{"id":2857,"date":"2012-11-04T11:05:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-04T16:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2012-11-04T11:05:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-04T16:05:26","slug":"blimey-is-america-going-to-the-brits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/04\/blimey-is-america-going-to-the-brits\/","title":{"rendered":"Blimey – Is America Going to The Brits?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I write historical and contemporary romance. Like many romance authors, most of my historicals to date have focused on Regency England. The period catches the fancy and populating books with handsome British Dukes and Earls is nigh irresistible. So, it surprises me not a'tall to discover that romance readers adore all things British. I was surprised at a recent NY Times story<\/a> pointing out that as a nation, we've all gone barmy over \"Britishisms.\"<\/p>\n

Alex Williams wrote the piece and I'll bet he's not even a romance fan. \u00a0He pointed to a recent article in the \"Daily Beast\" written by an American who called the iPad \"a lovely piece of kit.\" He also referenced an earlier piece from \"The Daily Herald\" saying that the Chicago Bulls were mired in uncertainty \"less than a fortnight\" after a player went down with a knee injury.<\/p>\n

Williams says that bits of Brit-speak have crept into the American vernacular. People are now saying \"cheers\" instead of \u00a0\"thank you,\" and \"brilliant\" instead of \"yes,\" \u00a0or \"I will,\" or \"I agree.\" \u00a0More and more Americans aren't going to the bathroom or the restroom - they're going to the \"loo.\" \u00a0Williams suggests<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The next time an American \u201cmate\u201d asks you to \u201cring\u201d her on her \u201cmobile\u201d about renting your \u201cflat\u201d during your \u201choliday,\u201d it\u2019s fair to ask, have we all become Madonna?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Williams refers the readers to a site maintained by Ben Yagoda an English Professor from the University of Delaware, who last year started the blog \"Not One-Off Britishisms\" or NOOB.<\/a> Yagoda says,\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe 21st-century \u2018chattering classes\u2019 \u2014 which is itself a Britishism \u2014 are the most significant perpetrators of this trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams wonders if perhaps TV and the Internet may be responsible for the trend. \u00a0He points to British Blockbuster shows like 'Dr. Who\" \u00a0and British stars who've virtually seized American television - like Gordon Ramsay. \u00a0I'd add Simon Cowell to that list - Cowell's X-Factor, \u00a0American Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance are practically their own genre and they've inspired so many others like Dancing With The Stars and The Voice.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Williams points out that people who traffic in trends for a living are, perhaps, most susceptible to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cFashion people live to sound British, the same way they over-pronounce French and Italian words because of those country\u2019s fashion weeks,\u201d said Peter Davis, the American-born editor of Scene, a New York society magazine. In an industry in which British-born editors like Anna Wintour, Glenda Bailey and Joanna Coles set the tone, ambitious underlings trying to sound front row \u201cuse Brit-speak to sound, well, more \u2018posh.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard people who grew up far from London uttering that a runway collection was \u2018brilliant\u2019 or just \u2018bril,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

And, Mr. Davis said, \u201cFashion editors worry they will get \u2018sacked\u2019 if their next issue or story is \u2018rubbish\u2019 and not \u2018clever\u2019 enough.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some fairly recent Britishisms have already become part of our lives - like \"no worries\" for \"no problems\", \"queue\" for \"line\" and \"wonky\" to describe electronic devices on the fritz. \u00a0And the Brits have noticed the trend as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This outburst of Brit-envy has not gone unnoticed in Britain. The\u00a0Guardian<\/a>, TheTelegraph<\/a> and the\u00a0BBC<\/a> Web site have all weighed in in recent weeks to poke fun at such linguistic shoplifting, as did the tabloid Sun, known for its Page 3 girls, which included aYank-baiting photo<\/a> showing a stereotypical ugly American with a gold chain and a Hawaiian shirt, slurping a can of lager, otherwise known as \u201cbeer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The articles cited examples from Not One-Off Britishisms, where Mr. Yagoda (a New York Times contributor) often charts the popularity of terms using Google\u2019s Ngram Viewer, which tracks the appearance of words or phrases year by year in millions of books. When rendered in\u00a0graph form<\/a>, certain British phrases, like \u201chave a look\u201d instead of the standard American \u201ctake a look,\u201d look like the Nasdaq charts for a hot Internet stock.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yagoda isn't the only linguist to track the trend. \u00a0Across the pond, Lynne Murphy of the University of Sussex nominates a British to American \"word of the year.\" \u00a0Some of the recent winners include \"kettling\" for corralling a crowd and \"ginger\" for a redhead. \u00a0Murphy notes that sometimes we Americans take a British expression and twist its meaning - like the newly popular phrase \"chat up.\" In England it means flirting with the intent to have sex and here it means talking. \u00a0I'm from South Carolina - so I know all about Americans and Brits saying the same thing and meaning very different things.<\/p>\n

In South Carolina the state dance is \"the shag\" which has its life's blood here in my home area of Myrtle Beach. \u00a0There are conventions of shaggers and clubs devoted exclusively to shagging. \u00a0But if you're in a club and walk up to a Brit and ask if they'd like to shag with you - the Brit is apt to raise both brows while his jaw drops. \u00a0Why? \u00a0In England \"to shag\" means \"to have sex.\"<\/p>\n

While we're importing Brit-speak, the romance world has some wonderful phrases that I think should become part of our vernacular. \u00a0One I love is \"good at the game\" meaning - the game of sex. \u00a0I love the term \"befogged\" meaning confused because it's so much more descriptive. \u00a0When I'm confused - you know how I generally feel? \u00a0That's right - \"befogged.\" \u00a0 One I think would be quite useful to describe political shenanigans is \"havey-cavey business\" because it means suspicious goings on. \u00a0A term that describes my - and many American households these days is \"in quite deep\" - it means \"in debt\" which too many of us are these days because we're \"purse pinched.\"<\/p>\n

Another term I've used in my books and would adore hearing around the watercolor is \"dicked in the nob.\" \u00a0It means crazy, so fans of the blog might say - \"The duck lady is dicked in the nob.\" \u00a0They'd be right too.<\/p>\n

So the next time you \"bandy words\" or talk with someone, throw in a British expression or two that you'd like to see us adopt. \u00a0And if you need more grist for that mill - pick up a Regency Romance novel. \u00a0Romance writers have been going to the Brits for a long time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I write historical and contemporary romance. Like many romance authors, most of my historicals to date have focused on Regency England. The period catches the fancy and populating books with handsome British Dukes and Earls is nigh irresistible. So, it surprises me not a'tall to discover that romance readers adore all things British. I was ...continue reading \"Blimey – Is America Going to The Brits?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2868,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions\/2868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}