What's this 'Euro-Dollar' then?

If I'm speaking American, and I say "I'll do that momentarily", I mean that I will start the task in question in a very short period of time.

If on the other hand I am English, and I say "I'll do that momentarily", I mean that when I perform the task at an unspecified point in the future, I will be performing it only for a very short period of time.

How the hell can the same word imply anticipated (short) duration in English and intended urgency in American? Or is it to do with the adverb ("momentarily") qualifying "will" in American and "do" in English? It's always sort of worried me -- someone here's bound to know...

Mark,

Or is it to do with the adverb ("momentarily") qualifying "will" in American and "do" in English?

Nah, they just have different meanings. BTW, according to Fowler, Americans use both meanings!

Thomas

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Originally posted by Thomas K:
Americans use both meanings!

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Ah -- thanks Thomas. I can therefore assume that a major terrorist will be captured momentarily.

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Originally posted by Mark Ellis-Jones:
It's always sort of worried me -- someone here's bound to know...

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As someone what works wiv English on an American newspaper (and has peddled something approximating English on British newspapers), I should be qualified to answer that...but I'm buggered if I know.

Suffice it to say that Thomas is correct. Webster's (THE American dictionary) also allows both meanings. Most Americans, however, use "momentarily" to mean "in a moment." And don't get me started on "presently."

I've been here 12 years, and there are still linguistic surprises for me every day. Apart from the big differences we all know about, there are literally thousands of subtle ones.

Davie

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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.

Matthew

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You're probably thinking of Tangier Island, of the coast of New England (can't remember which state exactly). The isolated fishing community speak (or spoke, probably wiped out in the last twenty years) a variant of English thought to be very close to that of about 200-250 years ago. Stephen B, coming from Norwich, would probably find it strangely familiar...

Another point to consider -- North American usage of temporal adverbs with the preterite tense:

"Did you eat yet?"

"Did he go already?", etc.

Discuss.

Cheers,

Tim
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Os nid Campagnolo yw hi, dyw hi ddim yn werth ei marcho...

Every time I visit America, I feel strange when people command me all the time. If I ask how to go somewhere, the answer sounds like "you go down this street, you turn left" etc. Also "stand here" all the time. Why?

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Originally posted by Ross Blackman:
Stephen, are you sure the reference to "Eurodollars" was not to debt issues in the European Capital Markets? Ross

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Maybe when I've heard it on the news, but definitly not when heard on US Sci-Fi shows!



Stephen

A very common complaint of Brit pedants is the supposed US (probably Canadian as well) attraction to superfluous prepositions - "I met *with* someone". There are others byut my mind has gone blank.

That can grate to my ears, but an odditity is the apparently ommitted prepositions in "we will be in London Wednesday through Saturday". To a BrE speaker this would make more sense "...London *from* Wednesday through *to* Saturday" (or more fluently "...from Wednesday to Saturday"). The American original always makes me want to ask "...through Saturday until when?".

There is I think one useful nuance to the AmE useage - I think the word "through" implies "inclusive of Saturday", but I may be wrong.

That said, I really like the linguistic differences (by contrast to some of the cultural/political ones).

Timo

(Hammersmith, England)

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Originally posted by Tim Oldridge:
There is I think one useful nuance to the AmE useage - I think the word "through" implies "inclusive of Saturday", but I may be wrong.

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That's what it means, as in "all through the day."

American English tends to be much more logical, because there was a delibarate attempt to make it so. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this broad observation.

Bill Bryson, whose name keeps cropping up here, has written well and often about this.

Davie

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Originally posted by Tim Oldridge:
A very common complaint of Brit pedants is the supposed US (probably Canadian as well) attraction to superfluous prepositions - "I met *with* someone".

Timo

(Hammersmith, England)

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It's not so superflous as long as the inclusion of the "extra" word signals a change in meaning.

"I met Tim" signals mine making his acquaintance (presumably for the first time).

"I met *with* Tim" means that I had a meeting with him.

Judd

Well, as the old saying goes, we are divided by a common language.....

N'est-ce pas?

Terrible terminology; the term "Eurodollar" precedes the advent of the euro by several decades. By traditional financial market usage it refers to US dollars held on bank accounts outside the US. Significantly (as referred to by Ross above) it was the "overhang" of such dollar accounts after WW2 that became a driver of the "euro" public debt markets in the 1970's; before the "euro" was even thought of as a currency in its own right.

By transference, the prefix "euro" attached to any currency became shorthand for a cuurency held "offshore" ie.e. outside its domestic locations e.g "eurosterling" for UK pounds held on accounts outside the UK; "Euroyen" for Japenese Yen held other than in Japan. This usage has been sanctified in a court case but for the life of me I can't remember the citation.

Now the Euro is a currency in its own right the samn e transference could create Euroeuro but that would be just silly......

For those of you who are intererested, when referring to the exchange rate of the US dollar against the euro, convention would indicate the use of the "slash" symbol e.g euro/dollar or dollar/euro.

The met "with" issue

I assumed it was a linguistic contribution of the German language to the American English - In some respects a lot of the US behavour is similar to German behavour (a view from an ignorant brit)

At one there was a very good chance of German becoming the national language of the US - consider the consequences of that if you will

Derek

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Possibly as the US is well aware that the €uro zone will overtake the $ollar as the World's no.1 currency within the next 5 years, innit, I'm sure Gordon knows it too, Bless im.

Fritz Von Greenspan