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We've been having some problems with people starting to (jocular Linguist English) peeve about unrelated topics in the comments section. This has upset some readers (and also me, but I'm hardened by 11 years of blogging). More importantly it is against the comments policy , so I've had to resume being a police-y person about it. If you'd like to request a topic for the blog, please feel free to email me (see contact page ). If you'd like to just let off opinion-steam, there are lots of places on the web for that. Here, we're trying to get away from the opinions and into the facts. So, in the interest of the comments policy, I've just deleted a comment on a previous post. Having already checked out whether the assumptions in the comment were fact or fiction, I might as well make it into a blog post. I know that this is a bad idea. I don't want to set up the precedent that topic-changing comments will get immediate blog-treatment. But, it's Saturday m...

  Please reserve the comments section for topics related to this post.  Lately, I've been super-aware of people saying that British English " slavishly " copies American English. Like this:  the UK slavishly adopts Americanisms !! (from an email to me this week) “To be snooty about Americans, while slavishly admiring them; this is another crucial characteristic of being British.”  (From the Economist , but quoted this week in Toni Hargis's reflection on the recent Word of Mouth on English ) It's an interesting choice of words, and I was reminded of it this morning when I read the television critic Mark Lawson writing about BBC4 (my emphasis added): The original 2002 mission statement also included “international cinema”, and this was expanded to include foreign television, which could be regarded as BBC4’s most lasting legacy. Its screening of Mad Men was formative in changing the UK’s attitude to US drama from dismissiveness to submissiveness. Why slavishly...

This is one of those posts where I'm going to let someone else do most of the writing. I got this message from Justin a couple of weeks ago: I’m from Malaysia, where BrE dominates in schools but AmE is prominent in pop culture (so too CanE and AusE). I was British educated there, before moving to the UK for boarding school and my undergrad. So I’d like to think of myself as pretty much a BrE speaker. My girlfriend is American. A born-and-bred Wisconsinite. I’m currently living with her in Illinois as I pursue my Masters. This is partly the reason we so enjoy your blog, as it has helped clear up a number of differences we’ve come across. One difference that gets me every time is the use of the word sure as an affirmative. When I use sure as an agreement, it is usually in response to a suggestion. I feel I am deferring to that suggestion, as if I am saying ‘I’ll go along with what is invariably your point’. My girlfriend, however, uses sure as a simple ‘yes’ - whether ...