I suggest bleedover from too much Harry Potter fanfic.

Posted June 16, 2007 3:14 AM by Jon Rosebaugh

i don't use it often,but i like the way it sounds. It makes me feel like Allingham's Lady Amanda.

Posted June 16, 2007 3:24 AM by Nina Armstrong

Wot, wot?
It makes us sound more posh.
Pip pip, cheerio, and all that.

Posted June 16, 2007 3:45 AM by Tania

Actually, we got it from the Australians, who castigated our cricket team as "whinging Poms" during a particularly disastrous tour of Australian in 1979-80.

Posted June 16, 2007 3:59 AM by Legionseagle

They aren't the same word. "Whine" tells you the note on which the comment is sung.

"Mo....meee" is the classic whine or "it's not fair!!!!", and I would use "whine" to describe any complain sung in a similar tone. So Paris Hilton is whining.

But whinge is closer to the Yiddish kvetch, a sort of on-going irritating protest.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:01 AM by Farah

Oh, stop whinging.......

Posted June 16, 2007 4:07 AM by Keith R.A. DeCandido

In my case, trying to emulate the great Justine Larbalestier. Maybe she gets around.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:24 AM by Josh

My experience of the word "whinge" here in Australia is that it is used to complain in an annoying way about usually trivial matters. Someone with a genuine grievance would never be regarded as whingeing--except possibly the party causing the grievance, as in, "Oh, don't listen to him, he's just whingeing as usual."

The thing about "whingeing Poms", though, quite apart from its application re that touring English cricket team, refers mainly to the English immigrants of decades ago who, we hear, were always complaining about how much better life back in Blighty was compared to life here in Oz.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:53 AM by Adrian Bedford

I think some people believe it makes them look more intellectual or cultured if they adopt common English spellings or word choices. The word they're really searching for is "affected".

The two words are often used differently over here, although I do know some people who use them interchangeably.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:19 AM by Gwen

I've been saying "whinging poms" for many years, having been infected long ago by Barry Humphries' The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie.

Also, "whinge" is so much more chewy a word than "whine." Not about the posh at all.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:20 AM by Vanessa

I've seen whinge used in threads on gaming discussion forums where persistent whining is combined with a sense of entitlement, for example, a demand for game features that give the requester an unfair advantage over other players, justified by little more than noting the player is "a paying customer". I think that there is an element of "cringe" in there somewhere, but mostly by dismayed onlookers.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:30 AM by Earl Cooley III

I'm going with the HP fanfic theory, too...

The funniest thing, though, is the occasional rant from the slightly out-of-touch..."Don't you people know how to spell the word 'whine'? There's no g in it!"

Posted June 16, 2007 5:43 AM by Melanie S.

I think we Americans should make up our own word and force it on the other English-speakers. Something like whindge should serve well.

Not that anything like that has ever happened before.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:53 AM by RichM

In my case, I blame my affectations on an early, impressionable exposure to Mary Poppins which fascinated me with the Disneyriffic version of Old Blighty. (To a 6yo, Burt's "Cockney" accent was spot-on.)

To this day, I find u's spontaneously creeping into my spelling and saying things like "And Bob's your uncle."

Posted June 16, 2007 6:42 AM by Connie H.

I've managed to resist using whinging, but have a much harder time not using the Australian "chuffed." Is there an American cognate for chuffed?

Posted June 16, 2007 7:19 AM by Elaine

Elaine: Stoked? Pumped?

Posted June 16, 2007 7:32 AM by TexAnne

Elaine: Stoked? Pumped?

Posted June 16, 2007 7:32 AM by TexAnne

Keith @ 6:

Took the words right out of my mouth! Or...errr...fingers, I guess.

I shall now go make tea.

Posted June 16, 2007 7:54 AM by Dave Weingart

I guess it's part of the increasing globalization of language? (I like the HP Fanfic theory too though.)

Marketplace did a story years ago about the increasing use of "At the end of the day..." in American speech. IIRC, their conclusion was that the musical, Les Miserables, was responsible for injecting the expression into American popular culture.

Hmm... why do I have this strange urge to eat some fermented bean curd?

Posted June 16, 2007 8:04 AM by JC

It could just be an attempt to be more universally understandable. IME, Brits are confused by the American use of "whine" to mean "whinge"; engines whine, people don't.

Or maybe it's just a case of wanting greater precision. I do personally tend to adopt terminology from various jargons and dialects if it makes a convenient distinction that avoids either ambiguity or long strings of modifiers in regular ol' 'Merkan English...

Posted June 16, 2007 8:28 AM by Marcos

Tangential but similar: when did Americans start using the word 'wanker'? (*) It irks me a bit, as I think Americans never get the tone right. (And as I'm Australian, you can count that as whingeing instead of whining. Ta.)

I blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer myself - I'm pretty sure Giles is responsible for using the word a bit, but I'm not a hardcore Buffy watcher, and perhaps my mind deceives me.

(*) after the publication of Jack Vance's _Servants of the Wankh_, that's for sure. I remember reading that book with great discretion when I was a kid, as my schoolmates would have been merciless if they saw the title.

Posted June 16, 2007 8:30 AM by Steve Taylor

The question is, are they whinging about the colour of aluminium?

Posted June 16, 2007 8:34 AM by Adam Lipkin

Oh, but it's so much fun to say.

Posted June 16, 2007 8:40 AM by Peg Kerr

Adam Lipkin at #22 wrote:

> The question is, are they whinging about the colour of aluminium?

Whether it's grey or gray?

Posted June 16, 2007 8:41 AM by Steve Taylor

I thought that whinging was what Indiana Jones does, like in Raiders of The Lost Ark...

"I'm going after the Nazis."
"How, Indy?"
"I don't know. I make this as I go."

Posted June 16, 2007 8:50 AM by Serge

(21) Steve Taylor
I too blame Giles. The character was one of the first well-rounded* Brits inserted into American fandom in an American show. Dr. Who doesn't count - it's the juxtaposition of Brit-ness with slangy American that lets these delicious words dribble in.

