Language Museum Blog

Having spent a lot of time overseas listening to different versions of English, I’m always amused to note the differences and similarities to British English.

At the beach recently with an American friend, we discovered that we each had a different pronunciation for the floating device in the water known as a buoy. Whilst he said something like boo-ee, I laughed and responded boy.

I was delighted then, to receive a link to the style guide of The Economist, a weekly British publication concerned with international news and politics. The link led me to a very amusing section on Americanisms. Here’s a sample:

Try not to verb nouns or to adjective them. So do not access files, haemorrhage red ink (haemorrhage is a noun), let one event impact another, author books (still less co-author them), critique style sheets, host parties, pressure colleagues (press will do), progress reports, trial programmes or loan money. Gunned down means shot. And though it is sometimes necessary to use nouns as adjectives, there is no need to call an attempted coup a coup attempt or the Californian legislature the California legislature. Vilest of all is the habit of throwing together several nouns into one ghastly adjectival reticule: Texas millionaire real-estate developer and failed thrift entrepreneur Hiram Turnipseed…

I recommend reading the rest of the entry. Anyone got other Americanisms to add?

Kia ora! If you happen to be in New Zealand this week (or even just know some Kiwis), why not take part in Māori Language Week?

Running from the 27th July – 2nd August, this years theme is “Te Reo i te Hapori – Māori Language in the Community.”

Te reo Māori is one of two official languages of New Zealand, along New Zealand Sign Language (English is a de facto official language). The language of New Zealand’s indigenous population, it’s experiencing something of a resurgence, with Māori language schools and it being taught at primary school. The national newspaper, the New Zealand Herald is getting involved, with some classic Kiwi phrases translated into Māori. If you’re already a fluent speaker, here’s an editorial celebrating the week in Te Reo (there’s an English translation too!).

I took a few classes in Te Reo when I lived in New Zealand, and it was a great way to connect with Māori culture. Here are some ideas for participating in the week, why not get involved?

Interesting news for German language learners this week – apparently 5,000 words have been added to the language.

How exactly can you add five thousand words to a language though? Well, apparently a lot of them are from English, including such gems as das It Girl and eine No Go Area.

The additions have been made by staff at Duden, a respected German dictionary now in its 25th edition. Containing 135,000 words, the current edition is around six times the size of the original, produced in 1880.

And my favourite of the new additions? Hüftgold, or as we say in English, “love handles”.

Read more about the additions here and here.

I was searching for some information on Spinvox (the company that converts voicemail to text), and it appears they’ve been keeping researchers, and the Great British Public, busy.

In addition to a poll they’ve conducted about grammar, which showed that almost half of Britons have trouble identifying the correct use of apostrophes, another survey revealed that the word “phenomenon” is the biggest tongue twister for a lot of Brits. (It’s pronounced ‘fen-om-e-non’). (https://jensen-jensen.com)

Other words in the list include “anaesthetist” which comes in at number 2; “prejudice” (at number 17), and “February” (number 12).

You can see the full list here, along with the phonetic pronunciations of each word.

I have a slight problem with these pronunciations, the first being those for “anaesthetist” and “anonymous”. They show both words being pronounced with the sound “uh” at the beginning, whereas I have always pronounced them with the “an” sound, as this is how they are spelt.

Further, with “hereditary”, the sound I make at the end of the word is something more akin to “tree” than the “ter-ee” that is shown. And “prah-awr-i-tahyz-ing” sounds downright American if you sound it out, rather than the British “pry-orr-it-hyzing”.

So, I turned to the trusty Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for validation. It shows the pronunciations thus:

Anaesthetist – /neessthtist/ – (the funny upside down ‘e’ is an ‘a’ sound such as in ‘apart’)
Anonymous – /əˈnɒn.ɪ.məs/
Hereditary – /hiredditri/
Prioritise – /praɪ’ɒr.ɪ.taɪz/