Are we losing our language - Chemists vs Pharmacies ?

Remember frocks, anyone? When did they all become dresses?

Or wireless transistors?
Dig

When did egg and something flan (using up leftovers) become quiche?

I still listen to the wireless.

I still convert prices to pre-decimal. No way am I paying 9/6d for a packet of crisps. It's just not going to happen.

I was told by my cookery teacher many, many ,many , years ago that quiche was an egg and bacon flan made with cream. Leave out the cream and it beacomes a flan.
My mother-in-law always wore slacks never trousers and her dresses were frocks.
My mum used to wear a skirt and matching jacket but she didn't call it a suit it was a costume.

I still say I am going to the pictures
I still wear a frock on special occasions
I always say front room
I still say tumble instead of fall
I say I feel all cooped up when in a confined space
I always ask my son if he has done his baggin.. made his packed lunch
If I think someone is staring I say "what are you goggling at"
When I ask my kids to clean anywhere I always say "don't forget the nooks and crannies"

I guess we have to live with many of the changes - language grows and acquires new words and expressions. I love the way ordinary words have new meanings since the computer age, such as 'mouse'.

There are lots of different 'Englishes' nowadays: African, Indian, American, Scottish, English and others. I think that mass communication is probably keeping the language together: instead of American and English growing apart decade by decade, as they would without all-encompassing communication, they just absorb bits from each other (alas mainly from the US to the UK) and remain the same language.

Think of Latin: it evolved separately into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Rumanian - probably others I've forgotten about. If they'd had the telly, radio, telephones, air travel etc all those countries may well have spoken the same language but with different accents. Just a thought - I might well be wrong.

Oh, about chemist v pharmacy - I agree pharmacy is more accurate, a chemist can be many things. When my brother was an engineer with the water board, running sewage works, his best mate worked there as a chemist, but he always called himself a 'shit tester'. I guess he went for accuracy too!

When I go into a cafe I will say "can I have one cup of coffee please" not "can I get a coffee" this implys that you are going to help yourself with the coffee !!!!!

I like the fact that we keep importing new words. This is why English has more words than any other language. It's something to be proud of.
The almost universal use of 'less' where it should be 'fewer' does annoy me though. The distinction is not difficult. I just see it as a sign of ignorance, though even that is probably no longer blameworthy; I expect many people have never been taught the correct usage.

I agree with Joan and Baggy. The English language has changed from Old English to Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens, to the present day and, with the growth of mass communications it's changing faster than ever. I think this is something to be celebrated. However, I also agree with Baggy's point about the misuse of 'less' to mean 'fewer' because anything that makes language less precise diminishes it.

But Baggy and Annobel, I was always taught that "less" means "more" - well that was more or less what I was taught.

helshea

Yes how far back do we go with the roots of language? I love Shakespeare, celtic, medieval english yet I use text. Languages have been dying out fast worldwide. The aboringines in OZ (c what I mean) once lost gone forever. They say once the language is gone so is the culture. It is wonderful some people do keep Wessex, Cornish etc.'They' say we will all speak american english eventually ah... We used to speak as spelt " Broad Bright Moonless Night" but with the vowel shift in The Renaissance the pronounciation doesn't match the spelling hence the americans have changed the spelling to match the prounciation. ie centre center, colour color etc.

I have to admit, I don't care for American spelling. 'Color' makes me want to pronounce it in a slightly different way, with the letter 'o' the same as in 'boss' or 'gloss'. But Webster decided to organise their spelling, and so they, and we, have to live with it.

When I did a linguistics unit at university here in Australia, there were English speaking students from all over the world in the course. We did an experiment to 'normalise' the spelling and ended up proving that it could not be done.

Which accent would you choose? Australian? American? Posh English? Indian? Whichever was chosen, others would be offended and annoyed. It was a linguistic and political minefield which none of us wanted to cross in the end.

Anyway, with the spelling the way it is, we can trace the origin of words quite well. If 'night' was spelled 'nite' for instance, it would not be as obviously Germanic, as in the German 'Nacht'.

I have been told that Asda (Walmart) now call biscuits "cookies" !!

My hairdresser here in France (who doesn't speak English) said "C'est tip-top" and "le long-term" in the course of our conversation today. Some of the ways English words get transported into French are odd though, le basket (ball), le foot (ball), and my pet hate un re-looking. One of my neighbours told me she had to give "un briefing" but she didn't know what it was.

