Latest news with #Americanisms
Spectator
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Claws out for Keir, Mamdani's poisoned apple & are most wedding toasts awful?
This week: one year of Labour – the verdict In the magazine this week Tim Shipman declares his verdict on Keir Starmer's Labour government as we approach the first anniversary of their election victory. One year on, some of Labour's most notable policies have been completely changed – from the u-turn over winter fuel allowance to the embarrassing climb-down over welfare this week. Starmer has appeared more confident on the world stage but, for domestic audiences, this is small consolation when the public has perceived little change on the problems that have faced Britain for years. Can Starmer turn it around? Tim joined the podcast alongside the Spectator's editor Michael Gove. What would they say Starmer's greatest mistake, and biggest success, have been over the past year? (1:46) Next: would Zohran Mamdani ruin New York? In the magazine this week, the Spectator's deputy US editor Kate Andrews writes about Zohran Mamdani – the self-declared 'democratic socialist' who defied expectations to become the Democratic Party's presumptive candidate for the New York City mayoral election this November. From a little-known state assemblyman to the mayoral heir presumptive – how did Mamdani do it? And what effect could his policies have? Kate joined the podcast alongside the Spectator's US editor Freddy Gray. (24:03) And finally: 'admit it – most wedding toasts are awful' Are wedding toasts as awful as Madeline Grant says they are in the magazine this week? Maddie writes about the trend for multiple speeches at weddings, beyond the traditional three, blaming creeping Americanisms and the feminist revolution, amongst other things. These, compounded with widespread poor oratory skills, means the playbill looks 'fuller and fuller' and guests are denied a moment to 'at least dull the horror with alcohol'. Should we push back against the trend? Maddie joined the podcast alongside professional speechwriter Damian Reilly. (35:37) Hosted by William Moore and Gus Carter. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Daily Mirror
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'Humphrey' and 'uwotm8': How Whitehall's AI assistant was given English lessons
Ministers' favourite chatbot has been given elocution classes to stop it spouting 'trash' - and get it to talk 'rubbish' instead Whitehall's AI assistant has been given elocution lessons to stop spouting 'trash' and talk 'rubbish' instead. The AI tool set, nicknamed 'Humphrey' after the manipulative civil servant in TV's Yes, Minister, has been used to cut back on expensive consultants and speed up how government departments operate. But users noticed a flaw in the bot - an irritating tendency of using Americanisms. Keen to make sure ministers' favourite official remained a true Brit, AI experts in Whitehall's Technology Ministry built a translator for Humphrey, known informally as 'uwotm8'. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: "Humphrey has the potential to transform the way government works – making things faster, more efficient, and less reliant on expensive consultants as we create a leaner state focused on delivering Plan for Change priorities. 'But an AI tool named after a British sitcom icon must speak the King's English. With this new translator, he now sounds a bit more like the rest of us – and that matters when he's advising ministers or engaging with the public. It's a simple fix with a big impact." The news comes as Elon Musk revealed a chilling plan to re-write history using his AI chatbot - with readers accusing him of copying 1984. In George Orwell's dystopian novel, hero Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents and newspapers so they match the tyrannical government's constantly changing party line. This morning, Musk vowed on X to use the latest version of AI chatbot Grok to 'rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors.' He said Grok, which X users can access directly within the app, would be 'retrained' based on the 'corrected' data. AI systems are trained on huge sets of data - mostly from publicly available sources like books, newspaper articles and other sources on the internet. ChatGPT, the main competitor for Musk's Grok AI, is estimated to be trained on more than a trillion words of information. Musk's suggestion would be for his next model to be trained not on original historical sources, but on Grok's revisions of them - with the erratic tech billionaire's team stepping in to remove 'errors'. Musk posted: 'Far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data.'
