There is a lot of affectation in British English.
Especially in some of the surnames or place names of the upper
classes. I swear they just invent a stupid way to say their estate's
name so they can look down on anyone who doesnt know it.

Case in point - Princess Di's brother's gaff - Althorp. Why on EARTH
is it pronounced "althrop" - purely so they can laugh at the peasants
- cannot be any other reason!

Emma

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:43:34 +0000 (UTC), "Su/Cutworks"
wrote:

Emma wrote:

Britain is so full of local dialects and accents, that that in itself
gives new words or new meanings to words if you just drive 50 miles
up'road!

Now't queerer than folk, lass.

I am half-way through reading Melvyn Bragg's book on the evolution of
the English language at the moment. It is fascinating and I highly
recommend it to anyone who is interested in the English language.

Did you see the series? It was wonderful.

For instance, I never knew that back when the USA was being born -
American English was considered to be much purer and closer to proper
English for a long while. I always assumed that when an American says
words such as 'gotten' where we would say 'got' - that it was an
American evolution to the language. But according to Bragg, 'gotten'
was original and the Brits dropped the ending and shortened the word -
which many found quite slovenly. Come to think of it though, I am sure
many dialects up North still use gotten too. There are plenty other
examples like this that are in the book.

What I fail to comprehend is the use of the ending -tate. Orientate to
orient someone in a direction. It seems superfluous to me. And odd to an
American ear that has gotten used to most British terminology. It sounds
fairly BBC-inspired which means it's more an affectation than anything else.

-Su