An equal case could be made for the Gaiman-Pratchett-Adams-Stross Pentavirate,** but that's another kettle of fish.

In currently playing popular culture, Curtis Stone on Take Home Chef candidate for a slow leakage of Oz-zy-isms.

*for various values of well-rounded in American TV. I mean, the actor actually had some range, and they did some neat stuff with the character.
**the legendary fifth member is still secret. Any guesses?

Posted June 16, 2007 8:51 AM by kimiko

kimiko at #26 wrote:

> **the legendary fifth member is still secret. Any guesses?

Can we have Alasdair Gray as the fifth horseman(*)? He deserves it.

(*) Though he is self described as "an elderly Scottish pedestrian". Horses may be out.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:03 AM by Steve Taylor

Why on earth would you want to let some poor Iraqi or Turkish ethnic rot? Don't they have enough trouble?

What? Spelled How? Oh ... never mind.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:05 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Although I'm married to an Englishman, I first encountered "whinge" on blogs. I think it's one of those words that bloggers feel is more fun to type than "whine," it seems to give things an extra kick, particularly when liberal political bloggers are complaining about right-wing bloggers (the full-time whinging hobby of some).

Posted June 16, 2007 9:07 AM by Elayne Riggs

kimiko @ 26

An equal case could be made for the Gaiman-Pratchett-Adams-Stross Pentavirate,** but that's another kettle of fish.

If we're talking about fish, then the fifth one must be Wanda.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:10 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Clearly, the American elision of the 'e' in the gerund ("whinging" instead of "whingeing") makes it a new American word.

What I'm curious about is the pronunciation. In fact, I can't recall ever hearing it pronounced, and I know a couple Americans who spent years in Australia (unless the 'g' is silent and thus homophonic with "whining"). This would argue for the predominance of the written transmission.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:13 AM by Eric Scharf

Elayne Riggs at #29 writes:

> Although I'm married to an Englishman, I first encountered "whinge" on blogs. I think it's one of those words that bloggers feel is more fun to type than "whine," it seems to give things an extra kick, particularly when liberal political bloggers are complaining about right-wing bloggers (the full-time whinging hobby of some).

Now the odd thing about that is that I find "whine" stronger than "whinge". If you say I'm whingeing about something I can tolerate it, but if you accuse me of whining, that's fighting words.

'Whine' has connotations of weak character, while 'whinge' has connotations of being a natural human failing - something we all do, that has to be put up with. I'm not sure if that interpretation is just a personal quirk, or would be common to all Australians.

Ok. I just asked my wife and she agrees with me. Bless her.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:15 AM by Steve Taylor

At one early point in my life, I listened to the BBC radio version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on almost a daily basis, and on weekdays watched a Monty Python episode on public television. Being a geeky kid, I quoted from both at length. My mother, who didn't really pay attention to either show, could tell which I was quoting because I did the accents differently.

I've since expanded to other British comedy shows (any other I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue fans?). While I don't use too many British words or spellings, I have this incredible urge to say anything funny, even things like knock-knock jokes, in a British accent. (And the really sad part is my British accent sounds unlike anything you'd actually hear anywhere in the British isles...)

Posted June 16, 2007 9:24 AM by Matthew

Well...it's silly to talk about us 'Merkins deliberately imposing our slang on other English-speaking countries. We've done it quite extensively already, without quite meaning to.

American Heritage calls whinge "chiefly British," and traces it to a dialectal alteration of a Middle English term, traced from an Old English term. That would appear to debunk the Australian origin theory, though Oz may have preserved and repopularized it. That sort of thing happens all the time (for example, the American English spoken in Appalachia is similar in many respects to Elizabethan English).

So Oz never did give nothing to the Brit man that he didn't, didn't already have. (Not literally true, of course; I just couldn't resist.)

At any rate, whinge and whine come from (different) quite respectable OE sources.

Whine literally refers to that high-pitched sound that very unhappy dogs make. You've all heard it, I'm sure. When you say someone is whining, you're saying that their tone overwhelms their words, and that you are no longer listening. "Communicate like a dog, and I will pay no attention to what you say; the fact that you're unhappy has been noted."

My nephews quickly learned (I told them explicitly, but they learned to believe me) that whining would get them nowhere with me. In fact, I made it clear that there were times when whining would lose them something they could get by asking nicely! There were times when just saying "you're whining" was enough to get them to stop, change their tone, and ask politely. I was inordinately proud of them (and myself!) when this happened!

Elaine 15: Do you mean true cognates (terms derived from similar sources), or just terms used for similar meaning? If the latter, TexAnne's suggestions are excellent. If the former, the answer is no, as far as I can tell. Chuffed hasn't made it to the American Heritage dictionary. The nearest thing is chuff, which is defined as "a rude, insensitive person; a boor."

Determining whether this is, strictly speaking, cognate to the Ozian term is left as an exercise for the reader.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:29 AM by Xopher

Matthew at #33 writes:

> I have this incredible urge to say anything funny, even things like knock-knock jokes, in a British accent.

I did French in high school, and while I don't retain much vocabulary, somewhere deep in my mind I've learnt that French is what people speak when they're not speaking English.

When I have to communicate with anyone who's not an English speaker I have to supress the urge to speak to them in French.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:30 AM by Steve Taylor

Eric 31: Nah, that's a standard difference in US and UK spelling. Aging, cleansing, fading.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:35 AM by Xopher

Steve Taylor @ 35... I've learnt that French is what people speak when they're not speaking English.

A genoux devant Zod!

Posted June 16, 2007 9:45 AM by Serge

Steve Taylor @#21: I picked up "wanker" from "Whose Line is it Anyway?" (improv comedy show) - they threw the word around quite a bit in their musical numbers. The version I watched, anyway--it had some American comedians but a British host. I think there was a later version that I skipped.

Wank is a useful word because it's not obviously vulgar, to American ears anyway, whereas calling someone a jerk-off is a bit more direct.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:48 AM by Mary Dell

Steve 35: Californians often do the same with Spanish. I remember during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, certain reporters saying sah-rah-HAY-voh. This was, however, better than the BBC reporters, who seem ignorant of any language other than English (maybe French); they all called it Sarah J. Vough.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:53 AM by Xopher

i think it's because people like to be pretentious.

