What's this 'Euro-Dollar' then?

"I would have thought if there was such a thing an 'American' language, it would be Spanish, wouldn't it?"

More like Siouxan or Apache, I would have thought.

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Originally posted by BLT:
"I would have thought if there was such a thing an 'American' language, it would be Spanish, wouldn't it?"

More like Siouxan or Apache, I would have thought.

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I was thinking Modern America, North and South.

Regards

Stephen

There is American English, which, after 200 years of independance, the USA is entitled to.
My sister has a particular problem with this, as she always complains about the American version of (what started out from) our language, but won't complain that we say "Paris" instead of "Pa-reeee". She believes that all countries can have their own language, except the USA for some strange reason.
The USA do not speak "the Queen's English", but have their own. We should respect that.
(this is not a rant - it justs reads that way. It's regional )

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Originally posted by Stephen Bennett:
I've noticed an increasing amount of US TV series (and some people being interviewed on the radio as well) refer to the Euro as the 'Euro-dollar'.
Stephen the US-O-Phile

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The Euro dollar market is the indicator for the markets forward view on Interest Rates in inverse. So if the Euro dollar is trending upwards and the market thinks in the long term interest rates will trend downwards. It is a market of US and European economic confidence, along with the US 'non farm payroll' stats, which tell you about US employment. The latter will be an electon issue for Bush, since it is a marker of economic properity for Joe Bloggs American voter, but the non farm payroll stats are misleading becasue it is a fact that US firms are creating employment but tehy are creating them overseas (eg China and India) and also US firms are becoming more efficient and bringing more income back to the US.

regards

Dev

Gents

If I may jump in here - The Euro is the Euro and the Dollar is the Dollar. Eurodollars are dollars that are presumably in Europe.

Defined thus:

'Eurodollars are time deposits denominated in U.S. dollars that are deposited in commercial banks outside the U.S., and they have long served as a benchmark interest rate for corporate funding.'

Hope that helps

Sam

Eurodollar are a car hire company. Therefore the cars are Euro Dollars.
Mind you the Euro and Dollars are worth about the same.

Howard

Rasher,

The US are most certainly entitled to their variant of English, nevertheless, 'Do you speak American?' is nonsense.

American English is one of many variants of English, along with British, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Canadian etc. English, but it is not a different language in the 'hard' linguistic sense. After all, what is meant is ‘Do we have a linguistic basis for communication?’. How silly the phrase is becomes painfully obvious when it is put to an Australian, for example – would he or she have to reply, 'Sorry, mate, I don't speak American. Guess you can't ask me the time then.'?

Regarding your sister, if she wants to complain about American English, why not? I find entire languages as well as many variants of my own mother tongue ridiculous to listen to.

However, that's usually just a matter of taste. There is inherently nothing better about a language (or variant) just because it is old. If we applied that as a criterion, we would still be grunting in order to communicate. If your sister wanted to properly criticize American English, she would have to look at system characteristics. Syntax geeks, for example, like to point out AmE's inconsistent use of the present perfect (compared to BrE, for example -- but you could also compare it to other languages). Pragmatists might complain that in AmE usage, people frequently tell you what you want (‘You wanna go there and …’, 'You don't wanna ...'), implying that they already know – I found this very perplexing when someone first spoke to me like that 15 years ago.

My advice (to her and to anyone so inclined) is to refrain from trying to justify one’s disgust and give in to blatant, unfounded arrogance. I do it all the time!

Thomas

The two American English constructs I find most annoying are "gotten" and "off of" as in "You should've gotten off of the bus at the last stop".

however overall the annoyances of american english are nothing compared to the evils of vowel challenged txt spk and the modern habit of having no punctuation or capitalisation at all which i just find impossible to read and makes everyone sound like berlinfritz

Matthew

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...nothing compared to the evils of vowel challenged txt spk and the modern habit of having no punctuation or capitalisation at all...

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I agree. I hate that alot Which is one of my pet hates of the moment. What is the purpose of the word "alot"? Are people really so lazy as to be unable to type a space between two words? It's bad enough from text-messaging 12 year-olds, but when grown adults start using it?!

Doctor, bring the big purple tablets - I need to have my lie-down early today.

Steve.

It's a grand old team to play for...

The reference is to the cross rate. The price of the Euro to the Us dollar which is 1.228 at the moment. There is also Dollar Yen and Dollar Canada etc. It is merely a reference to currencies and their relative exchange value.

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Originally posted by Matthew Robinson:
The two American English constructs I find most annoying are "gotten" and "off of" as in "You should've gotten off of the bus at the last stop".

Matthew

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I believe 'gotten' is an old English word that we stopped using about 200 years ago and the US have kept. This is also true of 'dollar' of course. According to my girlfriends linguist Papa, US English is closer to 'true' English than modern English, English.

If you've gotten that....




Regards

Stephen

ONly backwoods Americans would refer to someone as "speaking American". Those of us with all our teeth who avoid incestuous relationships as a rule do not speak "American".

Judd

Thanks for the replys, guys.

None of your (admittedly excellent) economic answers tell me why CIA hotshot Jake (in Jake 2.0) was handed several thousand 'Euro-dollars'- to spend in Berlin.



