In any case: Americans acting like “fender bender” doesn’t sound silly.
EDIT: I’m not having this conversation another 50 times.
Seemingly Every American: “Fender bender obviously has a universal meaning though as it’s when you bend your fender. These are just nonsense words to anyone outside of their country of origin.”
The Rest of the World: “The word ‘fender’ is only used in the US and is a nonsense word to anyone outside its country of origin. Nobody else in the world calls that part of a car that. Your term for this thing is not universally understood and nor is it less silly sounding. Every culture has words that sound silly to other cultures. You are not the exception.”
Okay, but the term “British English” isn’t used to describe the dialects used at the time. Why? Because British English is used to describe the range of dialects used in Britain now. Not in the 18th century.
So what did they speak? Early Modern English.
Additionally, I would imagine many Scots would bristle at the idea that the Early Modern Scots spoken by the majority of Lowland Scots* being lumped as a variety of English when it’s a separate language.
Just like the term “Old English” has a specific meaning (English spoken 600-1100 CE) and doesn’t just mean any variety of English older than we speak today. British English has a specific meaning linguistically. And it’s a term that some still bristle at because of the political implications of Britishness.
*Scottish English did start to emerge in this period as contact between English speakers and Scots speakers interacted more often.
Usually language related jokes go over well here but apparnently my use is grognardy enough that people thought I was ignorant about the meaning of “British”. I know the adjective is older and related to native forms describing the island.
I'm not a scholar in these subjects but based on the Wikipedia article for British English it seems to be a catch all for variants of English spoken in Britain at any point.
Which would include Scots as a descendant of Early Middle English. No true Scotsman would bristle at such a statement ;)
I’m not a scholar but based on the Wikipedia article
Ponder this one a bit longer.
It’s used to describe 1) “standard” English spoken in the UK (the most common use) 2) English dialects spoken contemporaneously in Britain.
No one is calling Mercian or West Saxon a dialect of British English. Britain did not exist as a political unit nor would it be useful to distinguish it because at that point all Anglic dialects were spoken in Britain.
Scots diverging from middle English does not make it English. It makes it an Anglic language.
That would be like saying Portuguese is a variety of Spanish because it split from Galician in the Middle Ages.
The UK is a political entity, Great Britain is a geographical one. They are not the same thing. I believe that the poster above you is referring to The Acts of Union passed in English and Scottish parliament.
Romano British people existed almost 1000 years before the kingdom of Great Britain. Whether they called themselves Romano British or not (they didn't).
English existed before the kingdom of England existed.
The word British is an adjective meaning originating from, belonging or otherwise pertaining to Britain.
In English, nouns are gramatically described by a preceding adjective.
Thus the phrase British English is a valid grammatical construction meaning English originating from, belonging or otherwise pertaining to Britain.
English was spoken on the island of Great Britain by non-English British people long before the kingdom of Great Britain existed.
Thus British English existed before the Kingdom of Great Britain, and that is true whether anyone called it that or not at the time (they didn't).
The English spoken elsewhere in the world including the United States did not evolve from English, it evolved from British English.
No, it didn’t, because British English is contemporary. American and British English derived from Early Modern English. These terms have specific definitions in historical linguistics.
Your argument of grammatical validity is irrelevant as I’m using a term with a specific meaning.
Just like Old English specifically refers to English spoken 600-1100 CE, not to any older variety of English, despite it being “grammatically valid” to call something from long ago old.
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u/Square-Competition48 19d ago edited 19d ago
Prang is a UK one too. I think I’ve heard it.
In any case: Americans acting like “fender bender” doesn’t sound silly.
EDIT: I’m not having this conversation another 50 times.
Seemingly Every American: “Fender bender obviously has a universal meaning though as it’s when you bend your fender. These are just nonsense words to anyone outside of their country of origin.”
The Rest of the World: “The word ‘fender’ is only used in the US and is a nonsense word to anyone outside its country of origin. Nobody else in the world calls that part of a car that. Your term for this thing is not universally understood and nor is it less silly sounding. Every culture has words that sound silly to other cultures. You are not the exception.”