A Murrain Upon Him


I too saw the Brit speak article, and while I do laugh when Albert rolls out a "I might do" and roll my eyes when he mispronounces "schedule" and have threatened the employer with certain and immediate death if he pronounces "pasta" in the British fashion in my hearing (which is perhaps unfair since he is British. Still, a girl has to have standards.) this is what I have to say to the author of the article:

Sod off.

Sure some people use Briticisms due to pretension, but there are others who use them as idiosyncrasies of speech due to reading and exposure. As his absurd slam of Gov. Schwarzenegger illustrates, the author doesn't bother to distinguish between these usages. Der Arnold, complains the professor, says "a coffee" instead of "a cup of coffee." Well here's a newsflash for you, Herr doktor professor of journalism, Germans frequently shorten the formal "eine tasse Kaffee" (a cup of coffee) to "ein Kaffee" (a coffee), so Der Arnold is not being pretentious, he's simply doing in English what he would do in German, and as his usage is neither incorrect nor ungrammatical, it seems to me you could lighten up a bit there, chum. Compared all the "modern" twaddle spoken and written by academics and journalist these days, a mere Briticism comes as a positive relief.