(no subject)

[tablesaw]

Two days ago, I put up a poll to look at differences between British English ("BrE") and American English ("AmE"). As I mentioned, these questions were inspired by the Cambridge exam for the Certificate of Proficiency in English. ghira, a member of ifmud, helps prepare speakers of Italian to pass this test. Claiming the certificate, presumably, helps them get jobs in England and elsewhere.

ghira was the one who brought up the "seawall" example, taken from a test or a sample test. The given answer was "crashed," but many of us also felt that "splashed" is acceptable. (I further argued that "sploshed" was acceptable, reasoning that "splashed" and "sploshed" are pretty much synonymous, in an onomatopoeic sense. I was pretty alone in that, although I did pick up some supporters in the poll.) The debate that followed, about whether a wave could actually "splash" over a sea wall then started to hinge on what seawalls were. Were they placed in the water to protect the harbor and beach (which is how I've always heard the term used), or were they placed between the beach and the town, or in lieu of a beach, to protect the town (which was how the Brits were using it). As Adam pointed out, if the seawall is what separates the beach from the homes and the town, then in California, the seawall is usually a small wooden fence. Then storme dropped in something about King Cnut.

This also led into a brief tangent into the meaning of "quite good" which apparently can mean "better than good" or "worse than good" depending on who's saying it.

The other ones that I pulled from the sample pages. I was picking out examples where an educated native speaker of English would be unlikely or unable to answer correctly if he were unfamiliar with particular BrE usage. Here are the three sentences, with the given answers placed in the blank:

• We made the records because we quite fancied the money.


• A few days ago, I was going through my new sailing gear ready for my first long trip.


• Economists are starting to abandon their assumption that humans behave rationally, and instead are finally getting to grips with the crazy, mixed-up creatures we really are.

This comment from joenotcharles sums up the issues on these three questions. The usage of "fancied" in the first is outside of standard American usage. So while many Americans would have a gut feeling that "quite craved" doesn't sound right, it would still sound better than "quite fancied." The "sailing gear" question, from an American perspective, is missing something, possibly a comma, possibly another word, to make the sentence fit. Otherwise, the "ready" seems to be an adverb trying to modify whatever verb is going to be in the blank. And in AmE, "coming to grips" is the idiom, with no others fitting in.

If you have any thoughts or insights on the questions, the answers, or the poll results, feel free to post them. I'm certainly interested in them.

FriNYTX: 26.

Comments

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that waves can still either crash or splash over a seawall, depending on how strong the wind is. Maybe I don't have a clear enough idea of what a seawall is. But the Stanley Park Seawall (image at http://www.lighthousepark.com/images/stanleypark/seawall.jpg (http://www.lighthousepark.com/images/stanleypark/seawall.jpg)) certainly looks like waves could splash, or slosh, or splosh, over it. Or it's possible that waves can't splash; it's just not what they do. I might well have been thinking "slosh". But MW suggests that water can indeed splash, so it's likely fine.

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

Ironically, our columnist mentioned King Canute in next Tuesday's column. One day earlier and I would have had an answer for you that I didn't pull out of my teapot.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a seawall in California. At least not a functional one. We're Americans; if the sea gives us any trouble, we'll preemptively bomb it!

[storme]

The Stanley Park seawall was the only example I could remember seeing in the North American continent, in fact. That is what I would mean by a seawall, pretty much.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

this came to mind during the discussion but I couldn't locate the photos at the time. And it's obviously not really the same.

UK-US dictionary

[ghira.livejournal.com]

This might be of some interest:

http://english2american.com/dictionary/wholelot.html