McTag wrote:Setanta wrote:So you objection is the "Americanization" of speech in your nation?
Yes that is so, and I don't know why exactly. It makes it looser and more homogenous, I suppose, less distinctive. I value the distinction and differences.
I like the lighter side of American writing from Twain to Mencken, Perleman, Dorothy Parker- not too modern, I admit- but I don't think even thay would use some of these clunky modern expressions.
Would Hunter Thompson, P J O'Rourke? Only in reported speech, I think.
It might help you to remember that good Dr. Thomas Bowdler was an Englishman--no nation has a lock of either the crude or the banal. If anyone were to blame someone or something for an alleged decline in the quality of language, that something (not someone) ought to be television. I would ask you if
Coronation Street were less guilty of spreading language banality than
Baywatch.
I recently read several novels of Harry Leon Wilson. He is best known for
Ruggles of Red Gap. Apart from a casual racism which would likely not have gotten any comment in his day, what i noticed most was the author's heavy reliance upon Americanism--and the quaint antiquity of the Americanisms he used. These things themselves change. Apart from noting that neither Mr. Thompson nor Mr. O'Rourke are authors whose names will attract me to a book, i'd simply offer the suggestion that these are fads, and that over time, it is as likely that Americans have been slavishly devoted to fads from across the pond as you now despair of among your fellow countrymen.
Listen to any newscast or sportscast, and you'll hear every pet peeve imaginable...
