#american-english — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #american-english, aggregated by home.social.
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Why Americans Say Entree When They Mean Main Course
This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Salmon served with spinach and mashed potato. – Sokor Space/Shutterstock We may receive a commission on…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Frenchrestaurants #AmericanEnglish #francais #france #French #Frenchcuisine #FrenchRestaurants #Restaurants
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2594148/why-americans-say-entree-when-they-mean-main-course/ -
Why Americans Say Entree When They Mean Main Course https://www.diningandcooking.com/2594148/why-americans-say-entree-when-they-mean-main-course/ #AmericanEnglish #francais #france #French #FrenchCuisine #FrenchRestaurants #Restaurants
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Today I finally understood a joke I've been missing for 40 years. My fault of course -- I only speak American, not British.
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Hitchhiking As A Type of Women’s Emancipation in the Early Thirties
This scene from director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1934 Heat Lightning brings me back to the observation that American women in the 1920s and 30s pioneered and popularized the practice of hitchhiking. Women like Doris Poggendee and Nettie Matthews, Barbara Starke, Nancy Youse, Betty Simpson, the McManus Sisters, or Allen Ginsberg’s mother Naomi – all could have been models from which these two characters were drawn. Some were out for adventure or, like these two, were seeking their fortune; many others just had no other practical way to get to where they were going, or get away from where they were.
By 1934, the word “hitchhiking” and its variants had already been in circulation for well over a decade (the earliest instance I’ve found, so far, is 1918); and female hitchhikers were an established American “type.” I borrow that word from one reviewer of the 1933 play (also called Heat Lightning) on which LeRoy’s movie is based, and where the characters of “First Hitch-Hiker” and “Second Hitch-Hiker” were played on stage by Gail de Hart and Geraldine Wall. (LeRoy cast “Blonde Cutie” Muriel Evans and the brilliant and under-appreciated brunette comedienne Jill Dennett in the roles.)
The comic portrayal here may not be entirely true to historical type — it would be surprising if it were — but it was the case that American women often hitchhiked in pairs, sometimes advertising in newspapers for a traveling companion.* And then there’s that thumb gesture George makes when he says he and his troubled friend Jeff are “just passing through” – the hailing gesture that we now associate with hitchhiking, and which Helen Card associates with a woman’s “right to ask things of the world.”
In Card’s 1931 book and in newspaper accounts from the 20s and 30s, the hitchhiking type of woman meets with a mix of moral disapproval, admiration for her pluck, and a thinly-disguised sense of titillation. Even here, in LeRoy’s film, the hitchhikers complain about having to listen to their ride’s “speeches about nice girls not hitchhiking” while the old man pinches the thigh of whichever young woman has the misfortune of being seated next to him in the front seat. And that line about the lecherous hypocrisy of the moralizing old codger made this one of the scenes in the film that the Hays Office found objectionable. Nor did it sit well with the Catholic League of Decency, founded in the same year this film was released. The League gave Heat Lightning a rating of C, for “condemned.”
Dressed for the road, as these two are, in trousers (or jodhpurs) tucked into boots, a loose blouse or buttoned shirt, and a sturdy hat, the hitchhiking woman cuts a transgressive figure. Adventuress or androgyne, self-directed or vagabond, an avatar of social dissolution or revolution? She looks like trouble. As one columnist put it in 1928, “the only distinguishing vestment left to man is his trousers…and even these are assumed by the female hitch hikers…. Man may well ask, tremblingly, ‘How much farther is this emancipation to go?'”
How much farther? It’s a question Helen Card takes on, albeit from a different angle, in her book about her hitchhiking adventures (and in this connection it’s worth remembering that the American edition of Card’s Touch and Go appeared under the title Born in Captivity). It’s also a question that runs throughout Heat Lightning itself, though there’s not much hint of it in this comic, flirty scene (except perhaps in the remark George makes, that their ride, “Popsy,” has more to fear from these two tomatoes than they from him).
The film — which is currently playing on Criterion Channel, but which can also be found online — explores this question of women’s emancipation more fully and a little more seriously through the story of its main character, Olga, a former dance hall girl who traded her fancy dress for denim overalls and now runs a filling station with her kid sister in the California desert. By the end of the picture, Olga’s virtue may be compromised, but her independence is not.
*Postscript 12 Feb 26: It was also the case that women in the late 1920s and early 30s were hitchhiking to Hollywood, or at least the newspapers said they were. The type was well known. The 1933 Will Rogers film Mr. Skitch features Florence Desmond as a hitchhiker bound for Hollywood. I hope to find a copy and watch it soon.