Stephen

IIRC "Jake 2.0" is set in the near-future so one presumes that part of the back story has the EU and the USA forming some sort of mega-economic region to maintain its economic hegemony against a rising Asia-Pacific conglomerate.

Either that or the producers of the show are Gak-addled twunts from LA who have only a passing familiarty with the rest of California let alone somewhere as far away as Europe.

Matthew

"According to my girlfriends linguist Papa, US English is closer to 'true' English than modern English, English"

I think there is some isolated community on a Carribean Island somewhere who are the long lost descendants of pirates or something and they speak a dialect that is closer to Samuel Pepys than modern English.

Matthew

Stephen,

Is your girlfriend's linguist Papa anyone I might know?

Thomas

Stephen,

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I've noticed an increasing amount of US TV series (and some people being interviewed on the radio as well) refer to the Euro as the 'Euro-dollar'.

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My experience is that many Americans don't have an international perspective, so they resort to American expressions and terms to explain or describe non-American things. A couple of examples --

* Coworkers have asked me if Canada's interstates are similar to the U.S.'s interstates. Maybe... if Canada had states. Canada does have some nice highways, though.

* Reporters often go to lengths to explain that a prime minister is "just like a U.S. president," as though it's necessary to spell out that the head cheese of another country could have a title other than president.

Among the more surreal experiences I've had since moving to the U.S. was listening to a group of researchers, who were reviewing an article on colorectal cancer screening from the UK medical journal, The Lancet, complain about the journal's sloppy editing. Apparently the editors missed all sorts of typos before going to press -- colour, haemorrhage, faeces, programme...

I was almost embarrassed to point out their mistake.

Joe

One other interesting Americanism is to refer to a city and immediately follow it by the name of the country that the city is found in, i.e. London, England or Paris, France.

Matthew,

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I think there is some isolated community on a Carribean Island somewhere who are the long lost descendants of pirates or something and they speak a dialect that is closer to Samuel Pepys than modern English.

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That's probably the Isle of Dogs.

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Originally posted by BLT:
One other interesting Americanism is to refer to a city and immediately follow it by the name of the country that the city is found in, i.e. London, England or Paris, France.

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That's because there are so many towns in the USA sharing the names of European cities (e.g. Moscow, Berlin, Dallas, Paris, Boston, Massapequa...) I don't know why the Europeans couldn't have been more original, rather than copying the Americans, but there you go.

As for asking whether someone "speaks American" (pronounced Murrk'n), that's usually a joke that comes at you on various levels. But as the English are famously unable to understand irony, that may well be lost on you.

Davie

Some of this is ridiculous.

That some Americans ask whether Canada has interstates has nothing to do with Americans assuming Canada has states (duh. . .we stupid Americans. . .duh) but because we use the term synonymously with "highway" or "freeway" to mean any sort of divided road designed for high speed, long distance travel. You are putting this rather benign question is the worst possible light.

You have the bit about the president wrong as well. You've cast the American in the worst (ie, self-involved) light you possibly could. When explaining that a PM is "just like a US president", the point is almost certainly that the PM occupies the highest executive office (the leader of the country) in a role similar to our president - NOT that we are so self-involved that we think every country needs to have a president.

The bit about the spelling - well, that part is true.


Judd

Judd,

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That some Americans ask whether Canada has interstates has nothing to do with Americans assuming Canada has states (duh. . .we stupid Americans. . .duh) but because we use the term synonymously with "highway" or "freeway" to mean any sort of divided road designed for high speed, long distance travel.

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OK, but Canadian highways aren't called interstates. That was my point. It's like calling the Euro the Euro dollar.

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You have the bit about the president wrong as well. ... When explaining that a PM is "just like a US president", the point is almost certainly that the PM occupies the highest executive office (the leader of the country) in a role similar to our president - NOT that we are so self-involved that we think every country needs to have a president.

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I think you've missed my point here as well. It's that the reporter feels it neccessary to point out that a prime minister occupies the highest office in a country, just like a US president.

You're reading far too much into my examples. I wasn't bashing the U.S. I simply gave a couple of instances of the tendency of Americans to use American terms when talking about non-American things -- like the Euro "dollar".

Joe

I'm sorry. I must have missunderstood the bit about Americans haveing no "international perspective". I assumed this to be an insult.

Judd

Judd,

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I must have missunderstood the bit about Americans haveing no "international perspective". I assumed this to be an insult.

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I certainly didn't mean it as an insult -- I tend to behave myself when in a guest's home and I consider myself to be a guest here -- but the general lack of an international perspective is one of the first things I noticed when I moved to the U.S.

A lot of the regionalism I see is fairly innocuous -- like weather stations that don't show weather systems north or south of the US border (as though Canada and Mexico don't exist) -- but some of the regionalism, I'd hope you'd agree, isn't healthy in an extremely influential and powerful state.

Joe

yes,

But there is a perception in the US that everybody else considers the lot of us as nothing but John Wayne type "cowboys" with confederate flags in the back of our trucks. The inference is that the rest of the world is "enlightened" and we are not.

Anyway, you are right. We have huge pockets of people across the country who can't find Great Britain on a map, let alone identify Tony Blair. But I suspect the converse is true across the globe.

Judd