Posted June 16, 2007 9:59 AM by sdn

Mary 38: I've been using the word 'jackhole' lately. I like it because it can be used freely in mixed company (i.e. company that includes people who aren't from the land of "fck this fck that fck you fck me" like I am), and because everyone knows exactly what other words it refers to.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:07 AM by Xopher

Xopher @61
It's a good word, but it always puts me in mind of a jackalope. Which is maybe a little more cute than you had in mind.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:17 AM by abi

41, not 61

(Not the product of a time machine; with a time machine I could be into July and living somewhere that isn't so grey, so cloudy, that it's triggered my SAD in midsummer. So not a time machine, just useless me.)

Posted June 16, 2007 10:20 AM by abi

abi: I like you, and am mildly glum.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:38 AM by Xopher

Xopher 39:

Californians often do the same with Spanish. I remember during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, certain reporters saying sah-rah-HAY-voh.

I've heard British reporters say Kim Jong-il as "Kim Yong-il". They evidently think that J is pronounced as Y in all languages except English. (And never mind that Korean isn't written in the Latin alphabet anyway.)

Posted June 16, 2007 10:39 AM by Gag Halfrunt

LOLz, Xopher

Posted June 16, 2007 10:40 AM by abi

"Whinge" sets my teeth on edge.

"Wanker" makes me laugh.

I cannot explain these things. (Ok, I can. I'm unreasonably annoyed by the way "whinge" replaced "whine" among fanfic authors, at least the ones I hang out with, wholesale and with no apparent difference in connotation. It's like they think it makes them sound cooler. And any use of "wanker" makes me think of the fantastic scene in Preacher where Cassidy mocks Les Enfants du Sang, so it makes me giggle on that basis alone.)

(Incidentally, that's the connotation of 'wanker' in my head at least -- someone who takes themselves far too seriously.)

Steve Taylor, I always think the same thing about French being what people speak when they're not speaking English. When I took Japanese in college, I had to make a strenuous effort not to switch to French in the middle of sentences.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:44 AM by Caroline

Connie H #14: Do you also say 'and Fanny's your aunt'?

Posted June 16, 2007 10:46 AM by Fragano Ledgister

What's the Australian meaning of "chuffed"?

The meaning I grew up with in the UK is "rather pleased" or "very pleased." Being Mancunian, "extremely pleased" could have been "dead chuffed about that."

Posted June 16, 2007 10:47 AM by dcb

(Incidentally, my comment is not meant to imply that fanfic authors are not cool! I just meant that it seems affected.)

Posted June 16, 2007 10:48 AM by Caroline

Yesterday I paid my semi-annual visit to the ophthalmologist. As I was waiting for the office to open, I noticed an advertisement for glasses that came in 'vibrant colours' (spelling as in original). This is in Atlanta. (On the other hand, I've had a student who seriously asked me what 'centre' meant.)

Posted June 16, 2007 10:49 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Serge #37: LOL!

Posted June 16, 2007 10:53 AM by Fragano Ledgister

re: British vs. Oz
I picked the (very occasional) usage up from my ex, a kiwi-Brit (dual citizenship, dual residency). Not only did my vocabulary acquire all sorts of oddities, but the hybrid speaking voice ruined my ability to divine accents correctly.

Other candidates for blame:
-- LiveJournal (I mean, really, British fans pressured me to Join the Cult).
-- British friends who insist on visiting the States periodically. Our language would remain so much more PURE if they'd simply stay at home.
-- @21: Giles works, too.
-- (d) All of the above?

Posted June 16, 2007 10:54 AM by another person with too many books

Elaine @ 15: Nah then, lass, what's tha mean, the Australian "chuffed"? That's good Yorkshire, I'll have thee know, and I'll be reet dischuffed if tha claims othergates, choose how.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:55 AM by chris y

sdn #40: So if I call your comment whinging, I'm being pretentious?

Posted June 16, 2007 10:56 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 51

I noted on a business trip to Toronto a store called "Color Your World." It took me a while to figure out why it looked wrong.

Posted June 16, 2007 10:57 AM by Dave Weingart

kimiko @26: pentavirate's fifth member

A draft choice to be named later? A guest spot?

Posted June 16, 2007 10:59 AM by another person w/too many books

Fragano @ 52... Tu es la bienvenue.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:18 AM by Serge

Serge #58: For a second there I thought I'd become a new superhero called The Welcome...

Posted June 16, 2007 11:21 AM by Fragano Ledgister

What I enjoy is the British gift for utterly withering put-downs. Now that I have the latest Word magazine (thanks, Serge!), I can revel in things like their description of the old TV show Crockett and Tubbs -- "Vacuum-brained fashion-plate no-marks, faffing about on the Florida Keys in eye-hurting pastels" -- even if I don't know quite all the vocabulary. ["Faffing about" = "farting around"?]

Posted June 16, 2007 11:22 AM by Faren Miller

abi @ 43... I think it's time for me to pick up my flat hat and my cane and start tap-dancing until I see at least a glimmer of a smile on your lips. And be warned that I've never tap-danced and so the results would be atrocious. The sooner you smile, the sooner my torture of Fred Astaire's art will end.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:23 AM by Serge

"Whine" is American? That's news to this immigrant.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:25 AM by David Dvorkin

A few of my friends (and yes, they're HP fen) use it-- seemingly as sort of a cross between "whine" and "cringe," as in "Liz is whinging about having Skeevy Dan as a supervisor this summer."

I've also heard it as "to be obnoxiously indecisive" out in Indiana, as in "my roommate has been whinging about her major all semester."

But in neither case was it a perfect synonym for 'whine.' I avoid it because I can never remember how to spell it.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:31 AM by Annalee Flower Horne

I picked up "whinge" due to the fact that my primary online "home" for several years was a predominantly-British newsgroup.

My tendency towards -our and -ise spellings, on the other hand, goes back much much further.* I blame that on reading too much original-spelling BritLit when I was a kid. The American versions of many such words just aren't quite natural to me; I still have to make a conscious effort to eliminate the British spellings from my writing at work. It takes too much energy for me to bother doing so in casual settings.