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
How the use of a word in the Guardian has gotten some readers upset
In Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II, a messenger breathlessly announces to the king that, 'Jack Cade hath gotten London bridge'. Hold this late 16th-century text in mind as we fast forward to last week when Martin Kettle, associate editor and columnist at the Guardian in the UK, was seen to suggest in an opinion piece that, if King Charles has pushed the boundaries of neutrality, such as with his speech to open the new Canadian parliament, he has so far 'gotten away with it'. In a letter published the next day, a reader asked teasingly if this use of 'gotten' – and another writer's reference to a 'faucet' – were signs the Guardian had fallen into line with Donald Trump's demand that news agencies adopt current US terminology, such as referring to the 'Gulf of America'. Another, who wrote to me separately, had first seen the article in the print edition and expected subeditors (or copy editors, if you wish) would eventually catch up and remove 'gotten', which 'is not a word in British English'. She was surprised to find the online version not only unchanged but with the phrase repeated in the headline. Queries over US English spellings or 'Americanisms' form a small but steady strand of correspondence to my office; 'normalcy', 'airplane' and 'hot flash' are among recent contested usages. We explain that while the Guardian was founded in the UK, and this remains its biggest edition, it is 204 years later a global media organisation with two-thirds of its digital audience outside the UK. And the reason some articles use American English is that they are produced by Guardian US, which was launched in September 2007 and works (like Guardian Australia, established in 2013) to serve readers in that country as well as globally. Naturally, local spelling and grammar is followed, although all Guardian articles share a website and one with wider appeal may appear on the front of the UK online edition. Only if a US story is to run in the printed newspaper is it re-edited for British English. The difference in language works both ways, occasionally leading an American eye to mistake British spelling in an online article for error. 'The word 'defense' was spelled 'defence' over and over!' wrote one reader. 'I don't need a job, but I'd be happy to help with your editing.' I can only hope the above explanation reduces consternation. Getting back to 'gotten', which has been described by the linguist David Crystal in his Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language as 'probably the most distinctive of all the [American English/British English] grammatical differences'. Well, to set the record straight, this did not come from Kettle's pen. He wrote 'got' but there was an unwanted change during the editing process, with 'gotten' also making it into the web headline. In my view, it was right that the published piece was subsequently amended back to the writer's voice. However, it would be a mistake to regard language as a fortress. It has always changed. 'Gotten' was used in Middle English and Early Modern English (Shakespeare uses it five times, says Crystal), before falling largely out of use in Britain by the early 1800s, except in 'ill-gotten'. Early copies of the Guardian show some remnant sprinklings: in 1842, it reported that special constables in Rochdale, whose wages had gone unpaid, feared 'this money had gotten into wrong hands'. But in the US, where this past participle of 'get' had travelled with English colonists, its use continued, and lately appears to be making a return to base. 'It's certainly in young people's speech now,' says Crystal. 'I don't use it at all, but Ben [his son and often co-author] does. You can see the rise in usage if you do an Ngram search,' he adds, sending me a Google graph showing frequency in books, with a steep upward curve from around the start of this century. Crystal says it is also important to note that Americans use both got and gotten. 'What this means is that Brits are likely to overuse gotten, thinking it's always a replacement for got, when it isn't.' Rebecca Nicholson, who in reviewing the BBC documentary The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, had ventured that 'once you turn on the faucet of public attention, trying to turn it off again is a sisyphean task', was amazed to find she had written 'faucet', and could only think that in the moment it 'sounded better'. Such 'borrowing' is a way that natural language shift occurs, and I see the extra force here in 'faucet'. Nicholson can also summon history in her defence. The OED tells us that, in its first sense, faucet is 'a wooden tap for drawing liquid from a barrel, cask, or tub', deriving from the French 'fausette' or 'fausset' and with earliest known use in Middle English. As a later word for a plumbing fixture, it is 'chiefly US', with speakers of English elsewhere typically using 'tap'. And there, in whichever glorious variety of English you use, we turn off – but your messages are welcome to flow. Elisabeth Ribbans is the Guardian's global readers'
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
American style has gotten out of hand
Following Donald Trump's demand that news agencies amend their style guides to reflect current US terminology (like 'Gulf of America'), has the Guardian now fallen into line too? Martin Kettle (Opinion, 29 May) tosses in a casual 'gotten' ('so far Charles has gotten away with it') and Rebecca Nicholson (TV review, 28 May) idly talks of turning on a 'faucet' ('the faucet of public attention'). I suggest a 25% tariff on unwonted and unwanted ElmesLondon Gwyneth Paltrow once said that, according to her father, the secret behind her parents' 30-year marriage in the divorce-ridden world of Hollywood was that 'they never wanted to get divorced at the same time' (Letters, 27 May).Richard EhrlichLondon We have children because they grow up and leave home, and we have dogs because they don't (Are millennials really substituting dogs for children? Obviously not – as any dog owner would know, 28 May).Roger LeitchBath Look, some of us just prefer dogs to children, OK?Geoff HolmanKnutsford, Cheshire It's no surprise that Keir Starmer's Labour is happy with the decline of swift numbers (Letters, 28 May). After all, they are BibbySheffield Since my total colectomy operation, I have neither a colon nor even a semicolon (Letters, 28 May), but thanks to the NHS my life has not come to a full EptonBrigg, Lincolnshire 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.
