I say standard English is better than US English because you tell a standard English adverb from the "ly" at the end. Whereas in US English, you do everything "slow", "strange" and so on.

Two questions:

1. Do they eschew adverbs? Sure, some Americans do but do all? I doubt it but I am prepared to be convinced. But it raises a question about which particular US (and for that matter UK) English I am using for comparison. If we are using educated (BBC English - for want of a better term) the comparision should be with some similarly educated US English.

2. Is the dropping of adverbs a bad thing? Would it create that much confusion? I doubt it.

That was a close call. You almost scored an own goal there.

Crikey!

How 'bout "Parkway", the space between the road and "sidewalk", or English "verge".

Also, my roommate "goes bezerk" whenever the "a" is dropped from "go to a hospital" to become the English "go to hospital". My argument that the american "go to school" is the same sort of thing doesn't sway him. I think the usage is kind of cute.

>

I'm a Yank, and I'm a copy editor (hence, perhaps, excessively anal about this sort of thing :-) and a native New Yorker (no reason, just thought I'd throw than in, draw what conclusions from that you will) and I say that this example is NOT U.S. English. It is BAD English. (If I'm feeling charitable, "spoken" or "informal" English -- which, for the record, does have its place and time.) There is a difference. If I had spoken that way for my job interview I would not have been hired.

I meant the "strange" vs. "strangely" example. It didn't appear in my post -- I think I formatted it wrong. Sorry!

Or should I have said "formatted it wrongly"? :-)

I am American and I agree with crl...this is bad English and I never hear Americans talking like that.

I am an American, and I will be trying to show that in our time and age American English is the clear champion of this debate.

If it were the nineteenth century, British English would take the flag hands down. But for better or worse we live in the twenty-first century, and it is the United States that has had a tremendous influence in shaping how we all live today.

I would argue further that certain characteristics of American English also illustrate elements of American culture itself (not all positive, mind you). Many people may bemoan American cultural influence; however, in sundry subtle ways they eagerly embrace such an influence and allow it to perpetuate yet wish to reserve the right to complain about the loss of traditional culture that only in hindsight looks so wonderful.

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So, on with the debate.

To recap what has been written earlier. Bad English is bad English on both sides of the pond and beyond; thus it need not enter our debate. Let's look at the best from both worlds. Let's take an article (even on the same topic) from, say, "The New York Times" and "The London Times." Let's look at style, diction, punctuation, grammar, and overall clarity of thought. (Feel free to add any other category.) I don't expect the U.S. scribes to win in all departments (After we have agreed upon the rubrics, we should even assign them an equal point value, say 5), but I expect them to come out on top after all is said and done. I would argue that our twentieth-century writers of fiction already do.

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As a warm-up exercise let's haggle over plural and singular verbs. In my second paragraph I use, as we left-ponders are wont to do, "United States" as a singular collective noun. In this day an age there is a marked focus on the "individual," thus it seems rather outdated to apply Victorian usage in such a context.

Can we objectively argue which usage is better? I vote for the singular and suspect such a usage is gaining ground (or already more popular) around the world, even in her Majesty's Royal Domain.

The singular usage in the U.S. is universal. I argue that British English cannot make up its mind. Sometimes you see the Victorian usage sometimes you don't. The "coupe de grace" will come from concordance research of the past 50 years, which will (or will not) show a somewhat marked move toward the singular usage.

I don't have access to such a corpus, but we can rig something similar. Take twenty articles from leading British publications, run them through an indexing program such as Adobe Acrobat, then search for "United States has" and "United States have". I think you will see a break from the plural usage . . .

Wait a minute . . . Shall I Google it? Why, good heavens, don't dare tell me I shan't, old chap. It is an exceedingly splendid idea. I dare say, I think I shall . . .

singular usage: 1,120,000

plural usage: 354,000

Admittedly, English on the Internet is predominantly of the Yankee variety, so such results are rather misleading. This is just to whet the appetite of any takers out there.

I put my money on the American usage. If we can prove through concordance research that British English is indeed not impervious to this nuance, the flag in this matter, then, has to go to American English, which pushes forward full-steam ahead, while British English suffers from a linguistic identity crisis. Darwinian survival of the FITTEST.

ES

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Some future points to consider:

1. Punctuation with quotation marks (I vote for the British method.)

2. Abbreviations (Again I vote for the British logic.)

3. Comma in a series (I buy the American Harvard comma here.)

4. Relative and Restrictive pronouns (I vote for the American English's distinctive feature of "that" over the British penchant for "which".)

5. The use of "as" as a pronoun (I vote for the less literary American "who" and intend to show how Anthony Burgess in "Grunts from a Sexist Pig" gets confused over this very usage, as well as style, and sound sentence structure.)

6. American English is today's language of science, medicine, technology, and business.

7. I would say that American English continues to influence British English, rather than the other way (a)round.

Google concordance:

"other way round" -- 114,000

"other way around" --- 353,000

8. If we compare the average contemporary British writing with its counterpart of 50 years ago, I argue we will see more conformity with today's American English rather than with, well, British English of 50 years ago . . . stagnation and Darwinian death.

lorry -- 208,000

truck -- 11,000,000

Ford lorry -- 141

Ford Truck -- 295,000

Is there any reason why "lorry" should be considered better than "truck." The sense and sound of the latter even evokes its ruggedness. "Lorry" is too delicate a word for what such a vehicle is supposed to do.

But let's question further. My "Webster's" tells me that "lorry" is British for motortruck (1908, origin unknown), while "truck" has a wider, more figurative usage beyond that of a noun, dating to 13th century French:

(1) truck \"trek\ verb [ME trukken, fr. OF troquer] (13c)
verb transitive
1 : to give in exchange : swap
2 : to barter or dispose of by barter
verb intransitive
1 : to exchange commodities : barter
2 : to negotiate or traffic esp. in an underhanded way : have dealings

(2) truck noun (1553)
1 : barter
2 : commodities appropriate for barter or for small trade
3 : close association or connection
4 : payment of wages in goods instead of cash
5 : vegetables grown for market
6 : heterogeneous small articles often of little value; also : rubbish

3truck noun [prob. back-formation fr. truckle small wheel — more at truckle bed] (1611)
1 : a small wheel; specif : a small strong wheel for a gun carriage
2 : a small wooden cap at the top of a flagstaff or masthead usu. having holes for reeving flag or signal halyards
3 : a wheeled vehicle for moving heavy articles: as
a : a strong horse-drawn or automotive vehicle for hauling
b : a small barrow consisting of a rectangular frame having at one end a pair of handles and at the other end a pair of small heavy wheels and a projecting edge to slide under a load — called also hand truck
c : a small heavy rectangular frame supported on four wheels for moving heavy objects
d : a small flat-topped car pushed or pulled by hand
e : a shelved stand mounted on casters
f : an automotive vehicle with a short chassis equipped with a swivel for attaching a trailer and used esp. for the highway hauling of freight; also : a truck with attached trailer
4 a Brit : an open railroad freight car
b : a swiveling carriage consisting of a frame with one or more pairs of wheels and springs to carry and guide one end (as of a railroad car) in turning sharp curves
truck•ful \-'ful\ noun

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Historical originality is the usual battle cry for why British English is superior. Here, "truck" is the word with the history. Especially with its "business" sense, I argue that "truck" is the more appropriate word for today's reality. It is embarrassing to call one of those big eighteen-wheelers a lorry (something better for the transport flowers, maybe). No, it is a "truck," a big, hulking, powerful machine that makes it possible for you to build and furnish your home, eat the food you have in your refrigerator, read the books on your book shelves, use the computer you're using to read this rant. Nearly everything you encounter these days, at one point in its manufacturing and distribution cycle, has seen the service of a TRUCK. And the widespread, mass availability of these items is directly the influence of United States democracy, for better or worse. It is the ruggedness of that culture (although I'll accept claims that we are losing this sense of ourselves), evidenced in its language, that has pushed through economic, historical, and cultural barriers to share its wealth with most of its members.

(Disclaimer: I am not a card carrying, flag waving American. I'm just getting caught up in this linguistic argument, which I think actually makes sense.)

Now, here we might enter into an argument about just who does have the highest standard of living -- a worthwhile argument. I'll leave this open-ended, as I am too tired now to qualify any additional claims. We'll see what happens.

ES

I was all set to reinvent the wheel and then I came across this:

http://language.home.sprynet.com/langdex/briteng.htm#totop

Game over! We win.

E.S.