Let it be said, I love the English. What did Shakespeare say? "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." But honestly, sometimes they just get on my last nerve.
I don't mind their spelling. They can't help it if they don't know how to spell. For example, the way they spell "jail." In England, it's spelled "gaol." Now, a lesser man would be bent out of shape by such atrocious mish-mash of letters, but not me. A tolerant man, me. Live and let live is my motto. I can even see the advantages of the British spelling. "Jail" definitely has vertical steel bars, but "gaol" has walls of rough-hewn stone. And the stone is damp. Possibly mossy.
No, it's not the spelling I object to. Spelling, as far as I'm concerned, although my computer may disagree, is a matter of personal taste. No, what gets me is the things they say. For example, a Britisher will call 4:30, "half four." This is an intolerable breach of logic. Half four is not 4:30; it's 2:00.
Another one is, "Catch you up." This is how the English say, "Catch up with you." What the what? I repeat, what the what? "Catch you up" clearly cannot mean, "I will catch up with you." "Catch you up," means you're going to catch the other person up with something; maybe you're explaining what happened on TV while he was in the bathroom - excuse me, loo - or maybe you're getting behind him and shoving because he's fallen behind some other people.
Catch you up, forsooth! You might as well say, "lend you money," when you want the other person to lend money to you.
The English, the bloody English.
Why can't they learn to speak American?
