Telling time in U. K. English

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

My friends and I always laugh at the fact that the stereotypes of NJ in those shows like Jersey Shore and Housewives of NJ are actually people who were either born across the river in NYC or are the children of parents who were born in NYC. That whole Brooklyn/Mob-wannabe accent is so not NJ.



Actually, it's more "quardder-ah" and "quardder-duh", though a "cuplah" or "cupalah" million dollars sounds right to me.

Folks here get their houses/homes "robbed" not burglarized. Cigarettes are "lit" not "lighted". We never call the Atlantic Ocean "the Pond"; it's "the Ocean", because it's really the only ocean that counts. We really do say that we're going "down the shore", not "to the ocean" or "to the beach".

In the town in NJ where I grew up, we used a wonderful word, "aina" (long "a" sound + "nah"), often sounded with a question mark or an exclamation point. The closest definition would be "ain't it" or "you're speaking the truth" or "no shit". It was like an "amen" to another person's statement.

"I'm tellin' yah, if he comes home late one more time, his mom's gonna whip his behind!"
"Aina."

"She said that she heard it from her mom who heard it from her aunt."
"Aina?"

"I slipped on that ice comin' down the hill from the tracks. It's like glass over there."
"Aina!"

So, reccon y'all 're aina retentive up there?

[Xanthe]

If you're in Ironbound, then the direction would be more like "down there".

[amward]

One of the things I have noticed on this forum is people using the word gifted instead of gave, as in "a Kindle, gifted to my mother" I wasn't sure if it was tongue in cheek, bad grammar or a usage like gotten that has died out here in Oz. Can anyone enlighten me?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by djchapple

It's a matter of where you were brought up. Dates are another example of confusion. We m(the English) say 25th may 2010, which is a natural progression - day - month year.

Over the other side of the pond they say May 25th 2011 which is an odd mixture - month - day year.

You've got your ponds mixed up! "The pond" is that thing called the North Sea. And the "big pond" is the pond you're probably talking about... Because we do say dd-mm-yyyy here! And you're across the pond from me

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

P.S. I always hated english 12h notations notoriously mixing up am and pm.
I still wonder why there are clocks on the island instead of sundials simply marked "before teatime/teatime/after teatime"

Not enough sun there...

And I always thought that am/pm thing was weird as well. Is it After Midnight and Past Midnight, or After Midday and Past Midday? Or any other combination...

The 24-hour clock makes so much more sense.

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Yes, it must be the politeness! I have wondered about that, actually. It's not as if all Americans have to be rude and loud and wear tracksuits & trainers.

You're wrong there! How else can Americans differentiate themselves from the rest of the English speaking culture? (oh, I love Kevin Kline in a Fish Called Wanda, especially when put opposite to John Cleese)

[amward]

am and pm are short for latin phrases, pm I think is post meridiam can't remember what am is, possibly ante meridiam. Will have to check with my Mum who's 95 and knows all sorts of stuff like that.

[Coops]

"Quarter to six" for 17:45 for me... but then I was born in Margate.

Here's how Thailand time works:-
The 24 hours is split into 4 six hour segments - midnight, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00.
To paraphrase (and save you the awkward transliteration) 08:00 would be spoken as "2 hours morning time" as 08:00 is 2 hours after the 06:00 'morning' segment.

"3 hours afternoon" would be 12:00 + 3 = 15:00

and so on... and to make it more interesting, a Thai may choose to tell time in the 'western' fashion on a whim.

Radio/TV time announcments are in 24hr military stylee...

Anyway, after the sun is over the yardarm it's time for nice gin & tonic.

[DMB]

It's ante and post meridiem. Latin for "day" is "dies" as in "dies irae". So meridies is midday and am is before midday and pm after midday.

I don't think the differences between English and American usage are attributable entirely to Americans having retained the earlier style. "Gotten" is such an example. Back in the seventeenth century both "got" and "gotten" were current. The English lost "gotten" but retained "forgotten" and lost "forgot". We also kept the "t" end for past tenses instead of "ed". I have been told by an American that I must be illiterate for writing such things as "burnt", "learnt" or "spent". There is a difference about strong vs weak verbs as well. For me "to strive" is a stong verb -- simple past "strove", past participle "striven", but I have heard Americans say "strived". OTOH I was unaware of "dove" as a past for "to dive" until I came across it as an American usage.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DMB

OTOH I was unaware of "dove" as a past for "to dive" until I came across it as an American usage.

Dove instead of dived makes this American's ears bleed.

Going back to the DD/MM v. MM/DD issue upthread, that's another where Americans retained the older usage while Britain switched to the more "logical" one. However, I think the Times (London) uses the archaic form.

