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Could be... I sure don't use it in my novels... At least I don't think I did... If I did, I blame grammar check.
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PeejayAdams wrote: "he lighted a cigarette."
Yes, the strong to weak verb change thats taken place in English.Its just old English the Americans use, so like weaved and wove, dived and dove, perhaps we should just accept lighted and lit side by side each other? 
Another old word is the use of 'gotten', whereas in the UK it only exists as a fossil in a phrase (phrases tend to keep their original words) as in 'ill gotten gains'.
When I left the UK many years ago and learnt French and to some extent Dutch, and hence the origin of much of English, I stopped being so pedantic about its usage, and am far more accepting of its foibles and oddities, and even its miss-usage. It realy is such a bastardised language that I dont see why we shouldn't continue to do so!
--edit--
Correction, its weak to strong change thats happened in general.
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PeejayAdams wrote: "Villa are my favourite football team" vs. "Villa is my favorite soccer team"
That's a common referent difference, where both are grammatically correct, i.e:
- (That team) is my favourite
- (Those eleven players) are my favourite
The same works with other collective nouns, like "the government", which can be referred to as 650 individuals ("the government are voting on a bill") or as an institution ("The government is voting in a summit").
At the same time, though, "Villa are my favourite football team" and "Villa is my favorite soccer team" are both just so incredibly wrong, because Villa's cr@p.
And how about we use a proper word, for the other issue: "He enlightened my cigarette"? I'm sure the mayor of Springfield would approve.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: At the same time, though, "Villa are my favourite football team" and "Villa is my favorite soccer team" are both just so incredibly wrong, because Villa's cr@p.
Oi! We're not cr@p, we've just been slightly out of form for a few years.
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PeejayAdams wrote: Oi! We're not cr@p, we've just been slightly out of form for a few years.
OK, OK, I'll at least admit that your pitch is superb.
Mind you, the amount of dung that's spread on it every weekend, that's not surprising.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I'm not a football fan, so I can't pass comment, other than to say I was brought up the other side of Aston Park to the Villa ground, and well remember hearing the roar of the crowd every other Saturday - loudest of course when Villa scored a goal.
And I can still see Aston Church from where I live now.
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OMG this has been a great thread.
As an American with some friends all over the world, I was commenting on someones English and how Americans LOVE the accent... And the person I was with was somewhat offended that the person speaking was a horrible example (I forgot the regional reference they made), but they felt their "proper" way of speaking sounded so much better (er, proper).
And your proper reference brought that back.
My wife is European, and she listens to someone speak and she just "knows" (She never confuses Australian, English/Britian, English/Elsewhere) unless they are just not fluent.
I sit back and think "Not American English... Right? Right?" LOL
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Like the English use knives and forks at the same time, but at the time of the split, that technique hadn't come into fashion.
[^]
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Isnt that odd? Just why do Americans do that. Transferring the fork to the right hand to eat after having used it in the left to help cut up the food. Very bizarre!
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PeejayAdams wrote: I hate to say it, but I do think that the language is gradually drifting towards the American version.
Never, never, Never, NEVER, NEVER will I use "gotten".
We dropped that out of English because it sounds and looks silly, and God knows we English don't stand for sounding and looking silly!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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We are the Americans. You WILL be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
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Pre 1840 ish 'ensure' and 'enquire' didnt exist. They still dont in US English, which of course split off before the Brits decided to add them to differentiate subtle meaning. And dont be too surprised if some Brits today get them confused.
Enquire is to 'ask'. Inquire is to 'look into' something. Hence a govt inquiry for example, looking into some issue.
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Which is why I said I think it is correct, albeit by chance.
You enquire in the screen and the service inquires in database.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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Yes, it sounds like the terms are used correctly.
(Its a bit pedantic though, English, dont you find? I mean, it really is a bastardised language, the least pure of any, I often think it hasnt got the right to take itself so seriously. )
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I'm sure you're sure that you cannot ensure if I'm insured.
Kitty at my foot and I waAAAant to touch it...
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The company I used to work for had a guideline that said all documents must be written in British English. It was so harshly phrased you thought you'd burn in hell if you used US English.
The paragraph describing this guideline contained at least 3 words written in US English 
Kitty at my foot and I waAAAant to touch it...
