Posted on 09/28/2012 9:03:01 AM PDT by C19fan
British people have long bemoaned the gradual encroachment of Americanisms into everyday speech, via Hollywood films and sitcoms. Now, "Britishisms" are crossing the pond the other way, thanks to the growing online popularity of British media such as Harry Potter, Downton Abbey and The Daily Mail. For example, BBC News reports that "ginger" as a descriptor of a red-haired, freckly person has shot up in usage in the United States since 1998. That's the year the first Harry Potter book, with its Weasley family of gingers, hit store shelves. The trend shows up in Google ngram searches, which track the frequency of words and phrases appearing in print.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ugh. Sorry, but the English language has been brutalized... by the English themselves. I also never got why redheads are called “gingers”. Has anyone in the UK ever actually seen ginger? It’s a creamy brown color.
BBC News reports that “ginger” as a descriptor of a red-haired, freckly person
-— South Park
WAG? Never heard of it
Jolly good show, old man!
I use the derogatory chav to describe “White wannabe rapper type” and scallie to describe “White drug-taking thug”
Those British words rock.
GINGERS!
I have to red headed kids and they are now known as “Gingy” and “The Ginga Ninja!” by their friends.
One that irritates me is when an American TV announcer of a soccer game calls a 1-0 score “one-nil”. There’s nothing backward about using the American “one-to-nothing” when speaking to an American audience.
It seems like I hear a lot more Posh British accents on Big Media lately. Just my impression backed up by nothing.
Lingusts are predicting that the future of English is going to be determined in India, due to the sheer number of speakers.
So someday we will all be doing the needful.
I hate that term.
Ginger on Gilligan’s Island was a red head.
So-called “gingers” (red-headed people) are mocked and bullied in England. I don’t know why. That’s why I’m dead set against this “ginger” thing slipping into American English.
Hello, my name is Kevin. How may I helping you?
I suppose it will be alright as long as our heads don’t have to wobble as we speak and warehouses don’t suddenly become go downs. Compared with some of the slang in Australia Indian English is not that bad.
Those terrorized by so-called spelling and grammar Nazis are among the enablers who are helping to compromise correct English usage and, thereby, American culture. There used to be standards of things that constituted American culture, and one of them was good English usage. Now, acceptable American cultural standards depend on the correct spelling of “doh” and “ni-i-ce.”
For a very short while, she lived in my mid-town NYC area. I would see her buying cosmetics in my local Love drugstore!
I’ve been using Brit idioms since the days of Monty Python!
“NO POOFTERS!”
Too many of us watching BBC America. The programming is so much better than the domestic networks.
Standing “online” is one . I guess with smartphones you can go online while standing inline.
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