American 'biscuits' are, I believe, more like scones. I can't say that American spelling bothers me one iota. The language diverged into two branches before spelling was formalised (or, as they would say, formalized). One is 'correct' for us, the other is 'correct' for them. Neither is 'wrong'.
Going back to the OP - when I was at school and it was still OK to ask children what their fathers did, one of my classmates was the daughter of the town's chemist (pharmacist) and my dad was a chemist (industrial). Everyone understood what she meant and I always had to emphasise the 'industrial' aspect.

As we've got back to the OP I'll add my two pennyworth.
I worked as a 'Pharmacist' for 51 years.
After 4yrs at Uni. I got my B.Pharm.degree.
I still had to work under supervision for a year and pass another exam before I was registered as 'Pharmaceutical Chemist' (what a mouthful!)
As already said'chemist'can cover many professions .

The one thing I dislike about the term Pharmacist is that more than once people have thought I worked in agriculture -Yes honestly!

We should have another thread about misunderstood jobs!

I was a bookkeeper (NOT a bookmaker as one person thought) in the library supply trade. We supplied serials (ie journals and magazines) to libraries. One lass there was so fed up about her job in serials supply being misunderstood, she ended up saying she worked for Kelloggs.

I do like the idea of a pharmacist being mistaken for someone in farming, Maniac! I can just imagine it: "I'm a pharmacist." "Oh, how nice, you assist farmers"

My brother was once a machine fitter - he went all over the world installing textile machines, but when he wrote down his occupation as fitter in a Norwegian hotel registry, they made him change it to engineer. Apparently they read fitter as something decidedly rude.

When it comes to the English language, in the end you just can't win.

And it wasn't so funny when, several years ago, a paediatrician's home was mobbed by idiots who thought this meant paedophile.

Oh dear - I DO remember that, though I could hardly believe it. It was disgusting on so many levels.

The American 'bathroom' for loo seems to be making headway - I saw loo rolls calling themselves bathroom tissue the other day.
If a bathroom is a loo, what do they call a bathroom (i.e. a room with a bath in it)?

And by whose definition can a toilet in a department store or airport possibly be a 'rest room'?

I remember being in a students dining room in Vienna in the mid 1960s when an American lass asked me where the bathroom was. "There isn't one" I said "But there's a toilet over there". I wasn't being sarky - I simply thought she wanted a place to wash.

Of course, i was being polite - at home in Yorkshire the toilet was the lav. Nowadays it's the loo - well, here in Australia anyway.

We can't escape Americanisms though - these days my unfavourite is 'listen up'. We used to just 'listen'.

Yes we are losing our language. A lot of it is connected with the Internet. So many American expressions are now being used which jar on the ear as they make so little sense, 'going forward'. 'Going backward' I have neither seen nor heard tacked on to the end of a sentence. That is another manner of speech that is being lost, 'either or', 'neither nor'. The negative version is no longer used,'at this moment in time'. That is another Americanism that adds nothing but words, in spite of the fact that all text is now printed with only one space after a full stop to save keystrokes they say. Please don't ask who 'they' are. 'They' take good care that we never find out.

The teaching of English is now so carelessly undertaken in schools that affect and effect are used as if they are totally interchangeable, even in our newspapers. Advertisers use quite a range of spelling techniques to sell their products which leads to a lot of confusion among those who are not confident spellers. I was told in all seriousness by a teacher at my children's primary school forty years ago, "Oh we don't correct all the mistakes, we don't want to discourage them with all that red ink". So your child spells a word incorrectly, is not corrected, and continues confidently in the error. Thanks teacher. Those pupils are today's teachers.

Then we have those who hold the view that if the majority spell or use it that way then it must be the right way. I could scream when I hear 'different to' when 'different from' makes so much more sense. 'Similar to' is fine. Who in the world would say 'similar from'?

Just a few days ago I was corrected when I said, "You should have" and was told that it is now, "You should of", because that is what most people say. If they were taught to speak and write English as it used to be taught they would understand that 'of' is no part of any verb. What they are hearing is the abbreviation 'should've' and assuming, incorrectly, that the spelling is 'should of', when in truth it is 'should have' as in 'you should have listened more carefully. I was taught the reason for this. It was to do with past perfect or past imperfect tense of the verb, but that was a long time ago.

This lecture has gone on far too long, but English is a beautiful language used all over the world. It really is worth taking care of.

I teach English as a second language and can't keep up with the new words that are added to the lexicon daily. I love that words - and their usage change over time. My especial favourite is the word 'wicked' which is defined as both something bad and something good!