[Magdalen] Creeping UK-ism?

[Scott Knitter]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 3:06 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford
<oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> If it makes better sense, I think that's it.  And it certainly does make
> better sense.
> Grammar only is an effort to explain what we're doing.  We drive grammar;
> it doesn't drive us.

Sid Abel was for many years the WJR Radio "color commentator" on the
Detroit Red Wings hockey broadcasts. He had a sort of loud and
creaky-sounding voice, and for some reason (perhaps because he was
Canadian), he used the collective plural ("Detroit are behind by two
goals after the first period"). So one of the other radio stations'
DJs eventually added a Sid Abel-like character to his "morning crew"
show, and he took the verb-number difference to an extreme ("I are Sid
Abel, and here be the scores from last night's games). It was actually
a very funny morning program, with a Jackie Stewart character giving
the traffic report with the sound of Grand Prix-style cars roaring in
the background ("Aye, the yellow flag is out on the inbound Jeffries
at the Southfield interchange..."). The impressionists were very good,
making it worth listening to, for fun at least.


-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA