Latest news with #AmericanEnglish
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
Minding our language on the use of Americanisms
The continual expansion of the English language is inevitable and welcome. But while Elisabeth Ribbans is right that 'it would be a mistake to regard language as a fortress', it is not unreasonable to lament the effect of some invasive species whose proliferation is so rapid that native alternatives face possible extinction (How the use of a word in the Guardian has gotten some readers upset, 4 June). 'Gotten' may be an innocuous, if inelegant, English word making a return journey from the US, but some other US variants are more problematic. For example, the phrase 'Can I get …?' is suffocating more polite ways of making a request, such as 'May I/can I have …?' or simply 'I'd like …'. It is also annoyingly inaccurate, since in most cases the person asking has no intention of helping themselves and wouldn't be allowed to, even if they wanted to. But wholesale adoption not only leads to neglect of alternatives, it can also produce banality. So when both a sandwich and a sunset might today be described as 'awesome', it is reasonable to imagine that even as eclectic a wordsmith as Shakespeare might consider modern English borrowings as diminishing the language through having gotten McGilchristCromer, Norfolk Thank you, Elisabeth Ribbans, for your article on the cosmopolitan and evolving use of words in the English language. I am always stung by the snobbery I encounter among my British peers regarding American words or spellings. Criticism of American accents more so. My country of origin provokes pride and shame in increasingly equal measure, but to be cowed because of my voice, both written and spoken, leaves a foul taste. Once we've gotten past this distasteful persnicketiness, we can actually appreciate the meaning of the words being used, not just their Amy FultonOxton, Scottish Borders I grew up in the old West Riding, only a few miles from the county border with Lancashire. In the early 1950s, we regularly used the word 'gotten'. It was frowned on by teachers and others addicted to standard English. I believe the use of the word was common in other districts of Yorkshire. It is an English and not an American word, which has sadly passed out of use. Language evolves!Roderick WilsonAmpleforth, North Yorkshire When I worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, in the 1980s, my friendly editor had more appreciation of British irony than spelling. She once wrote on a draft paper: 'Richard. Please pick one spelling of 'practice' and stick to it.'Richard LammingShaldon, Devon Am I alone in finding 'shined' for 'shone' less than illuminating? Incidentally, like, who introduced 'like' like?Bill WintripDorchester, Dorset So not an ill-gotten 'gotten' then. Now where do we stand on 'snuck'?Tony RimmerLytham St Anne's, Lancashire Never mind 'faucet' and 'gotten' (Letters, 29 May), I've been racking my brain: in what play did Shakespeare use 'worser'? (Colon used free gratis.)Iain FentonLancaster Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Mint
6 days ago
- Business
- Mint
No more re-explaining: Free ChatGPT users, say goodbye to repeating yourself in every chat
ChatGPT is really good at a few things - whether it's collating data, whipping up personalised recipes, or writing a quick email for work. However, if you're on the free tier of OpenAI's hyper successful AI tool, you'd understand the pain of having to re-explain yourself every time you want something done. If your prompt is lost or wafed to ChatGPT a while back, chances are that you'd have to redo the whole process if you want something done. Now, it appears that ChatGPT will finally allow its free users to go back to the chatbot's memory and continue the conversation. Mind you, this feature is already available for free users, but it hasn't been perfect - and most users end up having to manually remove prompts from the memory box due to low storage. It's pretty standard for OpenAI to roll out features to premium users first, and then slowly bring them to its free users. Of course, free users wouldn't get the same treatment as paid users in terms of features, but for users who love personalising their chatbot and don't wish to pay for it, this is great news. Now, free ChatGPT users can access its 'memory' feature and also turn on the chatbot's recall mechanism. What does this mean? The AI tool will be able to read your recent conversations to make sure the answers you're getting are tailored to you. This could be little things - the writing style or tone, the choice of language (British English or American English, for instance), etc. These small things, when bunched together, can save you a lot of time when you're engaging with GPT and have already fed expansive prompts to the chatbot. There's a catch, though. For free ChatGPT users, recall wouldn't work as it does for paid users. The 'lightweight' version of memory will only possess a short term memory. In essence, don't expect it to remember the conversation you had 2 weeks ago about why you should switch to almond milk. If you value your privacy and want nothing to be remembered by ChatGPT, there's an option to turn off memories and chat history. Prefer being incognito? Users also have access to the 'Temporary Chat' option that saves nothing to ChatGPT's memory. OpenAI is currently on a mission to make ChatGPT more personalised and natural for users. And this move is part of its larger plans for the chatbot. Memory plays a significant role in any AI chatbot's ability to deliver personalised and useful results each time. Hopefully, in the near future, you won't have to worry about writing long and specific prompts to get the job done; for ChatGPT will remember it all!
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Crossword editor's desk: should puzzles avoid Americanisms?
