Polite English dying off? How frightfully ghastly!

IF you still believe that it’s quite polite to avoid being frightfully rude – you’re rather unusual.

The quintessentially English habit of tip-toeing around topics so as not to cause offence is dying off, experts say.

According to a major study of language trends, there has been a ‘drastic erosion’ of words such as ‘quite,’ ‘rather’ and ‘fairly’ from British conversational habits over the past 100 years.

Other gradable adverbs – words used to stress or reduce the force of a phrase, such as ‘frightfully,’ ‘awfully’ and ‘terribly’ – are on the decline too, researchers found.

Instead, like the Americans, Brits are becoming more economical and direct. Professor Paul Baker, a linguistics expert from Lancaster University who carried out the study, told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘Americans want to get to the point and say what they mean, whereas British people want to avoid conflict so use downtoners like “quites” and “rathers”. We are more cautious and apologetic, but it can also come across as long-winded and means we take a bit longer to get to the point. My academic head tells me that it is an interesting change. But with a British person’s head, I think it is a bit of a shame as it is a mark of identity.’

Professor Baker said one of the reasons behind the decline of gradable adverbs is that they are considered posh.

‘There is an awareness of that... people don’t want to be associated with the upper classes, so they level out their language,’ he added. Whereas classic films, such as the 1945 hit Brief Encounter are ‘ absolutely packed’ with gradable adverbs, research suggests there was a steep decline in their use by the 1960s. Between 1960 and 1990 their usage levels off, before a further period of steep decline between the 1990s and now, Professor Baker added.

Researchers analysed newspapers, magazines, novels, academic journals, government documents and even reports by retailers such as Marks and Spencer, to spot changes in grammar, spelling and styles over the decades. Their findings, published in a book entitled American and British Eng- lish: Divided by A Common Language by Cambridge University Press, found that the decline in gradable adverbs was part of a broader Americanisation of English being used in Britain today.

People are more likely to combine words with apostrophes as in ‘don’t’, and use more acronyms, than previous generations. Shorter possessive forms such as ‘the king’s hand’ rather than ‘the hand of the king’ are also more common.