The Courier
23-05-2025
- Business
- The Courier
MARTEL MAXWELL: Why Dundee McDonald's handed 10-year-old me the hottest ticket in town
It is December 3, 1987, and the 10-year-old me has the hottest ticket in town: Michelle Palmer's birthday party. She's the first in our P7 class to turn 11 and has invited us to a newly-opened restaurant. The very first McDonald's in Scotland – resplendent with Golden Arches on Reform Street. In the month since opening, I pass by several times, lingering, taking in the unfamiliar yet mouthwatering smells, the shiny chrome surfaces, the scale of two pristine floors, the smiling staff. Had they all come from America? And what was a Big Mac? Finally, we were there. The memory of that afternoon – the excitement of joining the queue, rolling the terms 'Quarter Pounder' and 'large fries' on our tongues for size, being told by Michelle's mum we could order anything we wanted, my now-husband ordering two Big Mac meals – is as vivid today. I thought about McDonald's on Wednesday driving home from filming in Leeds. Johnny Vaughan was telling listeners on Radio X there was some breaking news – good news. The kind of news you would never expect. It was that McDonald's is good for you. My mind raced – maybe the occasional drive-thru for the kids could be more frequent. No washing up, no cooking, newly discovered nutrients. Joy. Alas, the news wasn't quite that it should be a staple of our diets but that there was growing agreement between migraine sufferers that fries and a Coke was the best cure for relieving pain. This anecdotal evidence was backed by experts. Eighty-five years after the chain was founded by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California, its success and newsworthiness – even for the smallest findings – is unstoppable. Often news has been bad – from staffing practices to lawsuits involving scalding coffee – but the storms have been weathered and negativity replaced by not infrequent positive PR, like the millions of free books the brand gives to children in the UK every year. If I was to tell you brothers Andy and Jamie Murray owed their success to McDonald's, you might laugh but perhaps it's not so far-fetched. Their mum Judy once told me she always knew the importance of making any tennis tournament – and there were many with journeys across the country – fun. Whether they won or lost, they looked forward to a trip to McDonald's on the way home. They came to associate competitions with the treat, no matter the result. Every day, McDonald's continues to be a parental gift. How many times, from Fintry to the Ferry, are these words uttered with magical effect? 'Go on, do a bit more study/try your best/be a good boy…and we'll get a McDonald's tomorrow.' No one's advocating a daily dinner there, but it has its place and that place is gold. You'll have your own memories of McDonald's – I'd wager it's touched us all. Often I have lamented the increase in Americanisms into common parlance. 'It's rubbish not garbage, trainers not sneakers, flat not apartment, sweets not candy, petrol not gas, centre not mall,' I say ad nauseam to my eye-rolling boys. But then, sometimes, what's the harm? I won't budge on the dilution of English or Scots language but if our kids grow up watching American shows, why shouldn't they hanker for the glow-up of a prom dress and hot date? Maybe some American things are better than our lower-key marking of events. McDonald's has outlasted several British bastions of the high street. It is 38 years since that first one came to Scotland, narrowly beating Kirkcaldy which opened the second a few weeks later. The Dundee branch, with its 70 newly recruited staff, broke sales records and needed to draft in extra staff and stock. The opening week was the second busiest in McDonald's UK history at the time, taking the restaurant another 20 years to beat that week's sales. That level of headline-grabbing fervour might not be sustainable, but I'll tell you what is: a 10-year old's delight. For that little girl from 1987 now looks at her own 10-year-old son and sees the smile spread across his face at the mention of a trip to the Golden Arches. Almost 40 years on, he is every bit as giddy. To be as important, as current and as relevant now as then is some feat – and the saviour of parents everywhere still lovin' it.