How can you tell if a phrase is American English, as opposed to the kinds spoken in the UK and elsewhere? I spent some pleasurable time searching to see who has used the phrase 'no way, no how'. An American cadence, but since it had appeared in an editorial about George Osborne, I gave it a clean bill of health. Some solvers are wary of an excess of Americanisms, and with reason: once a term is used widely enough to count as reasonable crossword fodder, it's unlikely to still be called an Americanism (or Australianism or whatever): the once-US BRASSIERE being a case in point. It becomes possible, though, to hear a word in an American accent when it need not be. Another recent quick crossword had 'They restore order in schools' for JANITORS. Transatlantic janitors spring readily to mind: I immediately thought of Corky and the Juice Pigs' Neil Young parody Janitor while conceding that Good Will Hunting will be on more solvers' minds. But as any Scottish solver will tell you, 'the janny' is the one who restores order in schools where highers are taken. Meanwhile Rory Cellan-Jones has written to the Financial Times to congratulate the paper for 'hiding cryptic crossword clues in the headlines', giving the example: Boutique lenders power post-Covid upswing in blank cheque Spac deals As we did with Victor Meldrew's 'Bag eggnog but get a tad bugged (4)', I'd be delighted if anyone could work this one out, with complete flexibility over letter count. Entries are now closed for Tramp's letters-latent Genius, which celebrated the Dorothy Parker poem Inventory and its couplet 'Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.' Solution above and a new Genius from Pangakupu awaits. In our cluing conference for RELENTLESS, the audacity award is JasCanis's for the near-article-length 'Fierce race ends with fast time and the French sprinters taking first and last place'; the runners-up are Harlobarlo's startling 'Nestlé's regularly alerted about being ruthless' and Rakali's boffinesque 'Relative space-time without being constant'; the winner is the impressively efficient 'Ongoing without diminishing'. Kludos to HighNoonAngel and please leave entries for JANITOR below, along with any favourite clues or puzzles you have spotted. 188 Words for Rain by Alan Connor is published by Ebury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Hindu
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
What does ‘mope around' mean?
'I heard you haven't been seen in the gym for almost a week. Is something wrong?' 'My favourite IPL team hasn't been doing well. I feel….' 'Just because your IPL team hasn't been doing well, doesn't mean you should be sitting at home moping.' 'Doing what?' 'Moping! Rhymes with 'hoping'. When you mope, you look and feel miserable. You don't…' 'Someone who is moping, makes no attempt to snap out of his misery.' 'Excellent! He doesn't do anything to get over his disappointment. Makes no attempt to cheer himself up. He continues to be sad and miserable.' 'There are a few people like that in my office. Ever since I had my big fight with my best friend, I've been sitting at home moping.' 'My cousin moped for two weeks when his best friend didn't invite him to her wedding.' 'My father was a different man after retirement. He just sat around the house moping.' 'A lot of people get depressed when they retire. I hope you don't do that after retirement. You'll make your wife's life miserable. By the way, how did Sunil's wife do in the marathon? Did she manage to complete the 5K run?' 'She ran quite well actually. She regrets not having started training earlier.' 'I told her several times to start training for the event. Now she says she should have started training earlier. She's a day late and a dollar short.' 'A day late and a dollar short? I've never heard that expression before! What does it mean?' 'It's an expression mostly limited to American English. When you say that you're a day late and a dollar short, what you're suggesting is that you're a little too late for something. That you don't have the necessary resources to bring about the kind of changes you'd like to.' 'How about this example? Though my boss loved my proposal, he didn't make use of it. I'd submitted two days after the deadline. He said that I was a day late and a dollar short.' 'Great example. If you had given me this information yesterday, I could have easily made a lot of money in the stock market. Now, it's a day late and a dollar short.' 'You need to get organised. No matter what task you're given, you're always a day late and a dollar short.' 'I think I should be giving that piece of advice to you. You're the one who always delays things — never gets anything done on time.' 'You have a point there. By the way, I went to the bank yesterday and asked them about opening a De-mat account. They gave me a couple of forms to fill out.' 'That's good! Did you ask them about…?' 'Do you 'fill out' a form or do you 'fill in' one? I always get confused.' 'Both are acceptable. You can 'fill in' a form or you can 'fill out' a form. They both mean the same thing. If you want temporary membership in our club, you need to fill out several forms.' 'Or I can say, 'If you want to become a member, please fill in this form'.' 'Very good. Maybe that's what you need to do in order to stop moping.' 'What's that?' 'Fill in or fill out forms!' 'Very funny!' upendrankye@
Atlantic
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Israel Plunges Into Darkness
