Posted on 05/29/2012 5:14:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The future of written English will owe more to Hollywood films than Dickens or Shakespeare, if the findings of a study into children’s writing are anything to go by.
The analysis of 74,000 short stories found that their written work was littered with Americanisms, exclamation marks and references to celebrities.
Researchers who looked at the entries to a national competition found they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash can, sidewalk, candy, sneakers, soda, cranky and flashlight.
The stories, written by pupils aged seven to 13, show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo.
‘Smart’ is now often used for ‘clever’ and ‘cranky’ for ‘irritable’.
Celebrity culture also has a powerful influence on children’s work, with Simon Cowell and Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi among the famous names cropping up repeatedly.
But pupils are let down by basic spelling, punctuation and grammar, according to the study by Oxford University Press, which looked at the entries to BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition.
Children stumbled over simple spellings such as ‘does’ and ‘clothes’ and struggled to use the past tense correctly, often saying ‘rised’ instead of ‘rose’ or ‘thinked’ instead of ‘thought’.
Researchers also found that punctuation was underused, especially semi-colons and speech marks. Some did not know how to use capital letters.
However, exclamation marks were overused. Researchers found 35,171 examples in total, with some young writers using five at a time.
The study of more than 31million words will be compared with future research to see how written language evolves. Popular US fiction such as the Twilight vampire novels and films is thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
| AMERICAN WORD OCCURRENCES |
BRITISH WORD OCCURRENCES |
|---|---|
| Candy (1,879) |
Sweets (2,448) |
| Cupcake (486) |
Fairy cake (46) |
| Flashlight (99) |
Torch (2,736) |
| Garbage truck (9) |
Dustbin lorry (5) |
| Tuxedo (74) |
Dinner suit (1) |
| Sneakers (38) |
Trainers (555) |
| Trash can (38) |
Dustbin (290) |
| Sidewalk (26) |
Pavement (924) |
They’ll never replace the word, “brilliant”!
Too bad this trend isn’t spreading to mexico.
Oh, great, advise instead of advice, it’s instead of its, your instead of you’re, no difference among there, their, and they’re, and so on.
Or, “daft”!
That is unfortunate. If the English speaking work cannot depend upon the Brits to uphold the standards of the English language, upon whom can they depend? upon?
As much as I watch Top Gear I’m starting to think in british.
The end of the UK, as we know it.
Yanks have them from the west and muzzies are invading from the east and within.
Researchers who looked at the entries to a national competition found they were increasingly using American words such as garbage, trash can, sidewalk, candy, sneakers, soda, cranky and flashlight. …. . . as opposed to rubbish, bin, footpath, sweets, runners, “fizzy drinks”, cross, and torch.
The stories, written by pupils aged seven to 13, show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo. ‘Smart’ is now often used for ‘clever’ and ‘cranky’ for ‘irritable’. …Uh-oh. What next, “cookies” for “biscuits”, “fries” instead of “chips”, “sharpener” instead of “topper” (for pencils), or (specific to cars) hood instead of bonnet, trunk instead of boot, turn signal instead of indicator, tire instead of tyre, windshield instead of windscreen, ad nauseam . . . ?
But pupils are let down by basic spelling, punctuation and grammar, according to the study by Oxford University Press, which looked at the entries to BBC Radio 2’s ‘500 Words’ competition. Children stumbled over simple spellings such as ‘does’ and ‘clothes’ and struggled to use the past tense correctly, often saying ‘rised’ instead of ‘rose’ or ‘thinked’ instead of ‘thought’. …They sure didn’t get that from American English.
Oh Bloody Hell, maybe we should all move to the Centre on this, colour me an optimist, but all this humour might spread to our good neighbours to the North too. That is if their labour party doesn't regain power like the democrats down here.
RE: we should all move to the Centre on this
Centre or Center?
Oh, this can’t happen! I watch Brit-coms with my wife, and big fan of Monty Python, so I love all of the Britishisms. I use “bleeding” a lot in spoken language. SAD!
Can we look on the bright side? At least they’re not using Muzzie words and catch-phrase, then we really would know England was in the loo.
These people don’t realize that not everyone in the US uses those terms, Those are more cali-fortification.
I grew up in the mid-west, we called it pop and not soda for example.
That’s no big surprise. Contemporary, British journalism looks like baby talk (lack of needed words, for one).
Oh, nice ...
Spot on! There are regional differences in American English that are not readily reflected in our pop culture.
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