Latest news with #Britishisms
Business Insider
16-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Workers who stayed put are finally starting to see their efforts pay off
Welcome back! A programming note: This will be my last week at the helm of the newsletter for a bit. Next week I start the second half of my paternity leave. Luckily for you, my fantastic colleague Hallam Bullock is back to run the show. Just don't mind the Britishisms. In today's big story, workers who stuck with their employer are finally seeing the benefit of their loyalty. Meanwhile, one generation is getting left out in the cold. What's on deck Tech: Recruiters told us the most sought-after qualities they're looking for when hunting AI researchers and engineers. Business: Some advice for switching up your job search if you feel it's stalling out. But first, I'm sticking around. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. The big story You should stay and not go After years of job hoppers being rewarded for their mercenary approach to work, the employees willing to stick around are starting to come out on top, writes BI's Juliana Kaplan and Madison Hoff. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that year-over-year median wage growth for job stayers has been outpacing growth for job switchers since February. It's the first time that's happened for a sustained period since 2009. Granted, the difference between the two sides isn't massive (4.3% growth for job stayers versus 4.1% growth for job switchers). But keep in mind the massive lead job hoppers once had. In July 2022, job switchers enjoyed 8.5% in wage growth while those staying put experienced 5.9% growth. The flip-flop is also another example of how economic uncertainty affects the labor market. With so many question marks giving companies pause, shelling out big for new hires isn't high on the priority list. The workforce's youngest generation finds the current job environment particularly challenging, writes BI's Allie Kelly. Beyond what I've mentioned, several factors have specifically put Gen Z in a tough spot. Artificial intelligence is starting to prove sufficient at handling the type of responsibilities found in entry-level jobs. Government work, once viewed as a stable alternative to the volatile private sector, isn't promising due to the ongoing budget cuts. It's a stark reality, especially considering how quickly the tides have turned. It wasn't too long ago that Gen Z was leading the job-hopping charge. Until this year, Gen Z was entering a labor market that had the best conditions for young workers since the 1990s, writes Allie. In many ways, a brutal job market can be a rite of passage for a young worker. From boomers' stagflation to millennials' 2008 financial crisis, an economic slump can serve as battle scars that generations eventually proudly show off. When I was entering the job market, things were BAD! But while many of the past economic issues were solvable, some of the current issues (the impact of AI, specifically) seem likely to upend the fundamental way the economy works. And how Gen Z fits in after that remains to be seen. 3 things in markets 1. A YOLO stock bet and a frugal lifestyle. Corey Forsythe is 35 years old, and he's already reached Coast FIRE status. That means he's saved enough for retirement and can now let his investments grow independently. From "living like a college student" to a risky investment, here's how Forsythe did it. 2. Top economic experts are sounding the alarm. The Treasury Department saw solid demand for its auction of 30-year government bonds, soothing investors' concerns. But Ray Dalio, Ken Rogoff, and Niall Ferguson told Goldman Sachs they're still concerned about an impending US debt crisis. Here's what they said. 3. When Jamie Dimon spoke, private equity listened. Early last week, the JPMorgan CEO blasted the practice of PE firms hiring junior bankers for future-dated jobs. Days later, buyout shops Apollo Global Management and General Atlantic announced they'd stop the recruiting practice this year. Here's why they took Dimon's warnings to heart. 3 things in tech 1. The AI hiring scramble is on. AI researchers and engineers are some of the hottest roles across industries right now, and companies are fighting for the best talent. For those who have an advanced degree, years of experience, and soft skills, recruiters and headhunters told BI it's a dream come true. 2. The next wearable tech? Digital face tattoos. That's the goal for researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, where they're developing an electronic "tattoo" that measures mental stress. It's meant for workers with high-risk jobs like air traffic controllers. 3. AI coding tools are disrupting the "build-versus-buy" equation. Bolt, Replit, and Cursor are some tools threatening the SaaS business model. While building enterprise software in-house was once considered expensive, it's now easier than ever to DIY, writes BI's Alistair Barr. 3 things in business 1. Some advice for frustrated job seekers. Labor-market conditions have you pulling your hair out? It might be time to switch up the types of roles you're going after or talk with friends about how to recalibrate your job search. Here are some of the best ways to do it. 2. All eyes are on the biggest advertising event of the year. Madison Avenue's heading to the south of France for the Cannes Lions ad festival. Agency consolidation, high-profile executive departures, and artificial intelligence (of course) are all top of mind. 3. A $55 billion PE firm has become healthtech's saving grace. New Mountain Capital is making a name for itself among VCs for big bets in the space, multiple investors and bankers told BI. It's a welcome change for an industry where IPOs and acquisitions have been tough to come by. In other news From frustration to elation: What Wall Street thinks about the potential death of the private equity recruiting race. I took a chaotic, surreal robotaxi ride through central London. It left me impressed, but with one big question. Burnout, $1 million income, and retiring early: What we've learned from 29 people who secretly work multiple remote jobs. Trump voters with student loans are having 'buyer's remorse' over his latest debt collection moves. Starting over in paradise: Eight people on what it's like to run a business, find a home, and build a life in Koh Samui. How to quietly search for your next job on LinkedIn. What's happening today President Trump attends G7 Summit day two. IRS quarterly tax filing deadline day. The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.
