Lion in Winter

Well let's face it, our very own "soup's off" doesn't sound good at all, now does it?

Ash UK/US

I work for a large department store chain in the US everynight they arounce they are closed and it goes as follows. "we are now closed, please bring your final purchases to a register, thank you for shopping *****' (store name)

:scared: :scared: :scared: why it would be so hard to say 'thank you for shopping AT *****' is beyond me.

Ash

fatbrit

In standard British English, the choice between the relative pronoun that or who(m)/which has nothing to do with whether it refers to animate or inanimate but is rather determined by whether the subordinate clause is defining or non-defining. I have noticed that MS Word’s grammar checker insists on using that with defining subordinate clauses. Is this perhaps the difference to which you are referring? Is this standard American English usage or just an MS whim?

Lion in Winter

Fatbrit I bet you're a riot at parties.

Sarah

I think that most of the problem stems from advertisers. The language of advertisers is what ****ing up most of the spelling and grammar we see today , nearly all the things I see that annoy me are from advertisers.
On TV recently I saw an ad for food and at the end the words that appear on screen are "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee"
Eh?? This doesn't make sense!
I always think, why can't they just spell things the way they are meant to spelt. Whats wrong with spelling 'quick' correctly instead of 'kwik'
Same with 'night', does it have to be 'nite' ?
Its the advertisers, they can't spell!

fatbrit

My knowledge of grammar (taken from another life, I'm afraid) or my nun in the latex suit?

Lion in Winter

Well both really. I'll bet there's not many people who could simultaneously diagram a sentence and cover a nun in talc.

fatbrit

It's a special talent. I was going to bore you with the difference between American and British English usage of the present perfect simple in order to explain some of the issues worthy contributors brought into the open further up this thread, but I’m afraid it’ll send you all to sleep.

Lion in Winter

Well I have to go to sleep anyway, it's late here. Still, if you can come up with some translation software that will turn American business-speak back into English I should be very grateful. Oh and it should work both ways - I have to redo my CV and I never learned American business-speak. Not only that, I can't seem to use nouns as verbs the way they do.

fatbrit

Sweet dreams!

Lion in Winter

Now that you say that, I think powdered sugar might work just as well as talc.

Rockgurl

Which brings to mind something else. When we say "the milk's off" we take it to mean that the mild is sour. The first time I said it to my partner she had no idea what I was talking about, so I said "the milk's bad" and she said "do you mean it's sour?". We're all supposed to be speaking English but I don't somehow think so.

I was buying a phone the other night and the saleswoman said something about evening charges. To this day I have no idea what she said and I had to get her to repeat it 3 times and then get my partner to translate. It's so frustrating!

neil

[QUOTE=Ben]Aren't you being just a tad pedantic.
QUOTE]

I don't really think it's being pedantic when in extreme cases different usages can actually change the meaning of a sentence, meaning that it could be misinterpreted. I know my "Vegetarian Fed Hens" example is an extreme case but it shows it could happen.

Also, with phrases such as winningest; would you also advocate the use of winninger? I've not heard that one but it would logically follow that one team could be winninger than another (if we accept winningest anyway). Furthermore why not have runningest for an athlete that has competed more than any other athlete (or competingest!); smokingest (as in they are the smokingest person I know - meaning they smoke the most of any person I know). I've also never heard the word losingest used; why not?

Consistency is what makes a language useful; if things are changed randomly it makes it more difficult to be understood by foreigners (but maybe to people with a George W mindset this doesn't matter ).

Celtic_Angel

er... I've never used that expression to mean something has run out......like rockgurl I'd use it to mean somthing is rotten/sour

As for the soups out ..I'd probably say that I've been here over 8 years and have to admit that the past few years I've noticed how Americanized I've become, I forget what's British and what's not lol

May of the complains/peeves people have about the States don't really bother me too much at all, in fact I don't notice many of them any more
It's fun to come on here though and get my Brit fix and to hear y'all complain about stuff that aggravated me ages ago

Lion in Winter

[QUOTE=Celtic_Angel]er... I've never used that expression to mean something has run out......like rockgurl I'd use it to mean somthing is rotten/sour

/QUOTE]

"Soup's off" at a restaurant - when they've run out of it.