Harry Lime
Practitioner
So, I'm not exactly sure if this is true, but I was told a long time ago that I harkens back the post WWI to 1950's period. Apparently this was a very common figure of speech in the 1930's and 40's.
I've noticed that a lot of early 20-somethings use it less, but a lot of them talk 'Valley Girl'.
It could come from the German influence. Remember that until just few decades ago, Americans with a German background made up a huge percentage of the population. Back in the old days a lot of Germans would start a sentence with 'Also...'. Using 'So' in English is a good equivalent.
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Is it English? Or American?
What do you understand by 'oil chamber'? (Indian English)
Oh: and why is it 'obvious'?
Cheers,
R.
wgerrard
Veteran
I think it's current popularity in the States is due to its use by the characters on Seinfeld. E.g., someone prattles on at length about whether they should go to the Chinese restaurant or to the Thai restaurant. Eventually, they stop talking and someone, less than innocently, asks, "So... do you want Chinese or Thai?"
So, in that aspect, it's American. But, opening a sentence with "So" is perfectly legitimate, and I'm sure it's done all the time in the UK. And, because Brits have been fouly corrupted by American TV imports, I'm also sure it's used there in the Seinfeldian sense. I recall often hearing the, "Right. So..." variation. As in, "Right. So, now what?"
Oil chamber: Where the oil resides in an internal combustion engine? Or, in a lamp of some sort?
Obvious: It's a signal that the speaker is going to say something. Very much like "Well", "You know", "OK, But...", etc.
So, in that aspect, it's American. But, opening a sentence with "So" is perfectly legitimate, and I'm sure it's done all the time in the UK. And, because Brits have been fouly corrupted by American TV imports, I'm also sure it's used there in the Seinfeldian sense. I recall often hearing the, "Right. So..." variation. As in, "Right. So, now what?"
Oil chamber: Where the oil resides in an internal combustion engine? Or, in a lamp of some sort?
Obvious: It's a signal that the speaker is going to say something. Very much like "Well", "You know", "OK, But...", etc.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Sump (English), oil pan (American). A good illustration of the evolution of dialects, like 'Eve teasing' or 'communalism' in Indian English.
English speakers of English, and Americans, tend to forget that theirs are not the only dialects, and to claim superiority. To say 'English' without specifying the dialect, except perhaps in the slightly tautologous 'English English', is excessively arrogant. Would anyone care to supply Australian expressions that are rarely understood in English? Other than Durex? Or Ocker?
Cheers.
R.
wgerrard
Veteran
In the U.S., we have many, many place names that are either taken directly from native American expressions or are vulgarizations of the same. Yet, as far as I know, American English includes few, if any, other expressions derived from native American speech.
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
Just off the top of my head...
Don't piss in my pocket.
Don't come the raw prawn with me, mate!
You've got two chances, mate...
Fair suck of the sauce bottle (a recently manufactured utterance of the animatronic device passing itself off as our Prime Minister)
He can play ducks and drakes all he likes, but... (not sure if that's Aussie or not, but I had to explain it to someone the other day)
Let's pack up our bongos and piss off (Aussie, yes, but probably purely military)
...Mike
Ronald M
Veteran
Because people can not speak, spell or punctuate anymore. Schools are more more interested in making the studends feel good and filling their heads full of liberal mush, than learnin em anything.
JohnTF
Veteran
After twenty years, people are beginning to think that the "self esteem" movement is a failure, that unearned self esteem is meaningless or worse, actually damaging. The same people pushing it used to say, "If the horse is dead, get off", but that horse has been down a long time.
Some of us in the game held out all along, and took a lot of heat.
It has meaning, if you help create a situation where earned self esteem can be achieved, not passed out like M & M's.
However, if you want to succeed in administration, you parrot the party line, and if it is repeated more than a couple of times it becomes gospel.
Education as a subject in itself is not firmly grounded, it is often an art, and you know how well we quantify art, yet people are required to obtain advanced degrees in education which are often a reflection of the ability to remain seated and upright in dogmatic classes which reflect what ever current trends people can get published.
