Top 10 Irritating Errors in American English (II)

The first time I saw these errors in my students’ essays, I had to look out of the window repeatedly to assure myself that I was actually in America. Of course, double comparatives and double superlatives were acceptable in earlier times (recall Shakespeare’s “the most unkindest cut of all”?), but they are now taboo in […]

The first time I saw these errors in my students’ essays, I had to look out of the window repeatedly to assure myself that I was actually in America. Of course, double comparatives and double superlatives were acceptable in earlier times (recall Shakespeare’s “the most unkindest cut of all”?), but they are now taboo in modern English.

 

Then there are the more pardonable errors of adding “most” to words that are already, by their nature, superlative—such as “unique,” “outstanding,” “exceptional,” “excellent,” etc. Actually, I too had used the phrase “most outstanding” in the past before realizing that it’s redundant since “outstanding” denotes the highest possible degree attainable and is not susceptible to gradation. In my grammar quizzes for the news writing classes I teach here, only two students have been able to identify “most unique” as a grammatical error.

8. Americans, especially young Americans, have invented the really irritatingly redundant prepositional phrase “off of” to stand for “from” or to merely intensify the preposition “off.” And it is catching on very fast among even the educated elite. It’s usual to hear people say something like, “He got it off of the Internet,” or “She made a lot of profit off of that business,” or “She jumped off of the train” (why not simply “she jumped off the train”?), etc. It makes me want to slap someone on the mouth! That sort of murderous violence against the English language should be punishable by flogging.

9. “I’m good.” This is a standard response to a greeting here. It’s rare to find people answer “how are you” with “I’m fine.” It’s always “I’m good.” But to be “good” says nothing about your health or your wellbeing; it merely indicates that you’re of good behavior. And I don’t care if you’re well-behaved; I only wanted to know how you were doing!

10. One last weird expression that gets the juices of British speakers of the English language boiling is the way Americans use “already” as an all-purpose, terminal intensifier to express exasperation or impatience, as in “Get away from here already!” “Resign your appointment already!” According to Dictionary.om, this colloquial use of “already” dates back to 1903, and is derived from a mimicry of Yiddish (a language based on the mixture of German and Hebrew and spoken as a vernacular by the European Jewry) where the Yiddish word “shoyn,” is used in same sense.

And, although “already” and “all ready” are often impossible to tell apart in speech, the written forms have discrete meanings and uses, which many American writers miss. The phrase “all ready” means “entirely ready” or “prepared” (he was all ready to fight). “Already” means “previously” (The man had already graduated from the school when we met him) or “so soon” (Is it chowtime already?).

The truth, after all is said and done, is that because of the power of American pop culture and the dominance of their variety of the English language, many of the misusages I have identified may become so standard that someone reading this piece in, say 50, years from now would wonder if I have my nuts loose. Many usages that were originally regarded as “horrible Americanisms,” and resisted for that reason by especially the British, are now fully integrated into International and British Standard English.

For instance, these words and phrases were once regarded as “horrible Americanisms” and stoutly resisted by the British: radio, immigrant, squatter, teenager, lengthy, to advocate, to locate, to belittle, live wire, hot air, third degree, cold war, mass meetings, peace process. Today, they are so integral to our everyday expressions that many of us can’t even imagine why the Brits had any problems with them.

On the other hand, many Briticisms never cross the Atlantic, a recent notable exception being the sudden popularity in American English of the informal British English word “gobsmacked” after “Britain’s Got a Talent” Internet sensation Susan Boyle used it to describe her unexpected success at the talent show. The word means “to be so surprised that you don’t know what to say.”

After she told CNN she was “gobsmacked, absolutely gobsmacked” by her success, the word topped internet search terms in America for weeks on end. Now, I see that many Americans have integrated it into their active idiolect.

However, some American expressions are still resisted by British writers and speakers. Expressions such as “OK, I guess,” “to check up on,” “to lose”; the sentence adverb “hopefully”; spellings such as “color,” “theater”; forms such as “gotten (British “got”), proven (British “proved”), “dove” (dived), “snuck” (sneaked); and grammatical features such as the use of “he” to refer back to “one” (One must support his team; British: “one’s” team) or informal “real” (That was real good; British: “really good”) have not made successful inroads into British English.

So are numerous words and phrases like “sidewalk” for pavement, “gas” for petrol, “first floor” for ground floor (with corresponding changes for other floors), “faucet” for tap, “name for” for the British “name after” (as in, Washington DC was named for (British: named after) former American President George Washington), “wash up” for wash face and hands, etc.