Correction 13 Feb 26: The 28 December 1933 review of Mr. Skitch that got me looking for a copy of the Will Rogers film was misleading. In the film, which I’ve just managed to see, Florence Desmond is headed for Hollywood, but she’s not a hitch-hiker; she just flags down Will Rogers and his family because her own car has run out of gasoline. I haven’t seen any instance where the word is used in this way, as a request for roadside aid, so I’m assuming it’s just an error.
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#AmericanEnglish #AmericanSpeech #asking #autonomy #hitchhike #hitchhiking #jointCommitment #rights -
Hype for the Future 94B: Syllables Required to Pronounce Letters in the English Language
Disclaimer While the American English pronunciation of the letter Z is “zee” and the Commonwealth pronunciation is “zed,” either name can be pronounced in the same number of syllables. Therefore, the syllable counts should remain consistent across distinct varieties of the global language. Introduction While many letters can be pronounced in one or a few syllables, words containing such letters could also be pronounced in fewer syllables than the letters themselves in select […] -
Hype for the Future 94A: Syllables Required to Pronounce Numbers in American English
Introduction Throughout the number line, counting only the natural numbers and excluding the whole number of zero and the negative integers, the minimum numbers required to be spoken in a certain number of syllables are, as follows, numbers often containing the digits one, two, and/or seven. Numbers by Number of Syllables 1 7 11 27 77 111 127 177 777 1127 1177 1777 7777 11777 27777 77777 111777 127777 177777 777777 As a general pattern, the largest place values in […] -
It's a very old meme but I do love it so.
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"I had an acorn fall from a tree in my driveway and dent my roof!"
"An acorn fell from a tree in my driveway and dented my roof!"
Why is this "I had" pattern becoming so common? Why does adding two words (and inserting yourself as a subject) seem preferable to using past tense in the normal way?
(I understand that language changes over time, so I'm actually curious as to what may be motivating this change).
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When your British TV interviewee says, "I'm a kid from a council estate" but the transcription AI you're using is USA-coded, things can get apocalyptic pretty fucking quickly.
#AI #Artificialintelligence #BritishEnglish #AmericanEnglish #journalism #journalists #interview #thatescalatedquickly
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KEP1ER -- Xiaoting
I don't know the source for the text, but I cannot imagine it being voiced in anything other than an American accent.
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Interesting article.
What are your thoughts on "Cali"?
While you're at it, tell us your feelings about "Frisco", "San Fran", and "SF".
#California #Cali #Toponyms #AmericanEnglish #SanFrancisco #SanFran #Frisco #SF #CalifornianEnglish
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I think I've mentioned this before, but as a result of being a) an Australian living in the USA, and b) just being plain old, I have no freaking idea how grammar or spelling work anymore.
#English #Writing #Grammar #AustralianEnglish #AmericanEnglish
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To improve findability, alternative spellings for English terms have been added to General Finnish Ontology YSO. Previously, British English spellings were favoured [sic], but now they have been joined by American English spellings: theatre and theater, self-defense and self-defense, organisational behaviour and organizational behavior etc. Over 600 YSO concepts were provided with an additional spelling. #YSO #english #britishenglish #americanenglish #spelling #ortography
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FWIW, Canadian English already uses the -our construction. Harbour, etc. So we're not using the USA spellings there.
If you want to switch things back to British style from American, the S / Z thing is a candidate. Specialise vs specialize, etc.
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If you are from the US and Brits are giving you a hard time for talking about "soccer", tell them to bone up on their own history!
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer
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I had been under the impression that #AmericanEnglish was a deliberate bastardisation of the Mother Tongue done in an attempt to create and demonstrate differences from the imperial enemy.
But if the following webpage is accurate then USAEN is often an example of the preservation of the then current Mother Tongue by emmigrants. And modern BritEn is the result of ongoing drift under the influence of monarchs, Doctor Who and Boris Johnson.
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Dear Canadian and Indian ex-coworkers of mine - what are some common colloquial phrases you might have used at work that I, as an American, would have been unfamiliar with?
I'm thinking like "Tickety-boo", "Bob's your uncle", "Do the needful", etc...
#AmericanEnglish #IndianEnglish #CanadianEnglish #BritishEnglish
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'Baseball court' - the merchant wars p115 (hardback) #stross #american-english #typo