A question with that in mind: Here in the US, 9/11 is shorthand for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I assume the ROW knows what we mean. But what kind of shorthand is employed elsewhere, assuming one is? Do others say 11/9? 9/11, following US form? Or something else entirely?

[mrbanana]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

I hadn't realized that "gotten" was the older past participle of "get" until recently. I suppose the phrase "ill-gotten gains" is still used there though?.

I grew up in England reading American science fiction novels and crime novels from about the age of eight, and for me gotten seems natural. It was only later at college that I was told in no uncertain terms by a few language snobs that the correct form in the UK is get got got, unless, as you said, gotten is part of a phrase.

The last time I looked at a number of British publishers guidelines, 15 years ago, I noticed a wide variety of style guides in use. One only wanted regular past tense verbs. Another only wanted irregular. One wanted single quotation marks, which seems more natural to me, and another wanted double quotation marks. One wanted words like realise spelled with a z, others with an s. I assumed that that was to make life easier for their American division's editors. In the end, so long as we can all understand each other it doesn't really matter, especially when the language is continually evolving.

I've just thought of another thing that sound odd to my ears, and that's the American pronunciation of the name Craig, which on a number of shows always sounds like Greg with a C at the front instead of a G, rather than "Crayg" with a long vowel sound. I don't know how that came about.

[DMB]

Originally Posted by issybird

Dove instead of dived makes this American's ears bleed.

Going back to the DD/MM v. MM/DD issue upthread, that's another where Americans retained the older usage while Britain switched to the more "logical" one. However, I think the Times (London) uses the archaic form.

A question with that in mind: Here in the US, 9/11 is shorthand for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I assume the ROW knows what we mean. But what kind of shorthand is employed elsewhere, assuming one is? Do others say 11/9? 9/11, following US form? Or something else entirely?

It took me about two years after the attack to take "9/11" on board. I was always reading it as "the ninth of November". That's still what 9/11 means to me in any other context, but now it's simply a code, like a foreign name, such as "the Concertgebouw".

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by amward

One of the things I have noticed on this forum is people using the word gifted instead of gave, as in "a Kindle, gifted to my mother" I wasn't sure if it was tongue in cheek, bad grammar or a usage like gotten that has died out here in Oz. Can anyone enlighten me?

I use the expression gifted. According to my dictionary, it is acceptable to use gift as either a noun or verb. To say you gifted something is shorter than to say that you gave something as a gift. It's meant to emphasize that you gave something as a gift and didn't expect anything in exchange for your act of giving. I can't say when or where I learned (or learnt) the expression. I think it's something I've picked up more recently.

[SeaBookGuy]

"Across the Pond" is a British idiom, meaning "the English speaking people 'over there'." Many Anglophilic Americans, myself included, do use the expression as well.

Originally Posted by mrbanana

I've just thought of another thing that sound odd to my ears, and that's the American pronunciation of the name Craig, which on a number of shows always sounds like Greg with a C at the front instead of a G, rather than "Crayg" with a long vowel sound. I don't know how that came about.

I would expect the name to rhyme with Greg, dreg, beg, etc.

Originally Posted by issybird

Dove instead of dived makes this American's ears bleed.

I've seen reference to "dove" being the technically correct form in the States, but it sounds a bit highfalutin' to me -- I'd say "dived", too. Then again, I prefer "pleaded' to "plead" and "snuck" to "sneaked".

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by mrbanana

I've just thought of another thing that sound odd to my ears, and that's the American pronunciation of the name Craig, which on a number of shows always sounds like Greg with a C at the front instead of a G, rather than "Crayg" with a long vowel sound. I don't know how that came about.

The difference in how we pronounce the name Bernard is the one that my ear is most sensitive to. The British use of envisage versus the American preference of envision is another one that amuses me.

Yesterday I had to explain what a zed is because a workmate didn't understand an email that we had received from one of our English colleagues. She did not expect the answer to be as simple as he means the letter "z".

[wodin]

Then there is the whole -ish thing, as in "What time is dinner?"; "Around sixish".

When I was growing up "ish" was the equivalent of the modern term "eeeeewww"!

[wodin]

Originally Posted by issybird

Going back to the DD/MM v. MM/DD issue upthread, that's another where Americans retained the older usage while Britain switched to the more "logical" one. However, I think the Times (London) uses the archaic form.

Government forms are incresingly going to the date format of 20010911 for September eleventh, 2001.

Blame it on computers, the numerical equivilent of yyyymmdd sorts much easier than any other format, except of course "Julian dates". But then if we used Julian dates, only computers would know what day it is.