Oklahoma-speak - or at least American-speak - is clearly seeping into the discourse of British teenagers more quickly than I'd imagined (see 'How to speak Oklahoman', 6 March). I noticed during the last two weeks, when I was examining in the UK, that most of the candidates answered my greeting of 'how are you today?' with 'I'm good, thanks' or some similar construction. I would always have said - and still would say - 'fine' or 'very well'.
It's like the other thing I've noticed for some time now, but haven't heard anyone comment on - the disappearance of what I think, from recalling my school French lessons, is called the imperfect tense. As in 'X just got better!', which surely should be 'X has just got better'. Or 'did you try the salsa dip?' as opposed to 'have you tried the salsa dip?' Surely the first of these suggests a meal which occured some time ago, while the second suggests a meal which is ongoing - yet in America, and increasingly in the UK, only the first construction is ever used.
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1 comment:
That's the perfect aspect I believe. Obviously we can live without it, but it's a shame. The adverbing of adjectives is the other thing we're seeing.
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