Americanisms

[Frey Pie]

Basically the lack of u's in the story is the only thing that pisses me off-White Harbour!!!

[Ser Not Appearing]

By 'corn' I figure GRRM meant... corn (maize).

Until the moment of reading it on this forum today, I never knew that it meant something else in other places. Now that I do know... I still think he meant maize, to be honest. Maybe that's me underestimating him.

[Ser Lepus]

There's no way he means it like maize. Next there will be turkeys, chipmunks, and moose!

The Hornwoods have a bull moose as their symbol. But the moose is apparently a Eurasian as well as North American species (I always thought is was specifically North American). And Coldhands rides an elk.

The american moose is the same as the european elk.

The american elk is a close cousin of the european red deer.

There is an eurasian chipmunk species, the siberian chipmunk. And there are other kinds of similar-looking stripped ground squirrels in Eurasia.

About turkeys, the original turkey was the african guineafowl, but the colonists gave the name to the american turkey.

[mankytoes]

I didn't realise what a can of cunts I was opening up making this thread.

But the conclusion seems to be, except for missing "u"s, there aren't many Americanisms present.

[Ghost Wrytre]

I wasn't implying it doesn't happen elsewhere. I don't know much about what goes on with another countries literacy ( though I should study). I'm just focusing on the country I know about.

Er... um... that should be "another country's literacy."

Just FYI.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Er... um... that should be "another country's literacy."

Just FYI.

thanks for pointing it out. Gotta love iPhone autocorrect

[Ghost Wrytre]

If we are going to venture into general irritating Americanisms, Can I just say that nothing pisses me off more than their habit of saying "I could care less" the phrase is " I couldn't care less." To say you could care less to indicate you do not care is just stupid, it imply's you care a fair bit.

Here's another one: "As God as my witness." (It should be "WITH God as my witness.")

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Here's another one: "As God as my witness." (It should be "WITH God as my witness.")

any sentence beginning with "I ain't "

[Pharnavaziani]

Thanks for owning up! If editing a scholarly journal has taught me one thing, it's that Americans are no worse than scholars in the UK or Australia when it comes to formal writing.

My biggest pet peeve as an American is hypercorrectness, using "I" instead of "me" in object situations because of the fear of using the objective case incorrectly in the predicate of the sentence. The reality is that many Americans do not understand parts of speech. Listen to just one prime time TV block. You will hear some variety of " [subject noun] [verb] to [object noun] and I." Or possibly the always incorrect phrase "between [object noun] and I." But many Americans stop learning grammar at age 12. College prep courses start focusing more on reading comprehension, more advanced issues such as dangling modifiers, and logic. I've never seen an instance from outside North America of a person being hypercorrect (making errors through fear of using the wrong pronoun case). Does it happen?

I can't speak for other countries but I'm definitely guilty of not knowing my parts of speech. I got in trouble in English class when I was little - I was always seated next to a stack of novels, so when I was supposed to be doing this-or-that assignment I was sneaking some fantasy or sci-fi book instead!

I actually think very poorly of academic writing, to be honest. Since I started attending college, I've been unable to even approach brevity - everything I read in the social sciences seems written to be as obtuse and verbose as possible.

Regarding foreign languages, don't many languages have other ways of conveying part of speech besides pure word order? Speaking as a very monolingual anglophone (unless you count programming languages, I guess....), I'm pretty ignorant here - but I was always led to believe that was the case.

By 'corn' I figure GRRM meant... corn (maize).

Until the moment of reading it on this forum today, I never knew that it meant something else in other places. Now that I do know... I still think he meant maize, to be honest. Maybe that's me underestimating him.

I don't think so. Maize is a very, very distinctive plant: it doesn't even occur in nature (it's been totally dependent on human cultivation for millennia), and without advanced technology is best grown and eaten in combination with squash, beans, tomatoes....the traditional 'three sisters' exists for a reason. Maize is brutal to the soil; and can leave you deprived of important nutrients if you don't prepare it properly. I certainly hope it's not maize - such an impressive contribution to world agriculture deserves credit, even in fantasy settings, with the societies that invented it [or, for fantasy, with ones that parallel them].

[The Boar of Gore]

My biggest pet peeve as an American is hypercorrectness, using "I" instead of "me" in object situations because of the fear of using the objective case incorrectly in the predicate of the sentence. The reality is that many Americans do not understand parts of speech. Listen to just one prime time TV block. You will hear some variety of " [subject noun] [verb] to [object noun] and I." Or possibly the always incorrect phrase "between [object noun] and I." But many Americans stop learning grammar at age 12. College prep courses start focusing more on reading comprehension, more advanced issues such as dangling modifiers, and logic. I've never seen an instance from outside North America of a person being hypercorrect (making errors through fear of using the wrong pronoun case). Does it happen?

