Are we losing our language - Chemists vs Pharmacies ?

I'm told by my GD that the latest 'in'word for something good is 'sick'!! 'Cool' is not cool any more!!

I never taught English "carelessly", nor, I suspect, did others writing here! Spelling, grammar and punctuation have to be accurate and fit the purpose to enable comprehension by the reader or hearer.

But yes, I love the fact that language is so dynamic; one of my specialisms when I studied linguistics was / is etymology (the only bit of linguistics I could bear, to be honest). Tracing the evolution of a word is fascinating!

A bit muddled here. What about wi-fi? Is that not wire free, therefore (a) wireless?
But my tranny isn't wi-fi, and my computer with wires is, or has.
I have no wires attached therefore am wi-fi? A wireless?
At least I can operate independantly without a power source, not counting tonights Chinese Duck, or yet the G&T

I think wi-fi is a neologism invented by a false analogy with hi-fi which is 'high fidelity'.

Can I just (belatedly ) add my penn'orth on the" names for a bathroom" topic. I met a charming lady some years ago who was English and had been an air stewardess with BOAC in the early days. She did transatlanitc flights, but as I said, was English. One day an American passenger on the plane asked for directions to the "restroom".Having no idea what he meant (but thinking perhaps he was tired) she said the plane didn't have one, but she could get him a pillow if he liked! Can you imagine the thoughts going through his mind???

Oh gawd - poor man!!!

It reminds me of a different tale. A man went seafood fishing and got a flight home. He asked the stewardess to put the crabs he'd caught in the fridge. She obliged, but when they had landed he hadn't picked them up, so she put on the loudspeaker "Will the man who gave me the crabs please see me in the kitchen"

My father who died only a few years ago carried on using the word "talkies" when he meant "the cinema"
which was odd as he was only two years old when Al Jolson first sang on screen

My point about Asda was that when trading in UK do as UK does and call them biscuits. When I am in the states I know that they have different names for some things and I try to remember to use the local version.

As I told my Husband (who is a smoker) do not get off the plane and ask where you can have a fag!!!!

Spelling in US was simplified as english was not the first language of many of the settlers.

As I told my Husband (who is a smoker) do not get off the plane and ask where you can have a fag!!!!

PennySue : better than him going into a hairdressers in the UK and asking for a sh*g...

It's never ending, is it, the different American meanings for words?

Let's see:
US fanny means bum (we'll not discuss what fanny means in English, but I'm sure a lot of GIs got into bother ....)
US bum means tramp
US purse means handbag
US pocketbook means purse or wallet

and the list goes on, with gas v petrol. hood v bonnet, trunk v boot.

The one I hated when i was young was calling a young woman 'baby'. If any lad called me baby he got a mouthful of, well, not very babylike angry words. I still hear it as an insult.

But at least the whole thing means we have lots of different words for most things and ideas - many more than most other languages.

And when did railway station become train station?

Whilst teaching reading in primary school with American children in the class I was careful to avoid the word 'rubber' for an 'eraser'

In evening class our French teacher told us of her embarassment on an exchange .She said that when baking her mother put preservatives in her baking. Shock!horror!when she learnt that 'preservatif'is the French word for contraceptive.
That knowledge came in useful when serving French customers in the Pharmacy

We have Fourex beer (written as XXXX) here in Queensland, but XXXX is a brand of French condom. You just can't get ways from those Frenchies, can you!

Especially as the pre-war generation called condoms French letters, which caused me some hilarious misunderstandings when i was a little 11 year old learning French, and exchanging letters with a French penfriend. We were set up with these penfriends, had to keep up the correspondence, and then answer questions in a spoken exam.

You can imagine my family's laughs when I was searching for my French letters because I had a French oral the next day. (The never explained the joke - I was years and years before I dared use the adjective 'French'.)

Yes I like language to be 'alive/changing' read "Bugbear of Literacy".by Ananda K. Coomarswamy Written word is in concrete but when only the spoken word was used we would be the living libraries (elders).

Chemists study chemistry and pharmacists study pharmacy! Massive difference!

A previous work colleague caused consternation in W.H.Smith by asking for Durex, which was the name for Sellotape in New Zealand.

OK let's keep it clean......my pet hates mostly have to do with rail travel:
train station =we used to manage perfectly well calling it the station
station stop = again, station was fine, or possibly stop on its own
this train will terminate = no, the service might, but one hopes the train is good for a few more journeys
we will shortly be arriving into London Euston - = no you arrive IN , you COME INTO (or GO)
customers = when did we stop being passengers?

Who writes this garbage that "train managers" (?) have to spout? On the few occasion that you hear someone speaking NORMALLY like a real human being, it is so refreshing.

And when did Christmas dinner and Sunday dinner become Christmas lunch and Sunday lunch?

It always was Sunday lunchwhen I was a child; think it depends where you lived. And no, not a class thing!

We eat lunch at lunch time, tea at tea time and dinner at dinner time!
Oh! We sometimes had breakfast and elevenses as well.

Elevenses - not there's a nice, cosy expression - reminds me of Einnie the Pooh and "a little something"...

Einnie?

Breakfast, elevenses, dinner, tea, supper - Manchester style!

Oh I forgot at my Grannies, High tea!

I have a dewbit (cross ref. Thomas Hardy, ^Jude the Obscure^), then breakfast, then elevenses, then lunch, then an afternoon pickmeup (non-alcoholic; usually coffee and a snackeroo), then dinner (one course), then a cup of 'evening tea' (blueberry at present). Six small eateries a day. I guess I'm what is called a grazer.

Just had my dewbit: coffee, flapjack (homemade, very nutty), cup of raspberry leaf tea.