Aluminum, however, only has one I, no matter what anyone says.

* Oddly, the only word for which I prefer -re over -er is "theatre". I do use "theater", but only in the context of movie theaters. The strange thing, to me, is that I'm not actually the only person to make that distinction.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:34 AM by Jennifer Barber

55: You say "pretentious" like it's a bad thing.

My excuse is simple: I lived and studied in the UK for much too long, and anything to separate myself from HRH Ronald I's idea of "culture" sounded like fun to me (and was a necessary component of my work). And chemists use "grey" and "aluminium" anyway... even aside from my cousins the Greys (yes, those Greys, or at least an American branch thereof). Hmm. Now that was a little bit pretentious.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:36 AM by C.E. Petit

I think probably it's been bleeding over from ficdom and websites. I know I also use wanker, git, bloody, wot, and zed. (I also usually spell in a horrible bastardised mixture of Canadian-English and US-English because I lived in Canada and read too many English fantasies when I was a kid. Also, I think grey with an e just looks better. My cousin says this is pretentious.)

Honestly, we're just continuing the great lingual tradition of stealing words from anywhere we like and incorporating them into the local language.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:36 AM by PiscusFiche

Google "mold" (American English) and you get many more hits for the fungi and businesses advertising mold removal services. Google "mould" (British) and the results are somewhat more eclectic, yielding a number of people with the surname Mould.

Posted June 16, 2007 11:48 AM by sara

I read whine and whinge differently, pretty much the way that several people upthread mentioned. Whine is related to tone of voice (thanks for triangulating on this, Xopher) and whinge simply being a (somewhat affected to American ears) synonym for gripe or kvetch.

One reason to preserve whine is the rise of Long Island wines, which is clearly preferred to the Long Island whine of, "Daddy, you said we could go to the maaaaaalllllll!"

Posted June 16, 2007 11:56 AM by Larry Brennan

I learned it from an aussie friend. He described the difference as "Children whine. Adults whinge."

Ciao!

Posted June 16, 2007 11:58 AM by docwhat

Steve Taylor @ 35:somewhere deep in my mind I've learnt that French is what people speak when they're not speaking English.

My related discovery is that I seem to file everything under "English" and "not-English", so when I'm trying to speak German with someone and can't find a word, sometimes a French word leaps out and forcibly inserts itself into the sentence - with appropriate German word endings.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:01 PM by Larry Brennan

Larry @70
The "English/Non-English" distinction goes to written language as well.

When we were in high school, my best friend and I invented a couple of alphabets. We abandoned them after a year or two.

In university, I started studying Greek, and found that my nearly forgotten invented characters were getting into my Greek alphabet. I had to revive the alphabet and start actively using it in parallel to the Greek before the interference stopped.

(I still use it for references to passwords and other very private information.)

Posted June 16, 2007 12:04 PM by abi

I picked it up in much the same way I picked up most of the British words, phrases, and spellings in my vocabulary. That is, through watching British TV and reading things (books, blogs, forum postings, etc.) written by Brits. Every now and then I'll make an effort to stop using it for fear that it sounds too affected, but I invariably give up.

Like Jennifer @64, many British spellings are so firmly entrenched that I have to consciously Americanize my spelling at times. I'm not sure I've ever spelled 'grey' with an 'a'. I used to make the 'theatre'/'theater' distinction, too, but the -re ending seems to have taken over completely now.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:14 PM by Suzanne M

Larry 68: "Her favorite w[h]ine: 'I wanna go to Miaaaaaami!'"

Do people in UK and Oz and NZ know from 'kvetch'? It's been my impression that borrowings from Yiddish (or "Yiddicisms" as I sometimes call them) aren't really understood even in the American Midwest.

This comes as a shock to some New Yorkers. I remember a Lanford Wilson play (Serenading Louie, 1970) set among Irish Catholics in Chicago. "You should see the nosh in the kitchen," says one of the women. Well, no, Lanford, she wouldn't (perhaps today, but not 35 years ago). And he's from Missouri and ought to have known better.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:16 PM by Xopher

I think a possible candidate for the first popular use of the word wanker in US culture predates Buffy and the intaweb. When Phil Collins guest-starred on an episode of Miami Vice, back in the eighties, his character delivered the line, "He is, what we would call, a 'wanker'." I recall being astounded that he could get away with that; didn't they (the director, the studio, the audience) know what it meant? A moment's reflection and I concluded that they probably didn't.

Apropos Buffy, I don't recall Giles using it; it's not exactly in keeping with his academic air.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:16 PM by NelC

Xopher, #73, Nosh is yiddish? Established British english word for food, I thought; no surprise, really, that Irish emigrants would be using it.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:22 PM by NelC

NelC 74: No, but the Ripper would. And I think it was in one of those eps, but my memory is spotty* at best.

*No, my memory does not have acne.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:22 PM by Xopher

NelC #75: 'Nosh' was introduced into the language of London by 19th-century Jewish immigrants into the East End.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:27 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Two different words, as has been said. My mother used it at us when we were kids ("Stop all that whinging and whining!") and I'm pretty sure she got it from her mother et al. as part of her received normal vocabulary. Mom was born and raised in a Pennsylvania coal patch* in the 1920s—1940s.

There were some relict words from Irish vocabs still lying around when I was a kid: my paternal grandmother used "dear" to mean "expensive" and the one insult that could get a rise out of me when I was young was "amadhaun." I couldn't have defined it precisely but it was perfectly obvious to me what it meant.

*a phrase with a local meaning: a very small town usually owned (or formerly owned) by a mining company

Posted June 16, 2007 12:30 PM by Ron Sullivan

Xopher @ 73 - Here in the Northwest, I find that the Yiddicisms work, but people have problems with the occasional Italian cross-over. If you tell someone that they're giving you agita they have no idea what you're talking about.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:33 PM by Larry Brennan

Steve Taylor @ 35 When I have to communicate with anyone who's not an English speaker I have to supress the urge to speak to them in French.