As to American English, it is the world standard, if you want to start tracing English back to "legitimate" roots, you can try Old and Middle English, and then propose the French influence of the 12th century should be challenged and rooted out in a sort of "reverse engineering". Am not sure what the language of the Angles was really like, but the point is that language evolves and just because it changes geography does not make it illegitimate.
Seems the UK has a number of dialects as does the US, and English absorbs new words from other languages continuously as it evolves. I think trying to define proper English as that of the UK is being geographically chauvinistic at its worst.
Hard, and perhaps not very useful, to pin it down to just one narrow pigeon hole.
As to beginning a sentence with "So", I agree it is often a verbal punctuation, perhaps a transition, used in several contexts, often determined by inflection. Much more common I believe in spoken communication.
Regards, John
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JohnTF
Veteran
Is there another version for "Like", or "Uh"?
Having spoken extemporaneously publicly for years, I find myself listening for these also in my own lectures, editing on the fly.
Sometimes people who speak as a profession tape themselves to improve, but I am surprised at how difficult it is, even if you are carefully listening, to limit the use of, for example, "uh" at times while speaking before a group.
OTOH, the example of Ms. Kennedy is an example of someone who is not practiced at public speaking.
Of course, some of the smoothest talkers were not necessarily the best choices, but if you are a poor speaker, you can look like an idiot in very short order on camera. ;-)
The style, syntax, grammar, of TV news-persons today seems to be at an all time low, even when they are reading.
Have to give the BBC news high marks, along with generally PBS.
Now if we can just get them to speak Standard English. ;-)
Regards, John
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear John,
No, sorry, it's not. It may be the most widespread but it is merely a dialect. As are all the other dialects. There is no world standard -- and an awful lot of people speak English as a second language, which may be turning into a dialect of its own, with regional sub-dialects.
The only reason not to specify 'English English' is that it looks pretty silly. It's a bit like 'London, England', or 'Paris, France'. Without a qualifier -- 'London' or 'Paris' -- it can fairly be taken to be the original.
To deny that the other English-speaking peoples derived their English from anything other than modern English (post 17th century or thereabouts) is to fly in the face of the facts. Even so, the phrase 'English English' makes more sense than a flat (and flatly erroneous) assertion that American English is the world standard.
Cheers,
Roger
FrankS
Registered User
Clearly and self-evidently, (central) Canadian English is the world standard with its neutral accent. 
JohnTF
Veteran
I flatly assert it is a matter of opinion, English English would include many dialects as well.
Actually, I have heard, "The Queen's English" and "Oxford English" much more often, but in my region, it is accepted that we speak a "Neutral English", which the Canadians copied from us, ;-).
There are published opinions, for better or worse, that American English, has become the accepted current standard. I do not take particular pride in that assertion, nor can I put a precise date on it, though I did not see it in print until probably the last ten years.
As most of the time I feel few here speak Standard American English from what I hear personally, I do not see this assertion as a threat to language in the UK and I do not expect the phrase "Speak American" to gain real traction.
If I look for a possible justification of such an assertion, I would look to population, technology and economics.
The world seems to face that fact (flat or not) and seems to be proceeding accordingly.
Left up to me, I personally would choose to standardize on Alistair Cooke English.
"As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later."
I did, however, live in fear that I would receive a pencil eraser at an awkward junction leaving me with limited options while in London, and that was not London, Ontario home of the famous Annual Shakespeare Festival. ;-)
Unfortunately, those fears went unrealized.
I also hear that York is proposing to change their name to "Old York" to distinguish it properly from the other well known one, York, Ontario.
Bit of a Tempest in a Tea Kettle, eh what old chap? Thank god I watched a lot of those old English English films. One cannot work up proper stereotypes without the influence and support of media.
OK, you may be fighting the current, but you will be awarded style points, as always.
(I replaced the accepted "So" with the new standard, OK.)
John
ps-- do not forget to set your spell check and keyboard to English when you pen the next article for Shutterbug.
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dmr
Registered Abuser
They say the same about Omaha.