Yes, it does, but it does sound pretentious and ridiculous and, personally, I'm more afraid of sounding that way than of making a (supposed) mistake. I mean you'll get stick for it from both ends: intelligent people will laugh at you for trying to sound educated when you're not, and uneducated people will know you're not speaking naturally. Maybe it's a class thing, or maybe also we're less teutonic about following rules than you, or perhaps also the affectations of the lower middle class have been satirized into submission.

There's hypercorrectness, but then there's also confusion. We get told 'you and I' is 'correct' and then start overextending the rule, e.g. you and I (subject) know the rule shouldn't apply when it's supposed to be you and me (object). I've heard people say 'between you and I' in a pretentious way, but also jocularly, and because they genuinely think it's correct. Isn't 'between object1 and object2' always objective case, never subjective? Next people will be saying 'between we' or 'between they'. :D We really should have some formal grammatical instruction to clear up these kinds of confusions, but there isn't much.

Finally, I think a lot of what is called uneducated speech should actually be called dialectal variation. For instance, when people say 'I does' or 'I goes', it's because that's how they naturally speak, not because they haven't learned their own native language properly. I'm not a linguist so I could be wrong, but I think this goes back to regional differences in the (seven) Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

[Le Cygne]

So, another example, "I dreamed of you" is a favorite line among Jaime and Brienne fans. Brits sometimes change it to "I dreamt of you", just one of those things.

[Willard/Mitt Lannister]

To go back to the original cunt comment, he isn't basing the word's usage in the books off of either nation's current usage, but rather off of Medieval/Early Modern English usage.

I find it kind of peculiar that people are so against American accents being used in fantasy fiction or American spelling conventions. (To all the Brits, I am sorry about the superfluous "u"s, but then again they are superfluous ;) )

American English phonology and grammar is much more conservative and in some ways is actually more similar to feudal English than modern British English.

[The Boar of Gore]

I imagine maize, being 'murcan, but i also read everyone in the books with American accents, so...

There are new world foods in westeros, ie hot peppers.

Edit spelling

Damnit. Bull moose and hot peppers.

Still, moose can just be elk, and peppers are Dornish, rather than ordinary Westerosi fare. Are there any other New World foods or other things in Westeros? If not, I stand by my assertion corn in Westeros isn't maize.

[giant snake]

To go back to the original cunt comment, he isn't basing the word's usage in the books off of either nation's current usage, but rather off of Medieval/Early Modern English usage.

I find it kind of peculiar that people are so against American accents being used in fantasy fiction or American spelling conventions. (To all the Brits, I am sorry about the superfluous "u"s, but then again they are superfluous ;) )

American English phonology and grammar is much more conservative and in some ways is actually more similar to feudal English than modern British English.

Right. I don't know if it's ignorance or arrogance, but when people say that the American accents, spellings, and old word uses are less correct, I always point to history. Actually it is the more traditional Southern accent which is supposed to sound like the English of 400 years ago.

It is anachronistic in all of these historical or fantasy movies for the characters to speak with a modern British accent.

[The Boar of Gore]

Here's another one: "As God as my witness." (It should be "WITH God as my witness.")

"As God is my witness" or "With God as my witness".

[Red Raven]

If we are going to venture into general irritating Americanisms, Can I just say that nothing pisses me off more than their habit of saying "I could care less" the phrase is " I couldn't care less." To say you could care less to indicate you do not care is just stupid, it imply's you care a fair bit.

I HATE that. It is definitely in my top ten list of linguistic pet peeves.

I utterly loathe the abuse of reflexive pronouns that has infested the American vernacular as of late. For example, people who say, "You can give it to myself." NO! It's supposed to be, "You can give it to me."

Maybe they think it sounds more formal, but to my ear it sounds illiterate.

http://www.englishcl...s-reflexive.htm

Also, some phrases by graduates of the Redundancy Institute of Redundancy:

reply back

return back

past experience

past history

close proximity

pre-planning

Ugh.

(I don't claim to have perfect grammar and spelling at all times, but I try my best to make an effort. Mom and Dad pounded that into my head very early and I thank them for doing so. Any slang, acronyms and other irregularities are meant to be intentional stylistic choices and not because I don't know any better. I welcome corrections and I know I could probably use a refresher course on the use of the comma.)

[Leif]

Only thing that bothers me is that there's not enough ghetto-talk in the books.

[Tommens Cat]

Only thing that bothers me is that there's not enough ghetto-talk in the books.

bwahaha. people in flea bottom speaking Jive.

[The Boar of Gore]

Also:

reply back

return back

past experience

past history

close proximity

pre-planning

To paraphrase George Orwell:

No need to think. Let the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you - and will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.

[Cameron]

i use cunt quite often, to refer to men and women. i think its universally agreed that its deragatory. im american but i didn't use it until i had lived in Scotland for a year. i think it varies intraculturaly