International English Usage Loreto Todd & Ian Hancock
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INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH USAGE LORETO TODD & IAN HANCOCK London First published 1986 by Croom Helm This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” First published in paperback 1990 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE © 1986 Loreto Todd and Ian Hancock All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Todd, Loreto International English usage. 1. English language—Usage I. Title II. Hancock, Ian 428 PE1460 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Todd, Loreto. International English usage. Includes index. 1. English language—Usage—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Hancock, Ian F. II. Title. PE1460.T64 1987 428 86–28426 ISBN 0-203-97763-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-05102-9 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-709-94314-8 hb. Contents Introduction iv Contributors vi List of Symbols viii Pronunciation Guide ix INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH USAGE 1–587 Index 588–610 Introduction In the four centuries since the time of Shakespeare, English has changed from a relatively unimportant European language with perhaps four million speakers into an international language used in every continent by approximately eight hundred million people. It is spoken natively by large sections of the population in Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Southern Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America; it is widely spoken as a second language throughout Africa and Asia; and it is the most frequently used language of international affairs. In the past, there has been a tendency to regard the English of England as the standard for the world. In recent years, more acknowledgement has been made of North American, Australian and New Zealand varieties; but in countries such as Kenya or Malaysia, where English is used widely but is not normally a mother tongue, ‘localisms’ are usually considered ‘mistakes’. Over the years many handbooks of English usage have been published, but International English Usage differs from its predecessors in two important ways. First of all, it acknowledges that speakers of English have won some of the battles with ‘prescriptivists’ who, for as long as usage books have been written, have legislated against such practices as split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. International English Usage offers a balance between description and prescription, basing its insights on recent research throughout the English-speaking world. Secondly, it adopts the position that English belongs to all those who have learnt to speak it, and that established regional varieties, whether spoken natively or not, have as much legitimacy as British, American or Australian dialects of the language. The compilers have attempted to achieve two goals in the present work: to deal objectively with English as a world-wide language with many local varieties, and to distinguish legitimate regional practices from actual errors. This has not been easy, since a nebulous international written English is everywhere in competition with local, colloquial varieties, which often differ markedly from it. It is when the latter intrudes upon the former that conflict arises, and there will always be pundits who are ready to take local usage to task in the letters-to-the-editor columns. Without a doubt, much of what we have included here will be felt by some to be out of place in a usage book, but it is precisely because the world community of English speakers is so diverse, and because the language reflects this, that the need for such a book exists. We have tried to make International English Usage encyclopaedic in content. It contains precise information on: 1 speech in all its manifestations: the network norms, the regionally marked, the emerging ‘standards’; 2 the written language, offering clear rules on abbreviations, grammar, spelling and punctuation; 3 stylistic variants, from intimate to formal; 4 the language of literature; 5 the language of linguistics; 6 the conventions established for writing dissertations, essays and letters; 7 swear-words and linguistic taboos; 8 catch phrases, clichés, idioms, proverbs and slang; 9 prejudice in language: racism and sexism. International English Usage is designed for all users of English, whether students, teachers, editors, writers, librarians or even our fellow linguists—who, while adept at taking English to pieces, are not always so skilled at putting it together. It is designed to bridge the gaps between colloquial and written English, to illustrate regional richness and to clarify how and why words and phrases are used. It provides information on innumerable topics hitherto not discussed in a reference book of this kind. And, most important of all, perhaps, it challenges pedantry, causing the user to become aware of the English language as it is, rather than as others tell us it should be. Loreto Todd, University of Leeds Ian Hancock, University of Texas at Austin Contributors Many scholars from English-speaking communities around the world have contributed entries to International English Usage. We should like to record our debt and our gratitude to: Dr Mary Penrith, Research Associate to International English Usage. Professor George Cave, Department of English, University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana, South America. Professor Andrew Gonzales, President, De la Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Professor John Holm, Department of Linguistics, New York State University, New York, USA. Mrs Margery Houghton, Sea Point, Cape Town, South Africa. Dr R.D.Huddlestone, Department of English, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Dr Tony Hung, Department of English, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Dr John Ingram, Department of English, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Dr Munzali Jibril, Department of English and European Languages, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. Dr Devindra Kohli, Department of English, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Dr David Lee, Department of English, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Dr Paul Mbangwana, Department of English, University of Cameroon, Yaoundé, Cameroon. Mrs Mona McCausland, Portadown Polytechnic, Portadown, Northern Ireland. Professor T.C.M.Milward, Department of Linguistics, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Dr Satendra Nandan, School of Education, University of the South Pacific, Fiji. Jonathan Price, Croom Helm Publishers, Beckenham, Kent, UK. Dr Bruce Rigsby, Department of English, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Professor Gildas Roberts, Department of English, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Ms Diane Sutton, Centre for British Teachers Ltd., Rabat, Morocco. Dun Ren Zhou, Department of Foreign Languages, Fudan University, Shanghai, The People’s Republic of China. We should also like to record our thanks to the following for their help and support: Professor F.G.Cassidy, Wisconsin, USA. Dr Moira Chimombo, Zomba, Malawi. Professor Dennis Craig, Kingston, Jamaica. Robert A.Dunbar, Dublin, Ireland. Professor Walter Edwards, Chicago, USA. Ms B.Honikman, London, UK. Dr F.C.V.Jones, Berlin, Germany. Ms Annie Lee, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mrs Katharine Mendelsohn, London, UK. Professor John Pride, Wellington, New Zealand. Mrs Aiko Reinecke, Honolulu, USA. Brother A.N.Seymour, Nashdom Abbey, UK. Dr Kashim Ibrahim Tala, Yaoundé, Cameroon. Ms Isabelle Tsang, Hong Kong. Symbols A limited number of symbols occur in International English Usage. The most frequently used of these are: → means can be rewritten as. Thus A→B+C means that A can be rewritten as B+C. means can be transformed into. Thus A B means that A can be transformed into B. ~ means is in free variation with. Thus A~B means that A and B are in free variation, just as dreamed and dreamt are for many speakers. < means derives/derived from. > means becomes/became. is the symbol for zero. * precedes a structure that is not acceptable. These and other symbols are explained in greater detail in the entries in which they occur. Bold print in the main text of an entry means that the word or phrase has its own entry in the book. Pronunciation Guide /i/ the sound of ee as in green the sound of i as in lip /ε/ the sound of e as in get /æ/ the sound of a as in man the sound of a as in arm the sound of o as in got the sound of u as in put the sound of aw as in lawn /u/ the sound of oo as in loom the sound of u as in but /з(r)/ the sound of ur as in church the sound of e as in the the sound of ay as in day the sound of o as in go (UK) the sound of o as in go (USA) the sound of y as in sty the sound of ow as in how the sound of oy as in joy the sound of ear as in hear (UK) the sound of air as in hair (UK) the sound of ar as in war (UK) the sound of oor as in poor (UK) /θ/ the sound of th as in thin /ð/ the sound of th as in then /∫/ the sound of sh as in shot the sound of z as in azure /ŋ/ the sound of ng as in sing the sound of ll as in full the sound of le as in bottle the sound of m as in rhythm the sound of on as in cotton the sound of wh as in the Scottish pronunciation of which the glottal stop that can replace t in the middle or end of words in some UK pronunciations, for example metal and put indicates primary stress indicates secondary stress A number of other sounds such as the initial consonant in a Welsh pronunciation of Rhondda, are introduced and explained inindividual entries.