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Now that made me chuckle.
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There's actually no such thing as "British English".
There's English (calling it English English would just be stoopid), Scots English (several variants, few of which are even remotely understandable), Welsh English (has a lot more "baa" sounds), and NI English (sounds fine, if you've downed enough Liffey water).
They're all too different to class them under a single dialect.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Power Puff Boy wrote: It was so harshly phrased you thought you'd burn in hell if you used US English.
Did it say "It is strongly advised that documents should be written in British English". Anything stronger than that is hyperbole.
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Keith Barrow wrote: Anything stronger than that is hyperbole
Is that better or worse than parabole? :rimshot:
Software Zen: delete this;
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That really deserves a rimshot.
Kitty at my foot and I waAAAant to touch it...
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Sorry, but I can't remember the exact words. One thing I do remember is that some of it was WRITTEN IN CAPITOL LETTERS. When people do that then they're really serious about it, no matter how stupid the guideline.
Kitty at my foot and I waAAAant to touch it...
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chriselst wrote: I've just noticed that where I work has an Item Enquiry screen that calls an Item Inquiry service.
Not really. You can use "enquiry" in place of "inquiry" (to broaden the scope to include the run-up to the inquiry), but not the other way around.
Hah! The US (or should I say U/S?) spell-checker in this browser doesn't even have the word "enquiry"!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Quote: English Is Tough Stuff
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Cindy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
( Mind the latter, how it's written. )
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
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I am surprised how long the discussion went on before "English is tough stuff" was brought up!
For more than thirty years, I have been handing out this poem to numerous native English speaker, and most of them end up laughing too much to complete the reading of it.
I have also met a few who read it without any stumbling at all over spellings and pronounciation. Those are the people who didn't learn the letters in grade school: From day one, they learned to read words, as single symbols, almost like Chinese pictograms. Each word identifies a given concept, and the name of that concept has a certain pronounciation, irrespective of the individual pen strokes making up the word. Not until much later will the kids learn to break the word symbol into separate components (letters), to enable them to 'decode' unknown word symbols they might encounter, and to understand how to create a composite word symbol for a concept you know the name of, but haven't learned the word symbol for.
Obviously, first grade kids are not introduced to 'concepts' (i.e. the concept of a concept) as such: that is an just academic way of desribing the idea behind. I must admit that I am somewhat fascinated by the idea: Even though a 'concept' is far more abstract than the physical pen strokes, the kid knows very well the concept of, say, an 'apple'.
Mapping the 'apple' concept to some (language dependent) pronounced name is an abstraction that the kid usually can handle. Then we break up that sound into another, rather unrelated, concept of small pieces called 'letters' having no direct connection to the apple concept - that is non-trivial! And then these letter concepts are mapped to a graphical representation which is quite independent of the letter concept: The concept of an 'A' can be represented as 'A' or 'a' (in any of ten thousand typefaces), or as the bit pattern 01000001 or 01100001, or as .- (morse), or as the upper left dot in a 2 by 3 matrix (braille)... For a kid to learn to write, the graphical A or a must be further broken sown into separate strokes, and then the kid must learn the fine motor skills to hold a pencil/pen and form these strokes.
Learning the word symbol for the concept is a much simpler task! Note that most schools teaching reading by word symbols rather than by letters also hold back the writing till after the kids are reasonably familiar with the word symbols. Usually, they start breaking composite words into individual simple words, such as 'grandmother' is composed of 'grand' and 'mother'. When the kids have been playing with breaking up composite words for a while, they go further by looking for some correlation between sounds (phonemes) and the letters making up the word symbol. Only after that will they start drawing word symbols made up of a few letter symbols (like drawing a man from head, torso and limbs), where the only new element is the fine motoric skill - everything else is familiar.
People who learn reading that way have much less problems reading Tough Stuff without problems.
(A side note: They also tend to learn foreign languages more easily, because their brain has been trained from day one to see the abstract concept of an 'apple' as the fundamental element, whether it is represented by the word 'apple' in English, 'eple' in Norwegian or 'pomme' in French. Different language word symbols are not that much more than upper/lower case differences or Arial vs. gothic letters differences.)
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