When I moved to Germany, the Danish I took years ago in college started trying to bubble up, along with bits of high school Spanish.

Someone told me that when you learn a foreign language as an adult it goes into a folder in your head labelled foreign language. When you end up someplace where English isn't the default language, your brain tries to pull words from that folder.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:36 PM by Laina

Bill Bryson, in his book "The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way" talks about how the english (and, I suppose, American) wholesale adoption of terminology allows for the acculumation of connotations (i.e. some other languages cannot distinguish between a house and a home, etc.). As has been amply shown in this thread, whinge and whine are taking on similar but distinct definitions...allowing for finer gradations of meaning.

...so what was the fuss about again? :P

Posted June 16, 2007 12:44 PM by Eric

Xopher @#76:

*No, my memory does not have acne.

So we need not fear encouraging you to express yourself?

Posted June 16, 2007 12:48 PM by Chris Clarke

NelC 75: Yep. Yiddish nash from the verb nashn from Middle High German naschen, to nibble. So if it's a standard UK term, Yiddish has found its way there too, answering my previous question.

Btw, another example of American usage: national origin terms are commonly used to describe ethnicities here. So when I say "Irish" I mean Irish-Americans, not immigrants. We'd say "Irish from Ireland" or "Irish immigrants" if we wanted to talk about the actual national origin Irish.

Also, Irish Catholic is a different religion than Italian Catholic (in actual practice), even though they're both ostensibly Roman Catholic! But that's another thread.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:50 PM by Xopher

I got it from interacting with non-USians in the IETF.

Posted June 16, 2007 12:51 PM by j h woodyatt

Xopher, 73: For me, New York leads not so much to Yiddish words as Yiddish-esque syntax, e.g. a sentence I produced on my third morning there. The desk clerk claimed he hadn't enough in his drawer to cash my traveler's check, and I said, "Fifty dollars you don't have?!"

Posted June 16, 2007 12:56 PM by TexAnne

Ron 78: You'd be surprised how many Irish words have found their way into English. If you have a slew of something, for example (Ir. slua, host), or someone makes a snide crack (craic fun, enjoyment). If one of our UK friends says "Smashing!" they're using an Irish borrowing (from Ir. is maisin, that's wonderful).

Nahuatl is also a source for a lot of words, but it's less surprising, because they're terms for things that were unknown in Europe, like chocolate, ocelots, avocados and guacamole (no, I'm not omitting the serial comma; those two are derived from the SAME Nahuatl word), etc.

Chris 82: You would not be impressed at how I express myself. I will suppress the urge to express how my repressed memories oppress me, and compress my lips in silence.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:01 PM by Xopher

Huh, it's happening there too then? I thought I was just hearing it more because I'd moved to Canada.

Are they pronouncing the letter Z as "zed" down there too now?

Other things to look for include Mazda commercials that pronounce the A as in "cat" instead of as in "father," and strange changes in Nabisco brand snack foods. Up here they're made by someone or something called "Mr. Christie," though with the same logo. And they taste different. Oreos have less filling, for one example.

My wife actually imports U.S. Wheat Thins when she can because the Canadian ones are so different I can actually sort them visually, and they aren't nearly as good.

Well, honestly, I think the states could only be improved by more Canadian, British, Australian or whatever elements creeping in. Except for the Wheat Thins. Please keep those the way they are.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:04 PM by John

Liana 80: I recently studied Spanish via CD, and the way this particular system worked was that they had a speaker say something in English which you were supposed to repeat in Spanish. One time the speaker said "I have three pesos" and I got all the way to the end and realized I had no idea what the word for 'peso' was.

No, it's even funnier than that. After doing nothing but Spanish for half an hour, I suddenly came out with "U menya yest tri..." and was groping for the Russian word for 'peso' (which is most likely 'peso' too, but that's neither here nor there).

My blog post about that was titled Ya govoryu nur ein Bißchen de Español.

TexAnne 85: That's a standard New York syntax to emphasize the fifty dollars. He probably didn't notice.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:09 PM by Xopher

Xopher 86: I get the impression all that depresses you. I renew my former-expressed offer: come on out and drink espresso with me under our cypress tree, and presto! Express decompression.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:16 PM by Chris Clarke

From #35
I did French in high school, and while I don't retain much vocabulary, somewhere deep in my mind I've learnt that French is what people speak when they're not speaking English.

When I have to communicate with anyone who's not an English speaker I have to suppress the urge to speak to them in French.

My problem is that, as much as I love languages, I'm a bit of a dilettante. Because of this, I tend to subconsciously categorize things as "English" and "not-English," which unfortunately has me occasionally spewing forth complete incoherencies made up of bits of French, Spanish, Serbian and Russian. Not real useful.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:20 PM by Rachel Heslin

I happen to know that a great deal of British slang arrived in my house with the broadcast of Robot Wars on PBS. "Well, that's gone totally pants" is a wonderfully useful phrase.

Non-indigenous slang words have meanings that are recognized by the hearer, but the pejorative associations aren't necessarily there. Being told not to whine takes you back to childhood, being told to stop whing(e?)ing keeps you in the present.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:22 PM by Mary R

Xopher 88: Yes, I know. I'm just astonished that *I* said *that* after *two days*.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:25 PM by TexAnne

TexAnne 92: Shows you have a talent for dialects.

Hey, one thing I forgot to mention. My mother had this friend named Coreen Balaban ("Balaban?" said my friend Judy. "She's either a Sephard or she married a Spanish guy." "She married a Sephard," I replied), who taught her all about Judaism, and she picked up all kinds of Yiddish words.

As a child and not very good yet at figuring things out, I assumed that a word she pronounced "yezooshmaddia" was one of those. It was only when I started studying languages that I realized that it was spelled "Jesus Maria" and was emphatically NOT Yiddish! (It's Bohemian/Czech, in case you care.)

Posted June 16, 2007 1:36 PM by Xopher

Misc stuff from random places:

-- I'm pretty sure I got "whinge" directly from Monty Python, since I can exclude/predate most of the other sources mentioned.

