OT: Where did our language go?

Though one odd fact that crept out during the coverage of this year's World Cup held in the USA and West Indies was the the first ever international cricket match was between the USA and Canada!

nib

Indeed, two neighbouring countries with almost a common language, although Canada gets more of it right, and not only in language. Having lived and worked in both of them, I prefer Canada by miles (or kilometres), but Justin T. is doing his best to ruin the country. His father must be rolling in his grave.

It doesn't stop people using it where they know it. It's part of the database(s) that companies use when translating your postcode to your full address when you buy something by mail order. I know this because some companies fill in "Humberside" rather than "East Yorkshire" or "East Riding of Yorkshire" for my address which is what most people round here seem to prefer.

It is surprising how often our village name gets omitted from a postcode-to-address translation, and the village name is critical because there is a street of the same name as ours in the "postal town" that the database supplies:

Number Street Village Town

is a completely different address from

Number Street Town

Of course the postcode should prevent mail being mis-routed, but this

I live in what was the short lived and now defunct county of Cleveland, in the historic County of the North riding of Yorkshire. I once got a letter from Glasgow, Air mail, correct post code routed via Cleveland USA.

I pay council tax to Stockton on Tees, in Co Durham, It annoys me the number of times the address is Co Durham or Stockton on tees, I don't live (and never have) lived in either.

Royal Mail used to provide a field called "former postal county" as part of the PAF database, but no longer provide any county field, so it suggests companies haven't refreshed data for several years ...

if its NOT part of the Postal Address how can they "know it".

Dave

They gain value, in being able to track your purchase, if you use the app(lication).

The address is a postal routing instruction, Your local sorting office is probably in Stockton.

Hmm.. I have an issue with shop Pay. You can't track your delivery without their app:-(

You're dead right there. Ask anybody under the age of 30, especially school kids to construct a sentence without using "like" and they'll be hard pushed.

The first time I encountered this horrible affectation was in the satirical " Valley Girl" by Frank & Moon Zappa from 1982. Unfortunately people took it seriously and here we are.

Another Americanism that gets on my t*ts is "levverage". For starters it's not a verb and secondly it's pronounced leverage. Thankfully we're not septic tanks yet but it's becoming more and more common over here.

I could never get used to 'Skedule' in the US.

And here, I hate the way people pronounce 'ki-LLO-metre', when it is really 'KILLO-metre'. Military Americans call them 'klicks', which is even worse.

A small price to pay for the Yanks conforming to our measuring system.

At one time one of the courier companies used a satnav that had a version of the PAF which had an incorrect OS grid reference for our street, placing it a few hundred yards away on another street - but with a stream in between which meant a journey of about half a mile to get from the incorrect location to the correct location (because of the location of the nearest bridge across the stream). I flagged it with the satnav company because couriers were being given the wrong location as the starting point from which to find our house. It seemed to get corrected remarkably quickly.

I'm still not really sure what "leverage" as a verb means, but from the context there seems to be a meaning of "make something happen".

I've noticed a lot of younger British people using words like "gotten" and "closet" - the latter as a general purpose word for "walk-in cupboard" as well as in the specific meaning of "secret" ("he's a closet Christian" or "a closet gay").

Aaaah! KillOMM-ter :-(

That offends my scientific/engineering background where all SI prefixes kilo, mega, micro, milli have the stress on the first syllable and all SI units have the stress on the first syllable.

If you ever watch any of the scientific documentaries by Brian Cox, listen for how he pronounces kilometre. He has probably been told by the director to pronounce it the "yoof" way kilOMMitre but occasionally forgets and pronounces it the scientific/engineering way KILoMEtre.

Presumably because the database that they are using still has county as one of the fields. If the Royal Mail PAF doesn't contain it any more, either they are using an old version of the PAF or else they are using a database which is based on an old version of the PAF and which is being updated independently of the Royal Mail as new houses are built.

Certainly a lot of mail-order web sites automatically populate a "county" field as you are filling in your address, so they are getting it from somewhere. Amazon doesn't - I've just checked my saved address for that - but some companies do.

I remember at one time, when counties were still officially part of the Royal Mail address, there were anomalies because the county was deemed to be the one where the postal town was located, not the one where the address was located. It hit the headlines because The Dalesman magazine, devoted to life in the various Ridings of Yorkshire, had an official address of Clapham, via Lancaster, Lancashire - and there is rivalry between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Clapham was and still is in Yorkshire

- North Riding at one time and North Yorkshire now.

And a very contentious one was the Scottish Western Isles having a PA (Paisley) postcode [because the mail came through Glasow Airport (which really had a PA code)]

Parts of Caithness have a Kirkwall postcode.

Another one which keeps popping up on TV is 'skedule' instead of 'shedule'.