Peter Harvey, linguist

English English

This morning I explained to a student that the language is called English wherever in the world it is spoken and that its varieties are called British English, American English and so on.

This afternoon I have chanced upon this from the BBC:

The government has told school test officials to scrap their advice to pupils about using non-English spellings such as "fetus" and "sulfate" in national curriculum science tests..."School pupils should use English spelling," [School Standards Minister, Estelle Morris] said.

The Royal Society of Chemistry said international agreement was "essential" for science.

But the Plain English Campaign disagreed:

A spokesman said: "For English schools, it does seem to be going too far - it's more appropriate for university students."

Well, I would have thought that it was plainer to have one common standard for schools and universities rather than two different ones. Or are we to assume that this is not going too far for Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish schools?

The BBC article is from November 2000 and is related to the acceptance of sulfur  by the Royal Society of Chemistry, which I have discussed here.

First Impressions, by A Lady

Getting a book published by the clever, sophisticated, cultured types who run British publishing isn't easy. From the BBC:

To news that a frustrated author has confirmed what other unpublished writers have long suspected: even Jane Austen would have problems getting a book deal in the 21st century. The TIMES notes that what really astonished the author, David Lassman, was that only one of 18 publishers and literary agents recognised Austen's work when it was submitted to them under a false name. The paper explains how Mr. Lassman re-typed the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion - changing only the titles and the characters' names....

He called himself Alison Laydee, after Austen's early pseudonym, "A Lady" - and waited for the offers to roll in. Instead, he received yet more rejection letters. One from Penguin - which re-published Pride and Prejudice last year - described his chapters as "not right for us".

This has been picked up by El País (Spanish), which mentions that Lassman actually called his book First Impressions, which was Jane Austen's original title for Pride and Prejudice.

Sulphur or sulfur?

Should the name of the chemical element be written as sulphur or sulfur? The simple and immediate answer is that the former is the British spelling and the latter is the American form. But a close look shows that the situation is rather more complicated.

Starting with the COED, we see:

sulphur (US & Chemistry sulfur)

then, slightly contradictorily:

sulfur etc.

• n. US spelling of sulphur etc.

or perhaps it is just implying that Americans write sulfur even when Brits use the ph.

The origin of the word is of interest. It is not the usual ph case of English taking the Latin spelling, which the Romans themselves used to represent Greek ф. The word is of Arabic origin, as can be seen in its Spanish name azufre, which, as usual for such words, includes the Arabic article (the Catalan is sofre, which, as usual, omits it). The OED etymology is, in full:

[a. AF. sulf(e)re (12th c.), OF. (mod.F.) soufre (from 13th c.) = Pr. solfre solpre, sulpre, It. solfo, zolfo, OSp. çufre, Pg. xofre (also, with Arabic article prefixed, OSp. açufre, Sp. azufre, Pg. enxofre):-L. sulfur(em), sulphur(em), whence also Du. sulfer, solfer.]

The Arabic connection here is not perfectly clear but the Latin is given in both forms, with f and ph.

One might suppose that in a matter such as this the chemists might have something to say about what their materials are called, and indeed they do. On 24 November 2000 the Royal Society of Chemistry issued this press release, which accepts sulfur as the standard form, and which is presumably the base for the COED’s recommendation in 2001:

Sulphur or sulfur?

An internationally agreed nomenclature is essential for science. This ensures that scientists can communicate with each other clearly, and consistent nomenclature is increasingly important as scientific information is searched electronically. For chemistry the standards are agreed by IUPAC [International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry]. In 1990 it was recommended by IUPAC that the spelling of sulfur would use ‘f’ instead of ‘ph’ and at the same time the spellings aluminium and caesium were recommended instead of aluminum and cesium (the spellings in common use in the USA). Interestingly, in 18^th and 19^th century Britain it was commonplace for sulfur to be spelt with either an ‘f’ or ‘ph’.

The guidance sent out by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for Key Stage 3 tests merely reflects the recommendations contained in the Association for Science Education - the professional organisation for science teachers in the UK - publication ‘Signs, Symbols & Systematics 2000’. The use of internationally agreed terminology is just one of many ways that the science curriculum is kept up-to-date to ensure that young people in schools can access the latest scientific information.

That makes sense. I see no reason why the RSC should not have the last word on this and am perfectly happy to use sulfur.

The acceptance of aluminium brings this into line with all the other elements that end with ‑ium but I am not sure why caesium with the ae is accepted for international use. There can be no doubt, as any Google search will confirm, that the Greek ae and oe forms are the minority in scientific use. And I can confirm from my own experience that it is quite impossible to persuade a Spanish gynaecologist that there is any point whatsoever in his including the a in the name of his department.

Using 'used to'

Brian Barder, who has provided unfailing interest in and support for my Guide to English Language Usage, objects strongly to my recommendation of I didn't use to play football as the negative form of used to, and that he would seize the alternative form I used not to play football with both hands. What is there to say about this?

My reasoning in making this recommendation is that use pronounced /ju:s/, i.e. with an unvoiced final consonant, is an auxiliary verb which, not being a modal verb, takes the infinitive with to. Thus I see it as analogous to want. I used to play football has the same structure as I wanted to play football. This being the case, it follows that the negative form must be I didn't use to play football and also that the question form must be Did you use to play football?

As for the form I used not to play football I see nothing to recommend it, though I recognise that it is widespread. The use of an auxiliary verb without do is restricted to modal and semi-modal verbs, and is followed by the bare infinitive: I won’t play football; I needn’t play football. As there is no obvious reason why the negation should not be transferred, and this is not a case of predicate negation, I can see no grammatical justification for the latter form.

Why then do people prefer the form without do support? I suspect that we are dealing with that old and curious phenomenon, hypercorrection. The clearly incorrect form *I didn't used to play football is sometimes found in print. In speech this cannot be distinguished from I didn't use to play football and people who wish to make it quite clear that they are shunning a solecism can only do so by avoiding the homophony completely and using an alternative form.

Fowler isn’t much help; under use 2 (e) Burchfield tells us that the negative form without do support is found ‘only in very informal contexts’ but he fails to recognise any distinction in do support between didn’t use to and didn’t used to. The Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al. 3.44) gives He usen’t [sic] to smoke and He used not to smoke as British and He didn’t use to smoke and He didn’t used to smoke as both British and American. It adds ‘The construction did … use to is preferred to other constructions in both AmE and BrE. The spelling did … used to, however, is often regarded as nonstandard.’ This book was my main reference for grammar and my recommendation for non-native speakers is a simplified version of its comments. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum, 115), which was not available when I wrote this article, shows He usedn’t to like it and Used he to live alone?, both marked as ‘grammatical in some dialect(s) only’, and He didn’t use to like it and Did he use to live alone as unmarked forms. It mentions that ‘choice between the negative variants is sometimes avoided in informal style by using never: He never used to like it.’ This bears out my recommendation.

I might add too that the tag question for used to is naturally made with do: You used to play football, didn’t you? Does anyone really say usedn’t you?

Finally, I would point out that my book is intended to make recommendations for non-native speakers, so I tend to go for the simplest solution whenever possible.