A British friend who ran a bookstore here in the eighties and nineties told me the English she spoke was what they’d spoken in the UK thirty years before--- correct, a bit formal, with a turn of phrase and vocabulary that was not close to what she heard when she returned there for visits. Hers was good colonial English, not Estuary or any other incarnation. And the rest of the time she spoke Geneva French. Or sometimes both.
Language evolves with your language environment. There’s a certain stasis in our spoken English, yes. But then there's FRABBLING! (copyright please!)
Like so many others here, I am a terrible FRABBLER!
Sprinkling daily speech with French words and phrases is natural: they’re just a better fit, the right flavor for my sentences, they are just there for me, ripe cherries rolling around on my tongue.
Do Rabbit’s friends and relations back in the States think it’s [hip] [groovy] [bodacious] [cool] [intense] [bad] [down] etc. etc.?
No sirree, as they used to say back in the day. To them it sounds pretentious. I look at them helplessly.
Of course they understand and forgive quickly because I don’t live there anymore.
And they have to get back to their tweeting.
