Separated by a common language

[owlectomy]

"Forwards" and "backwards" is a British thing?

Well, that would explain my copy-editor nixing every incidence of "towards" in my manuscript. Really, how is it that I've spent 13 years in Canada and 13 years in the US and I never noticed this before?

Comments

[laughingrat]

*raises eyebrow* British like Kentucky, then. Well, actually, since a lot of Kentucky folks are descended from English immigrants...

But yeah, forwards and backwards, I think I've always said/heard those. I'll have to listen to my gran next time I'm talking with her, and see what she says.

[cyprinella]

Or British like Michigan here.

[laughingrat]

They have Cornish pasties in Michigan! Nom nom.

[cyprinella]

True, although the area I grew up in was heavily German and Polish. Pasties are more of a UP thing, IIRC.

[owlectomy]

Well, that makes sense, insofar as upper-midwest dialects seem like the most Canadianish of American dialects.

Or maybe this is just a case of the prescriptivists getting it wrong!

[owlectomy]

Innnnnteresting. If that's a southern thing generally, maybe that's why I didn't notice it during my North Carolina years.

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

That would indeed explain my spellcheck red-underlining all my uses of "towards" and especially "afterwards." Those are proper words, right? In the UK and/or the Commonwealth, if not in American English, right?