After 19 months of war in Gaza, the Israeli government has decided to march deeper into the quagmire. Israel has announced its intention to take and retain a significant part of the Gaza Strip. Call-up orders are going out to tens of thousands of already exhausted reservists. The battered, hungry population of Gaza is to be forced into an even smaller part of the narrow enclave. The lives of the remaining Israeli hostages are in greater danger than ever. The plan came with a caveat: The escalation will reportedly not start until the end of U.S. President Donald Trump's tour of the region next week, allowing for the possibility of a new hostage deal. But reports of an impending deal have become such a constant background murmur that few observers count on a diplomatic breakthrough to head off the new operation. 'We will achieve full, absolute victory in Gaza,' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Hebrew in a social-media clip just before the decision Sunday night by the security cabinet—the committee of senior ministers responsible for military affairs. 'We are in the stages of victory,' Netanyahu added. Or, to paraphrase in American English: We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. For this Israeli, as for many others, the escalation is a promise to plunge deeper into darkness, militarily and morally. The Israeli army will seek to take and hold more territory in Gaza and to 'destroy all terror infrastructure, above- and belowground,' a government spokesperson said Monday. 'Belowground' refers to Hamas's tunnel network, which has bedeviled the Israeli army since the war began. What will be left standing aboveground remains to be seen. The spokesperson, David Mencer, said that the objective was both to 'return the hostages'—the 59 captives, alive and dead, still in Gaza—and to defeat Hamas. But Netanyahu made the order of his priorities clear in a controversial speech last week: Freeing the hostages was 'an important goal,' he said, but the 'supreme goal' was victory over Hamas. Or, as he put it in another clip for his social-media followers this week, to drive Hamas 'from the face of the Earth.' Netanyahu has made this overambitious promise—of 'absolute' triumph over Hamas—since early in the war, and has repeatedly said that it is around the corner. But total victory is a chimera. Reoccupying larger chunks of Gaza is unlikely to eliminate Hamas. Instead, it will expose Israel's soldiers to a long war of attrition with the extreme Islamist organization. Hamas's losses will mount, but this will not make the deaths on the Israeli side any easier to bear. Israel's military doctrine relies on mobilizing large numbers of civilians to fight short wars. This war is no longer short, and many reservists have spent more time in uniform than in civvies since October 7, 2023. They, their families, and their workplaces are very tired. Netanyahu's government promises more exhaustion. The Palestinian civilians of Gaza, of course, are much more exhausted and traumatized. In the name of protecting them, the Israeli army intends to order yet another evacuation, reportedly to a single 'humanitarian zone' in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu said this week that the intention is for the army to continue to hold whatever territory it takes. Implicitly, then, Palestinian civilians won't be returning until the promised day when Hamas is erased—and maybe not even then. If permanent displacement is the government's policy, the proper term for it is ethnic cleansing —a moral catastrophe. And what will happen inside the 'humanitarian zone'? The government reportedly has a plan for providing food aid via a largely unknown foundation and private security firms. Nothing has been reported about who will govern the area, provide health services, or enforce public order. If Israel were to try to impose a military government, soldiers would be under constant attack. Netanyahu has been unwilling to discuss proposals for creating a new Palestinian government in Gaza. Hamas is likely to fill the vacuum. The security cabinet apparently paid little attention to this problem in setting its policy. It also reportedly ignored an explicit warning from the military chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir. 'In the plan for a full-scale operation, we won't necessarily reach the hostages,' Zamir told ministers in a preparatory session before Sunday's decision, according to Israel's Channel 13. 'Keep in mind that we could lose them.' As of now, Israel's official count is that 21 hostages are still alive, the fate of three is unknown, and Hamas is holding the bodies of 35. Netanyahu insists that military pressure is the only way to save the remaining living hostages. But no hostages have been found or released since fighting resumed in March. A New York Times investigation concluded that 41 hostages have died in captivity since the war began, including at least four who were killed in Israeli bombings and seven who were murdered by their captors to keep Israeli troops from rescuing them. Those dangers will only increase if the fighting intensifies. The gap between the Israeli public and the government is most stark on the hostage issue. A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of Israelis see saving the hostages as the most important goal in the war, compared with one-quarter who say that toppling Hamas is most important. Last month, nearly 1,000 current and former Air Force reservists signed a public letter calling on the government to reach an agreement immediately with Hamas to release the hostages and end the war. That set off a wave of statements by reservists and veterans of other units. So far, Netanyahu has refused to change course. To do so would mean admitting that his promise of absolute victory is hollow. It could spark a revolt by the two far-right parties in his coalition, and bring down his government. It's just possible, nonetheless, that Netanyahu will change his mind and finally respond to the fury and despair of his own people. Or that during his stops in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, the erratic American president will hear something to persuade him to tell Netanyahu to hold his fire. Or that Hamas and Israel will agree to one of the latest proposals for a renewed cease-fire and hostage deal.
