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Comment by FlamingMoe

2 days ago

However, that is not the perspective of the creator of BritCSS, who refers to current CSS property names as "bastardised" spellings.

It's fair to assume that if a brit writes something online, it's highly likely to be a piss take joke. We just don't waste our time writing /s on the end of every sentence

  • It must be said that the Americans are rather well known for an inability to spot the satire and sarcasm that pervades our conversation here in Blighty!

  • yeah, but IME (as a british person) a lot of british people _do_ actually see it that way.

S/he's wrong, simple as that. "The particular spatio-temporal version of speech that I grew up with is correct, and all others are bastardised" is not a defensible or - frankly - interesting position. Chaucer would find virtually all modern English to be debased; Bede would wince at Chaucer's English; and so on, forever.

Nothing fruitful comes from cultivating arrogance towards the language of others. It is just as much a cherished part of their cultural inheritance as yours is to you.

  • I find it ironic that you're making an argument about how language evolves in the same sentence that you insist on an awkward "s/he" instead of just using a singular "they" (or if you're Richard Stallman, whatever neopronoun he fancies, I forgot what it is)

    • And I find it totes ironical that you'd respond to a post advocating against language prescriptivism, and intolerance of other modes of speaking and writing, by trying to pick on variants you dislike. Point goes whoosh.

      Also, I "insist" on nothing, you're the only one with a chip on your shoulder about pronouns here.

    • there exists nothing else other than a she or a he. Executive Order was signed more than a month ago, have you not heard?

I mean, wouldn't the U.S as a nation essentially be a bastard child of Britain, and thusly use a bastardized English?

  • Strangely, it's the insular dialects across Britain that have become more bastardised over time. The North American English dialects are far more conservative when it comes to evolution. As this BBC article[1] says: "[...] although there are plenty of variations, modern American pronunciation is generally more akin to at least the 18th-Century British kind than modern British pronunciation. Shakespearean English, this isn’t. But the English of Samuel Johnson and Daniel Defoe? We’re getting a bit warmer."

    [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20180207-how-americans...

    • I've heard more specifically the southern US dialect is probably closest. Not sure how deep or dirty in the south. I have about as hard a time understanding people with the US South accent as UK accents.

  • The colonies were acknowledged as the offspring of Britain .. the United States of America is more of a chosen fraternity of the emancipated offspring after they fled the control of their former legal guardians.