The Brits do have some funny phrases that really haven't become part of the American lexicon. E.g., blimey, bollix, chips (they're fries dammit), etc....
On Nov 9, 2011, at 2:24 PM, "Raymond E. Feist" <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Nov 9, 2011, at 9:57 AM, Earl Borah wrote: > >>> A language is a living, evolving thing, and could change rapidly before it >>> became "fixed" by print. >>> >>> Best, R.E.F. >> >> How much has modern media (radio, television, movies) helped "fix" >> language? When an entire country - or even much of the world - is >> watching the same television shows and movies, does the pronunciation >> and dialect from Hollywood help minimize the local variances we'd >> otherwise have? >> > >> Specifically -- while I recognize there's still a difference in >> southern speech and New York speech compared to what I hear every day >> here in Oregon, are those differences less than they'd otherwise be >> due to the prevalence of audio media? How does that effect compare to >> the effect of print media? >> >> What happens when a show like Doctor Who becomes popular in the US -- >> does it affect our speech patterns much? How big a deal is American >> television/movie to the rest of the English-speaking world -- are we >> affecting their speech patterns? >> >> Not that I expect anyone to have a definitive answer, they're just all >> questions I find interesting. >> > > > Very good point. First radio introduced Americans to "mediated speech" which > was more or less eastern, upscale (even among some broadcasters sort of a > "Mid-Atlantic" half US/half British, witness someone like Alistair Cook) > which is a bit like monied Americans like FDR spoke. That evolved into what > is now modern "Mediated American Speech," which pretty much is a bit of a > broad midwestern twang toned down a great deal and softened, witness Walter > Cronkite or Tom Brokaw. If you go to cities like Atlanta, you don't hear the > broad southern accent you here in more rural parts of Georgia. If you go to > San Francisco or L.A. among non-ethnic neighborhoods, you hear a westernized > melding of accents from all over the nation. > > Yes, media is making us all slowly sound alike. > > Importing shows from Britain has little effect. Ironically, a much smaller > nation, there's almost nothing like the melding of speech we have in the US. > Perhaps it's due to there being more of a connection between accent and class > and neighborhood in the UK? I don't know. > > Best, R.E.F. > > ---- > www.crydee.com > > Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by > stupidity. > > > > > > >