Clearly and self-evidently, (central) Canadian English is the world standard with its neutral accent.
It is, eh?
Roger Hicks
Veteran
The idea of a 'neutral' accent is terminally bizarre. Such a thing cannot exist.
Cheers,
R.
Cheers,
R.
JohnTF
Veteran
Right, the number of eh's vary by region, and I can normally pick up the very slight rise toward the ends of certain words that are a Canadian "tell", but it can be very close to "neutral Cleveland" .
Neutral accent, on the surface, appears to be an oxymoron, however a neutral accent normally refers to the lack of any particularly recognizable regional inflection. Some say, other than calling a carbonated beverage "pop", short for Soda Pop, there is a very slight flat "a" around here. Henry Higgins might have trouble placing you. ;-)
In truth, it is not a great achievement, your speech is what it is, but with 35 trips to Europe and a similar number to Mexico, people often tell me they have less trouble understanding my English than others. If you have a southern accent, you may as well be from Mars to them. In Mexico, they often think I am Canadian as I do not have any strong regional US accent.
I became quite used to people telling me I had an accent in French, and I used to joke it was everyone else who had an accent, but my friend Maria from Mandelieu said it was Parisian. ;-)
Am afraid what ever it is now, it is rusty.
I know I have heard different accents in French regions, I just cannot tell what region they are from. Quebec French is very recognizable for a variety of reasons.
While in various parts of Morocco, locals could not place my French accent, and they often did not place my English as American, but I was traveling with a French tour group.
I grew up in a suburb that was largely a population of folks whose parents had immigrated from central Europe, so there were a lot of accents, my dad was from Kiev, but at such an early age that he had no accent.
Unfortunately, some people used to make fun of people with an accent in their English, but I was taught to understand from hearing an accent that they probably spoke at least one more language than I did.
Roger, I joke with you a bit more, because I know you are a student of languages, and many other things, and I am guessing you enjoy a fine point now and again.
Canadians, I joke with you guys, just to mess with you, after all, the border is 30 miles by the crow's flight?, and you have decent beer, if it stops evolving into American beer, plus I know the problems of Toronto in the 1950's and you have done a very decent job of turning that around to create a beautiful city with a subway, (bit expensive though) please send those folks in charge down here, eh. ;-)
Regards, John
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kermaier
Well-known
Good thing I decided to read the rest of the thread before I mentioned "well" as well.
There are, of course, other similar locutions in common use in various languages and cultures.
I've heard a fair number of Brits begin sentences with "Right!" even though they're certainly not agreeing (nor sarcastically disagreeing) with any immediately preceding statement.
Israelis of a certain generation seem to begin most of their sentences with the Hebrew word "az", meaning "then", which I guess is similar to "so" in that it connotes a continuation from something immediately preceding. (Israelis of an earlier generation use "nu" liberally, even though they're not Yiddish speakers.)
I'm sure there are others that aren't coming to mind right now.
::Ari
wray
Well-known
Within the context of a country, neutral would indicate a "plain" accent that is regionally difficult to identify. For example a great many Americans speak with what H.L. Mencken called the American Midwestern non-accent which does indeed sound strange to those not from the U.S.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Region. Yes. USA. UK (by region). Australia. South Africa. India (by region -- a Bombay accent is not a Calcutta accent is not a Madras accent). It IS an oxymoron.
The most neutral accent in the world will, at best, provoke the reaction 'You're not from round here, are you?'
And: no offence (or offense -- Americans can't spell either*) taken. Or I hope given...
*This is another argument, and actually, I'm on the side of non-standardized spelling: standardised spelling is a nasty 18th century invention.
Edit: as Wray says, 'Within the context of a country'.
Cheers,
R.
JohnTF
Veteran
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J J Kapsberger
Well-known
It's not quite an alternate spelling. The two words are pronounced differently.
The correct word to denote the element is aluminium. The word aluminum comes from a trade name (I'm not sure which one; perhaps Aluminum Foil) and has in North America become the commonplace word instead of aluminium.