced by vastly different languages. But english is highly standardized (dictionaries, literature, etc.)so both of our countries would have to go through some catastrophic changes and be cut off from the rest of the english speaking world for quite a while for this to all come about.

[Michele Zone]

Originally posted by jresta
Latin never "diverged" into all of the different romance languages. When the Romans took over western europe they weren't conquering trees

Oh, darn! I thought they were. Back to the drawing board.

[B'lieve]

Actually, Basque is, as far as I've ever learned, the only remaining European language that is not Indo-European. A handy Google search brought up a webguide to Basque sites:

Yamada Language Center: Basque WWW Guide

and the official website of the Basque autonomous region within Spain:

Euskadi

Not to hijack the thread or anything ...

[jresta]

Originally posted by B'lieve
Actually, Basque is, as far as I've ever learned, the only remaining European language that is not Indo-European. A handy Google search brought up a webguide to Basque sites:

Yamada Language Center: Basque WWW Guide

and the official website of the Basque autonomous region within Spain:

Basque is fascinating. There's been some borrowed words from latin (via french and spanish) and some heavy influence on vowel pronunciation from spanish but otherwise it's intact and no one can really figure out where it came from.

Galega is spoken in northwestern spain. It's another romance language that holds on to some of its Gaelic influences. The traditional ceremonial dress there is a kilt and they still play the bagpipes.

It's just neat to see how that culture got pushed to the fringes of europe - look at the map and see how the Celtic languages are on the northwestern fringe of every landmass. Irish and Scottish, Breton and Welsh.


if the pic doesn't show up for you try
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/indoeu...languages.html

Finnish and Hungarian are also not Indo-European but are related to each other. They're members of the Ural-Altaic family which includes turkic and the dravidian languages of southern India and, some say, japanese and korean.

[Tom R]

I haven't enjoyed a thread so much since the "camel toes."

[Doitnow!!]

Ohhh!!
The argument/debate seems to have gone quite ahead, I must say.
But heres an old joke about british english( I hope some of you find it funny and hope the Brits dont mind and also the brit accent lovers.

If a Brit says
" I am light to die..."
He means
'I am late today'

Some expert can comment on that!

Now althought i dont find it funny myslef( somebody told me this more than a decade ago) i think its htey way tomake someone understand how accents can be picked up.

Well well well...

PS
Michelle , I would definitely want the 'h' in my name and with the like the 'h' in 'Hardly'

[Michele Zone]

Originally posted by Maheep Singh Thapar
PS
Michelle , I would definitely want the 'h' in my name and with the like the 'h' in 'Hardly' [/B]

Oh, that's funny. That wasn't actually how I meant that. I wondered which name you go by. I know that not all cultures put the surname last. I didn't know if Maheep was your given name or surname. But your answer is funny, given the topic.

[Doitnow!!]

Well Michele

My name is at it appears at the bottom of every message.

First name: Maheep
Middle Name: Singh
Surname : Thapar

All have different meanings and stand for different reasons.
I can explain but only if you are interested because it may be a long story.

But i sure agree with Tom about this thread being funny. Although some of your posts are really long and require patience to finish with all due respect. It does show the amount of seriousness that you are taking in this topic .

Bye

[Doitnow!!]

Oops

Correction:Not at the bottom but the top left corner of the message box.

[jresta]

you guys didn't hear the story about Rusty Wallace walking into a department store in southern California?

He asked if they had the kind of clothes NASCAR fans might appreciate . . . the befuddled sales clerk went to ask his supervisor if the store carried any rice wire.

[carlomarx]

One time, I was complaining about all the exceptions to rules in a foreign language long ago, and I was asked the following:

If teachers teach, and bowlers bowl, why don't fingers fing?

Or hammers-- do they ham?

...

I had no response.

Engalish make-a no sense neither.

[Michele Zone]

Originally posted by Maheep Singh Thapar
Well Michele

My name is at it appears at the bottom of every message.

First name: Maheep
Middle Name: Singh
Surname : Thapar

All have different meanings and stand for different reasons.
I can explain but only if you are interested because it may be a long story.

Oh, I might well find it interesting. But it might be better to e-mail it to me. I don't know that anyone else wants to hear it.

While we are giving anecdotes, here is one that is a little off topic:
In a homeschooling forum, people began talking about visual learners and how they percieve words and that some words "look" very off-color. Someone gave the example of a town named "Scotrun" on a map that looked to them, at first glance, like "scrotum". So I told the following story:

For a few months, I had the dubious privilege of living in a town in Germany called Dampfach. It may not look that bad in written form but it tends to sound just terrible when you say it to an American. The American ear tends to not distinguish the sound at the end of the word correctly and they tend to hear it as a "k" sound. Americans tend to hear the first part of this word as "dumb" and the second part as a word that I can't say in a nice forum with clean language, but it starts with an "F" and ends in "ck".

The worst was trying to tell the minister where I lived and getting a "What did you just say?!!!" kind of reaction. Fortunately, he had a good sense of humor -- especially since the amusement was at my expense.