-- "Pentavirate" is another one of those Greek/Latin hybrids like "homosexual" and "automobile" in a recent discussion on another thread (though I would guess "pentavirate" was admirably invented on the spot); the all-Latin version would be something like "quinquevirate", but I have no idea what the missing half of the all-Grrek version would be.

-- In a much older thread several months ago, there was a discussion about "grey" vs. "gray" whose general consensus seemed to be that "gray" was a slightly browner, drabber colo(u)r than "grey", which was more ethereal and silvery (probably from imprinting by Tolkien). There wasn't a similar sense of agreement about "purple" vs. "violet", however.

-- Harry Potter doth bestride the modern world like a colossus. It's fascinating to compare the US/UK versions and observe how less and less stuff gets changed as the series progresses, so that increasing amounts of Brit lingo are getting absorbed into US usage. This leads to some odd things such as US urchins dismissively using the adjective "ickle" without knowing that JKR based that spelling on the Cockney glo'al sto'; they pronounce it with a hard K clearly enunciated in the middle, as if contracting the first two words in the sentence "Ick will harm your fish if left untreated".

-- I've been attempting to teach myself Japanese as a lackadaisical hobby. Recently (and possibly because of a recent trip to Quebec), the sight of a vaguely familiar kanji will cause the French equivalent to pop into my head. Unfortunately, since I haven't taken French for a very long time, I'm not always sure what that French word meant in English.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:37 PM by Julie L.

Larry @ 79, about Yiddicisms in the PNW: all I know is that when I was a junior in high school, Pat's Bookery couldn't keep The Joy of Yiddish in stock.

Although I also have it on good word that The Goldbergs was highly popular on Yelm Prairie in the '30s.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:43 PM by JESR

This thread is, of course, the dog's bollocks.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:44 PM by sharon

Julie @ 94

"Ickle", including spelling, predates Rowling by some way -- it's babytalk for "little". "Ick'll" sounds like a reasonable pronunciation to me, unless you mean they're hitting the K really hard.

I'm vaguely learning Japanese as well, and have a tendency to switch into it whenever I try to recall my school French. C'est warui, n'est ja nai?

Posted June 16, 2007 1:56 PM by James Moar

I blame dyslexic fingers. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Posted June 16, 2007 1:58 PM by Tully

In terms of the usage of the word "wanker," I've heard it used several times in one drunken rant by a British person to mean "obnoxious, posh/pretentious idiot." My friend was referring to an obviously rich undegrad who said some rather demeaning words to us (graduate students).

Posted June 16, 2007 2:01 PM by Shannon

Xopher #36: Who spells "fading" with an "e" in the middle? What an odd thing to do.

Posted June 16, 2007 2:11 PM by Madeline Kelly

Faren Miller @60 : "Faffing about" is not the same as "farting about." Faffing about is when you're intending to get something done but not getting very far because you're distracted/don't really want to do it / can think of lots of things better to do than writing up your PhD thesis... The New Oxford Distionary of English defines the verb "faff" as bustle ineffectually

Jennifer Barber @ 64 It took me AGES to work out that the reason Americans pronounced "aluminium" as "aluminum" was because they also spelled it without the second "i".

Then I was visiting a friend and she asked me to hand her the "oregano": pronounced in the American manner with the emphasis on "reg". I couldn't work out what she wanted until she pointed to the jar. Oh, she wanted the "oregano" -over here it's pronounced with the emphasis on the "ga" and a long "a" - almost oregarno (sorry, I'm no linguist and cannot write this with the proper symbols.)

As a Brit who grew up reading a lot of American-written SF, and hearing American English in TV shows, I get most American slang, but I have to remember that many Americans don't know nearly as much British slang. I remember the British: American lexicon produced for Glasgow Worldcon in 1995 - very funny, particularly when you worked out some of the most potentially embarrassing mistakes.

To quote: "And it's not just pronunciation that makes English so difficult when: A bum in the USA is a tramp, a bum in Britain is something unmentionable, a fanny in the USA is a behind, while a fanny in Britain is even more unmentionable. inspired by Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue - The English Language". Sent to us by Ronald Baron, , August 1999"

Somthing else people on Making Light may enjoy is the poem "English Pronunciation" or "English is Tough Stuff". It's available on a number of web sites, and easiest to find by Googling for "Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris"

(e.g.: http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v03/0134.html)

WARNING. Don't try to eat or drink while reading this!

Posted June 16, 2007 2:19 PM by dcb

More bleedover: it's very odd to hear our Hawai'i newscasters use the phrase "went/gone missing," but it's becoming more frequent. It describes the phenomenon perfectly, but the phrase hasn't gotten to the point of me accepting it without notice.

Posted June 16, 2007 2:21 PM by Linkmeister

Xopher @ 73: It's been my impression that borrowings from Yiddish (or "Yiddicisms" as I sometimes call them) aren't really understood even in the American Midwest.

I've lived in central IL my whole life and use these expressions all the time, having picked them up from TV and friends. I've never noticed that people had any trouble understanding them.

Posted June 16, 2007 2:56 PM by Jen Roth

Given the influence American English has had in the UK over the last few decades, it's only fair that something travels the other way.
As a *real* Mid-Atlantic-an, it's quite interesting to see which side of the pond has the more interest in the locals' English usage (American wins). For my self, English English is much more influential, but last weekend in a conversation I realised I probably don't consciously register whether a book I'm reading has English or American spelling unless I really read slow.
Also, my home on the net for years and years was a predominantly British newsgroup (waves at Jennifer #64), so that helps.
For all that, I'm still living down the 'So you've been to America a lot' my host family said when I first came to England at age 15. TV has a lot to answer for.
dcb#101: Thanks for that poem, going to circulate that at work

Posted June 16, 2007 3:20 PM by Bjorn

#97 ::: James Moar wrote:
I'm vaguely learning Japanese as well, and have a tendency to switch into it whenever I try to recall my school French. C'est warui, n'est ja nai?

*ROTFL* C'est completement taihen, nee!

I've never forgotten the long pause that came after my complaining to a british friend (on the phone, while packing my suitcase for a trip) that I couldn't find my pants and suspenders.

