Survey time!

[icepixie]

Take a look at my userpics. Comment thusly: of those, which do you most associate with me?

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Polls! Because I realized that I've had a paid account for rather a long time now and I've made, like, three polls. This should be rectified immediately.

The first of today's polls is brought to you by this poem about serial commas. (A serial comma occurs here: Billy, Bob, and Jane. It does not occur here: Billy, Bob and Jane.)

[Poll #744031]
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The second of today's polls comes about because it was recently discussed on a message board I visit. Also, everyone loves food. This poll may be applicable only to Americans.

[Poll #744032]

Comments

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well...I believe I'm what you might call your friendly local anomaly. ::waves:: Which is why I did my best with your polls, but can't say as I answered them 100% accurately (also, kinda skipping the icon thing since I've known you for...a week? Not really enough time to build up an association, though I think 8 was the first one I saw, for what that's worth).

Commas: I am a vehement believer in the serial comma, as I feel it's far more clear. As an example, I once heard of a court case in which an inheritance was to be divided equally among Bob, Sue, Joe and Mary. The reason it went to court was because the Bob and Sue each wanted the cash to be divided into thirds, while Joe and Mary wanted it divided into quarters. The whole thing hinged on the serial comma, or lack thereof. In my ever-so-humble English teacher role, I firmly believe that it never should have been considered optional.

That said, your poll refers to spelling as well as grammar, and honestly, having lived in the UK for a while, and marinated myself in imported UK television and literature for the last 20 years, I use whichever. Sometimes I'm not even aware that I'm switching back and forth, or if I happen to type realise or organise, I just don't bother to switch it back. (This is a fairly recent development since I basically got tired of fighting it--in high school I used British spelling pretty exclusively and was the only kid in my class to have words like "color" on their misspelled-words quiz--I'd spell them the US way on the quiz and then happily go on my merry way doing whatever I liked--and so it's even odds now which one you'll get from me. I do pay more attention for "official" documents, but otherwise, I just don't care.)

As for the dressing/stuffing thing, I'm from PA Dutch country, where nobody talks about "dressing" unless it's something you put on a salad. At Thanksgiving, you have "stuffing" or "filling," and in my family, they both mean the same thing. I have heard that in some areas, "filling" is cooked in a dish and "stuffing" is cooked in the bird, but I can't speak to that from my own experience.

And that had to be at least twice as much information as you were looking for! :)

[icepixie]

though I think 8 was the first one I saw, for what that's worth

I think that was actually my newest one last week. :D

I am so with you on the serial comma. I had a third grade teacher who was of the old regime as far as grammar goes, and it was drilled into my head as, "Some people don't use it, but they're WRONG, do you hear me, WRONG!"

I feel like half the Americans I know use British spellings a lot. We must all be a bunch of Anglophiles. *g* I blame the excessive BritLit I read as a kid. I still cringe internally when I have to use a "z" in words like "sympathise," or spell the color "gray" instead of "grey." But British punctuation? Gah. No. Punctuation marks go inside the quotation marks.

At Thanksgiving, you have "stuffing" or "filling,"

Huh. I've never heard it called "filling." Nifty. I know about the convention of stuffing being in the bird and dressing being in a pan (which means that I've never had "stuffing"), and I have a slight tendency towards "turky and dressing" over the other, but beyond that they appear pretty much evenly in my speech. Dad's from TN, Mom's from Ohio by way of Florida. I think that explains much about my speech. ;)

[alto2.livejournal.com]

"Some people don't use it, but they're WRONG, do you hear me, WRONG!"

Sing it, sister! :)

We must all be a bunch of Anglophiles.

Not only am I an Anglophile of, I suspect, ridiculous proportion, but I also believe that Noah Webster was a linguistic terrorist who had no business appointing himself the God of Spelling. There just wasn't any good reason for him to go removing letters from words (part of the reason I think modern "simplified spelling" movements are so stupid is that they'd be removing all the nuances of the language we got these words from, and I happen to be quite fond of being able to see linguistic heritage right in front of me).

And I confess, I really enjoyed making my 9th grade English teacher play his stupid spelling game. I don't know how many times I had to spell "color" and "realize" on those damn tests he gave. I suspect that's part of why I teach the way I do--let's not be pedantic for its own sake! Fortunately, my teacher the following year had spent a year teaching in Scotland and loved those spellings ;)

British punctuation? Gah. No. Punctuation marks go inside the quotation marks.

I spent a good part of my day editing ESL writing, and nine times out of ten, I have to mark punctuation that's outside the quotes. I'm given to understand that they learn American English before they get here, rather than British, but it's hard to tell--they spell things the American way, generally, but the punctuation looks British. I have to say, though, that in the process of editing their stuff, there have been times when I've been thoroughly discombobulated by how to fix such a thing, because there are times when it just doesn't make any sense to put the punctuation inside the quotes. As a result, I've been wondering lately if it's more consistent just to leave it outside, even though I still think it looks weird.

I've never heard it called "filling."

I've never heard it not, but then I don't cook stuff like that here in NJ, so I maybe just haven't been paying attention :) My best guess is that "filling" was the translation from the German, and everyone else translated differently? I don't know. My whole family is PA Dutch several generations back, without much mixing in from elsewhere, so I have a firm basis in that vocabulary, but I've picked things up from people and places--I steadfastly refused, when I got back from Northern Ireland ten years ago, to give up certain words: loo, shite, gobshite, bloody, etc. So they're peppered throughout my speech, too, and then there are the general patterns you pick up from years of watching DW and other things. And I pick up accents really quickly. I wonder sometimes what a Henry Higgins type would make of me :)

[icepixie]

I am honestly of two minds as far as simplification of spelling. For example, one part of me says, "C and Q are useless! K, S, and KW can perform their functions completely adequately! We must be more efficient and uniform!" Then the other part says, "But they're pretty!" And that's kind of my reaction to a lot of measures to simplify spelling.

As far as American punctuation--I know there are a couple you do leave outside the quotation marks; a semicolon is one, and I think a colon is the other one. I'm honestly not sure why you do that. However, the British way seems even more inconsistent; in dialogue, they tend to put everything within the (often single, but not always) quotation marks for dialogue, and then nothing within them for other types of writing. I can discern absolutely no rhyme or reason to it.

My best guess is that "filling" was the translation from the German, and everyone else translated differently?

Wouldn't surprise me.

I wonder sometimes what a Henry Higgins type would make of me :)

*snerk* The only two things I picked up from a year in England are "flat" and "dodgy." I lived in a college-owned apartment this year with three of my friends who'd been on the program with me, and we just called it "our flat" and each other "flatmates" purely on the basis of it being a heck of a lot fewer syllables. I like other Brit vocab, but honestly it sounds very strange coming out in a mild TN twang, so I tend not to use it in speech. *g* Although I think I've picked up some British speech patterns, if not vocab; I use "quite" and "rather" a lot (which is possibly not a stereotypically British speech quirk, but for some reason in my mind it is). Some of that is being Southern, as well; apparently our speech is a wee bit closer to British English than other areas of the US.