(Question for Brits: is the two-syllable form "learned" still used to mean "educated" in BrE???)
Yes it is, although not often.
Its most often heard in Parliament: When an MP addresses another in the house of commons, and the addressee is a barrister, the correct form of address is "My learned friend"
Oh, and we'll cheerfully use "fucking" as an adjective. "Bloody" is considerably milder, "this damn car" = "this bloody car"
I have never seen the word "bank" spelt "banque" here in the UK; although all this changed when I went to France! Does anyone have another example of this kind of spelling we can replace this with?
No. There aren't any (he boldly asserts). I've moved "cheque" vs "check" into the miscellany.
I'll agree with both of the above points: I think 'learned' is usually writen 'learnèd', to put emphasis on the pronounciation, and I've never seen bank spelt banque either. I'm not sure about the fitted, forecasted, knitted, lighted, wedded bit, either. Lit, wed, forecast are British English too, but I'm not entirely sure about the context.
Archeology, encyclopedia and medieval are also highly acceptable variants in British English, almost preferred; upwards would be only preferred to upward. I'd personally also write 'skillful', not skilful; 'argument' not arguement, 'jail' not gaol.
The list should be split into cases where there are additional British English words and where the words aren't understood. Balls is perfectly unacceptable, whilst Dialling Code, fag, lorry, lounge, pissed, pudding, randy, ring someone and shag are all just alternatives... the american words are acceptable too. 'Concession' generally refers to a reduction for certain people (old people, kids... generally classed as 'concessions'), where as a discount is general. I think I'm right in saying 'tube' would just refer to the London Underground. -- almost but not quite: see The Tube. sjc
I think the most important thing to say is that American English and British English are growing together. With the world spanning media, within a few hundred years there will be no American English or British English - there will be only English. (Hell, by that time, there might only be one global language.)
-- I disagree strongly with your theory of convergence of language. English and American are becoming different languages by slow and sure degree. Also, if history teaches us anything, it is that languages are strongly culturally based entities, and that meaning will never ever be truly global. I (and most British people I know who are literate) would never write archaeology, encyclopaedia, or mediaeval in the fashion you indicate above. sjc
And frankly, it is this kind of slackness in the use of language which debases it. Language is like currency: bad usage and spelling drives out good. If you are English you should use the orthodox spelling and not resort to the incorrect. In France the Academie des Belles Lettres would be down on this like a ton of bricks. sjc
The improved global communications hypothesis is an interesting one, but actually is underdetermined by the physical evidence. In 1978, Robert Burchfield, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries made a speech in Chicago in which he thought that on the balance of all the evidence available that 'British' English and American English were moving so far apart and so inexorably that in 200 years they would be mutually unintelligible. This did not go down too well with the convergence theorists at the time. But in the last thirty years or so, that gap which Burchfield predicted between the implementations of the languages has actually widened by a great deal. Usage has changed significantly on both sides of the language. American English has considerably more Hispanic loan words now than thirty years ago; it has changed grammatically; it forms verbs from nouns more easily; it is altogether a more flexible language than 'British' English.
The real worry, however, from my point of view is not that the languages will diverge but that they will become one homogenous grey mess... sjc
The Internet will ultimately accentuate divergence more than ever before, and the prime movers will fight tooth and nail to protect their own particular implementations since they recognise that language is a key feature of self and cultural definition. Certainly the future of English as the dominant language itself is not unconditionally guaranteed. It is by no means a rational language and it is not easy for novitiates to acquire. Grammar, and usage are only to a certain extent ever going to be determined by minor cultural epiphenomena such as 'movies'. sjc
There is nothing silly concerning this debate about language whatsoever. As The Blessed William Burroughs once opined: 'Language is a virus'. These 'real' users of language you seem to advocate do not do whatever it takes to communicate: the preponderance of this putative polis are barely articulate, let alone literate (current estimates suggest that fewer than 5% of the US population read books). My native language (see Cornish language) was systematically suppressed over four hundred years and has been brought back from extinction by people who care about language, meaning and culture; if language was a matter of life and death for my forebears, then so it is for me. Let me state this one time unequivocably: languages do not converge, they diverge. The only way in which two disparate languages can possibly merge is by absorption which is not at all the same thing as convergence, and this can only be brought about by the sort of expedients mocked so effectively in George Orwell's 1984.
The arguments about lexical equivalents are entirely consistent with the sort of arguments levelled at Burchfield 30-odd years ago, and it seems that the convergent hypothesis has apparently got no further in the intervening timespan. Never have languages converged in the history of humanity: what makes you think they will now? The Internet? In twenty years, let alone two hundred years time, the Internet will not exist in its present form. sjc
--- Found a resource on Cockney slang, but it's copyrighted: http://www.byrne.dircon.co.uk/cockney/cockney3.htm. It's on my todo list to request permission to add the info to the Wikipedia. <>< tbc
--- On the subject of the terms 'Underground' and 'Tube' British people use these terms specifically to refer to The London Underground in London and would not normally refer to other underground transit systems as such. I am British and i wouldn't for example refer to the New York subway as the underground or the tube, i'd just call it the subway and i'd call the subway in Paris the Metro because that's what it's called. Am i making any sense? - JamieTheFoool
ALSO: The Tube = London Underground minus The Bank to Waterloo Line, Docklands Light Railway, etc. London Underground = All the lines now and historically controlled by [London Underground Limited]? inclusive often of few primarily overground lines such as Docklands Light Railway. The Tube and London Underground, or even 'the underground', are not coterminous. sjc