Posted June 16, 2007 3:23 PM by xeger

Let's see... I see "whinge" all the time, but don't use it -- it feels pretentious.

"Wanker" I saw for the first time when I started reading political blogs, especially Atrios.

I do use "It's all gone pear-shaped" which I lay completely at the feet of Terry Pratchett.

My kids, in spite of my best efforts, occasionally use "smeg" and derivations thereof, derived from watching Red Dwarf.

Also, when did people start saying "no worries"? I hear it all the time. Is it Australian in origin? I went to Australia in 1991. Being a Californian, I found myself saying "Have a nice day" to people, only to be met with confused looks.

Xopher @35, a fried of mine used to get into arguments about the proper pronunciation of a certain street name in Atlanta (he was a New Yorker). My friend: "All the locals mispronounce it! It's supposed to be 'Pons day Lee-own'!" Other person: "No, 'Pons day Lee-own' is a Spanish explorer. 'Pons duh Lee-on' is a street that runs from Midtown to Buckhead."

Oh, and Sharon @96? "This thread is the dog's bollocks"? As opposed to it being the dog's breakfast?

Posted June 16, 2007 4:04 PM by pat greene

This whole discussion reminds me of a quote I came across a few weeks back:

"The English language doesn't borrow words: it follows you down a dark alley and hits you over the head then riffles thru your pockets for loose grammar" - LadyTevar

Posted June 16, 2007 4:04 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

I find different languages layer themselves in my head, rather than dividing themselves into English/Not-English. The reason I know this is because, invariably, if I'm groping for a word in German and can't find it then the relevant one in French will present itself to me, while French will default to Welsh, and Welsh to English - never in the other direction.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:13 PM by Sam Kelly

pat greene at #106, we have a highway out here named Likelike. You can imagine how much fun that is for visitors. (It's roughly lee-keh lee-keh.)

Posted June 16, 2007 4:14 PM by Linkmeister

My favorite Britishism of the last few years is "gone all pear shaped." Hee!

For whine and whinge, I say "Word" to #5 Farah on meaning and #32 Steve Taylor on implication. Someone you're friendly with says you're whinging, eh. Someone you're friendly with says you're whining, no longer are you really friendly, eh?

#65 C.E. Petit: "Those" Greys... Jean Grey? (Mouseover link) Hm. I bet Jean Grey and Jane Grey are related, because that would be hilarious.

#73 Xopher: In an intro to linguistics class I took in college we got to see a hilarious video of how people see what they expect to see... "Could you pronounce the word written on this card for us?" Brusque New Yorker: "Schlep!" quick What, you were maybe expecting something? glare at camera. Confused Texan in cowboy hat: "Shhh...elp?"

#101 dcb: A video in chemistry class in high school included a British guy going on about al-yu-min-i-um. I watched for like five minutes, kind of wondering what material he was talking about, maybe some alloy? before I realized that was his way of saying aluminum.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:21 PM by Madeline F

Pat Greene @106
I do use "It's all gone pear-shaped" which I lay completely at the feet of Terry Pratchett.

I ran a role-playing game at a convention that happened to include a lot of Dutch attendees. Although their English was excellent, they didn't have the British idioms down.

The players made a plan, written on a flip-chart, for their particular caper (it was a battle in a worker's revolution in Zelazny's Amber...complicated). By stage two of six, it had all gone horribly wrong. One of the British players walked up to the flip chart and drew a very large pear on it.

That was an explanation that strained the rules of staying in character.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:29 PM by abi

@#107: Who is LadyTevar, and why is she stealing lines from James D. Nicoll?

Posted June 16, 2007 4:41 PM by Owlmirror

dcb #101: You may be more faithful to oregano, but I was quite confused when I stayed with my mother's friend in Reading and she asked if I liked toffee with dinner. I thought that was more a dessert food?

Tofu, of course, I like quite well.

Posted June 16, 2007 4:48 PM by Painini

Madeline F @ 110... I bet Jean Grey and Jane Grey are related

Guess which actor was in 1986's Lady Jane and in the X-men movies...

Posted June 16, 2007 4:50 PM by Serge

I think I need to propose a new law.

"In any discussion of language difference and language change, the probability that someone will bring up a famous quotation from James D. Nicoll, H. Beam Piper, and/or William Caxton approaches 1."

(Have I left anyone out?)

Posted June 16, 2007 4:54 PM by Owlmirror

@#47,@#99 : I suspect that the reason that "wanker" has additional connotations of "self-important", "overly serious", and "pretentious" is because the rhyming slang for "wanker" is "merchant banker"...

Posted June 16, 2007 5:00 PM by Owlmirror

Painini @ 113

Um. We pronounce it "tofu" with a "u": to-fuw. I've never heard it pronounced "toffee". Curious.

My mother-in-law remembers the time an American was wandering round London asking how to get to "Chay-ap-si-day". Nobody knew. Eventually my mother-in-law figured it out and gave directions to "Cheapside" (cheep-side).

Then there was the Australian trying to reach "Low-ga-bo-row-ga" in the UK. More normally, Loughborough is pronounced "Luffbru" (or close to that).

Posted June 16, 2007 5:01 PM by dcb

Sam Kelly, #108 - I've always thought of them as different language tracks, too, and there are definite patterns of default. My (very poor) Japanese is prone to Mandarin substitutions; Spanish will end up with a 'demo' where 'pero' belongs. If I don't know a word in Mandarin, though, all bets are off. Which may be why I keep hesitating to dabble in Russian.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:09 PM by Painini

@#34: "(for example, the American English spoken in Appalachia is similar in many respects to Elizabethan English)."

I've seen this asserted elsewhere, and it always sets off my UL-meter. On doing some research, I found the following paper, in which the claim is given closer examination:

"In the Mountains They Speak like Shakespeare"

Quoting a bit from it:

The more one reads and thinks about it, the less exact meaning "Elizabethan" and "Shakespearean" have. In the popular mind they appear to mean nothing more than "old-fashioned."

Finally, the Shakespearean English idea ignores many things that linguists know to be true. All varieties of language change, even isolated ones, and contrary to popular impression mountain culture has been far from isolated over the past two centuries.9 In vocabulary, mountain speech actually has far more innovations (terms not known in the old country) than holdovers from the British Isles. The Shakespeare myth reflects only simplistic popular views about the static nature of traditional folk cultures, especially those in out-of-the-way places.

#include <nicoll_quote>
#include <piper_quote>
#include <caxton_quote>

Posted June 16, 2007 5:11 PM by Owlmirror

Linkmeister @109, I can just imagine. Fewer people would have a sense of Hawaiian pronunciations than of even, say Spanish or French ones. (And even Spanish is not necessarilly all that familiar: it took many years before I stopped looking for "La Hoya" on a map of Southern California.)

abi @ 111 How did the Dutch react? It seems to me such a wonderful phrase that seems just right on its face, but I wonder how much of that is cultural and language based.

As an aside, the Wikipedia article about the phrase contains this gem: "It was used in the movie Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, by the character Joshamee Gibb when explaining the fate of the Isla De Muerta. This may be a modern term however." [emphasis mine]

Because, of course, POC was such otherwise such an exmplar of historical correctness. And considering that the OED places the phrase's origins in RAF slang, then yes, I'd say it was modern.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:13 PM by pat greene

dcb: My anecdote loses at universality? Mea culpa, mea hen culpa.

What she said was more like 'toffu', but my brain substituted an e and justified it as 'that softer Southern accent'. The short o just threw me off entirely.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:17 PM by Painini

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @ 107

Regarding English stealing from other languages, I'm reminded of the wonderful story about the high-up American (General, Diplomat or Politician, I can't remember which) who apparently said: "You can't trust the Russians; they don't have a word for 'detente'."

Posted June 16, 2007 5:18 PM by dcb

Painini @ #121

Mea culpa also. I'd forgotten the American pronunciation has the long "o" - "tow-fuw" rather than "to-fuw".

Posted June 16, 2007 5:23 PM by dcb

pat greene @120:

It would have taken less explanation if one of the players had not got into the spirit of the Revolution by bringing vodka.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:26 PM by abi

I hear it a lot from members of the Hash House Harriers, a running club with British and Australian roots.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:29 PM by Paul Woodford

Larry Brennan @ 79

IIRC there's been a Jewish community in Portland since the 1880s. There are several Jewish families among the Hundred Families (or what passes for them here). So it's not surprising that some Yiddicisms have crept into the language here. On the other hand, no matter what anyone says, you can't get a first class bagel or even a second class piece of whitefish here. And there are still people who try to pass off smoked Alaskan salmon as nova*.

* Bless 'em, Alaskan salmon is one of the great delicacies of the world, but the fish isn't the same species as the Nova Scotia fish, and the smoking process isn't the same.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:43 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

James Moar @97: "Ickle", including spelling, predates Rowling by some way -- it's babytalk for "little". "Ick'll" sounds like a reasonable pronunciation to me, unless you mean they're hitting the K really hard.

Hmmm. Without knowing exactly what the authentic babytalk sounds like, it's difficult for me to gauge how much harder the K is being hit, but iirc when I've heard American kids say "ickle", the word gets very clearly enunciated (with a definite K sound in the middle) and no longer sounds anything like "little" (which may've already been the case in common Brit usage).

On one clip on the DVDs of the new BSG, Jamie Bamber discussed his American accent and noted the near-impossibility of applying it to certain words, such as "bugger" and "wanker".

Posted June 16, 2007 5:55 PM by Julie L.

re: Terry Pratchett - is it the terminology pear shaped? What about pancake shaped? Somehow pancake-shaped has entered our lexicon here with me and my boyfriend, and we don't know why or how the etymology on it works. We do read Terry Pratchett, so it's possible we just misheard pear-shaped.

Posted June 16, 2007 5:57 PM by PiscusFiche

21, 26, 53: Wanker. I'd associate that with Spike more than Giles.

abi @43: Time machine. I was wishing a Tardis on you; it would have been handy for the Amsterdam accommodations. I'd loan you mine, but I don't got one. Too bad; it is a perfect answer for all sorts of problems (transportation and storage problems in particular; it wouldn't even have to travel in time to make me happy). Such suggestions aren't really helpful though...

Totally off topic: Xopher, there is a series of comics featuring the Indian gods. Issue 1 featured Ganesha.

Posted June 16, 2007 6:07 PM by Rob Rusick

@#128: Terry Pratchett uses both of the phrases "pear-shaped" and "pancake-shaped" to mean "badly wrong" ("went all pear-shaped"; "go pancake-shaped")

Posted June 16, 2007 6:26 PM by Owlmirror

you're all wrong: it's hugh grant's fault.

as for the blogosphere, it's atrios' fault.

i am sensitive to a lot of american regional coloquialisms. as a child of the northwest in the 70's i recall the shock of the new at hearing an older, more cosmopolitan and sophisticated second cousin from the east use the terms "excellent" and "wicked". thanks to mike myers the former is now ubiquitous. do kids say "wicked" now?

Posted June 16, 2007 6:35 PM by r@d@r

Perhaps the proper American equivalent of "to whinge" isn't "to whine," but "to bitch?" But bitch is a (mild) swear word, so whinge is more acceptible.

Say, when I was a kid, "swear" was a verb or an adjective used to modify "word." When did it become a standalone noun? Or is that a regional thing, rather than an age thing?

Posted June 16, 2007 7:09 PM by Mary Dell

"Swear" has always been a verb. As in "to swear an oath," or make a solemn promise, or to invite god to cause problems for you if you don't follow through with your promise.

Sort of the opposite of "to curse" which would be to ask god to cause trouble for whomever you are cursing.

Posted June 16, 2007 7:21 PM by Ursula L

Mary Dell #132: 'Swear' has been used as a noun (as a synonym for 'oath') for centuries:

Who all in France have taken a sware
That they will have no Prothestant heir.

(Thomas Wharton, Lilliburlero, 1688.)

Posted June 16, 2007 7:22 PM by Fragano Ledgister