Winnipeg Free Press
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
An A-level account
What a gift — a book you feel is going to be perfunctory turns out to be deeply felt and revelatory. Veteran British writer Geoff Dyer's memoir of his working-class childhood in western England surprises you with its thoughtfulness, wit and vivid detail. Despite its trauma-free subject matter — a boy living with his dull parents in the small city of Cheltenham near the Welsh border — Homework contains passages that will have you laughing out loud, while others might bring you close to tears. Matt Stuart photo Geoff Dyer's memory for detail and humour helps his prose shine on every page. Presumably no relation to the Free Press's international affairs columnist Gwynne Dyer, the author is a literary and art critic, non-fiction writer and novelist. He is a prolific chap, having published almost 20 books. His most recent, 2023's The Last Days of Roger Federer, examines the later works of a variety of artists, writers, musicians and even athletes who have touched his own life. Dyer has lived in Los Angeles for a dozen years, where he teaches creative writing at UCLA. Being uprooted from his native soil, one suspects, and also the death of his parents a few years before that, must have got him thinking of who he is and where he comes from. He was born in 1958. He grew up as an only child when England had finally shed the deprivation resulting from two world wars and a punishing depression. Yet deprivation was all his parents had ever known in their formative years, and it marked them for life. His mother, the daughter of poor dairy farmers, expected nothing beyond subsistence. His father, meanwhile, a sheet-metal worker who had served his war years in India, made a religion out of thriftiness. In an early passage Dyer describes his dad's morning shaving ritual, which took place in the kitchen, 'the red washing-up bowl becoming grey with suds and tiny splinters of beard.' After the blades became too dull for him, he passed them to his wife 'to shave her shins, after which they were still not thrown out. 'Their functional life was ended but they had some as yet undiscovered use even if they were so blunt as to have rendered suicide almost impossible.' This combination of memory for detail and droll humour makes Dyer's prose shine on every page. The book is awash in Britishisms ('biro,' 'lollies,' 'O-levels' and 'A-levels'), which go undefined for North American readers. At one point Dyer applies his art-critic's skills to a brilliant exegesis of the book's cover photo. It shows him in a cowboy hat at age six, while his folks pose beside the symbol of their proudly attained affluence, a sky-blue 1963 Vauxhall Victor, 'looking like an American car but less elongated, as though a U.S. model had been shortened in order to better accommodate itself to our narrow island.' Homework Dyer relates his story chronologically. As a youngster he spends his weekends in the backseat of the Vauxhall on trips to the country to visit his Dickensian collection of grandparents, aunts and uncles. At age 11, he passes his '11-pluses,' England's national exams at the time which divided students into academic and vocational streams. His parents were chuffed that the fruit of their loins was going to 'grammar school,' in which he would learn to work with head rather than his hands, as did they. Ironically, however, this 'most momentous' event separated him from his parents. The attitudinal gulf widened as he grew into his teens, discovering music, tennis, beer and books. He was a lanky, good-looking youth who had his share of success with girls. Some of his erotic recollections verge on TMI, given the wholesomeness of the preceding pages. The story, you think, will conclude triumphantly with Dyer's admission to Oxford University. But there is a moving coda regarding his mother's background, which he foreshadows in his earlier analysis of the cover photo. One quibble. Homework is a terrible title. This memoir is not work at all. Morley Walker is a retired Free Press editor and writer.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bonkers for Britishisms: the UK terms Americans have embraced
The Americani(s)zation of British English is often described as a linguistic disaster – frustrations over imported words or usages, from 'awesome' to 'ATM', are well documented. But in recent years, there's been growing interest in the opposite phenomenon: Britishisms that have made their way into American English. These days, it's not uncommon to hear Americans describing a single event as a 'one-off' or noting that a perfect assessment is 'spot-on'. People on both sides of the Atlantic have complained about this exchange. Britons have long argued that Americanisms are 'poisoning' or even 'killing' their language, but it must be alive and well, since some Americans vent about the opposite; they feel that their compatriots are being a bit twee when they 'impersonate an Englishman'. Others, however, welcome the cross-pollination – not least, apparently, young Americans. Gen Z is helping to fuel the import of Britishisms into American English, according to researchers at Northern Arizona University, who collaborated with the language-learning platform Babbel to investigate the phenomenon. Using a database called the Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American Spoken English – a joint project with the UK's Lancaster University – the team analyzed 1,000 hours of spoken American English recorded between January 2023 and October 2024. In the process, they identified the most commonly used Britishisms in American English. Related: The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US The most common was bonkers, meaning 'absurd', which was applied to topics from politics to sports to internet trends, according to the language learning platform Babbel. The word is believed to derive from 'bonk', meaning 'hit on the head', and first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1943; at the time, a soldier wrote that losing contact with his family would cause him to 'go bonkers'. By 1965, it had appeared in the US, in a New York Times article describing a film character, and by the 2000s, it was common in the US. Back in the UK, it got renewed life from Dizzee Rascal's 2009 hit of the same name, which later appeared in the US show Rick and Morty, the researchers note. The rest of the top 10: Amongst (rather than 'among'), whose use has nearly quadrupled in the US over the past four decades Queue, whose frequent use on tech platforms such as Netflix has given its British meaning – what Americans would generally call a 'line' – new life in the US Wonky, meaning a bit off Cheeky, meaning a bit naughty or indulgent, as frequently used by Mike Myers (a Canadian with English parents) on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s Snarky, often used to describe early internet discourse and sites such as Gawker Cheers, which has long been used while clinking glasses in the US but has started to mean 'thanks' in some contexts Keen, meaning enthusiastic Maths, rather than just math, which has become more familiar in the US due to international academic work and social media Nil, meaning zero, which is turning up in online gaming In addition to the list of words, researchers examined the demographics of the speakers. They found that the use of 'bonkers' is most common among gen Z, whose members accounted for 77% of uses in the database. People aged 66 and older didn't use it at all. Meanwhile, 90% of 'bonkers' speakers were women, and 97% lived in urban areas. Esteban Touma, a linguistic expert with Babbel, said gen Z's use of Britishisms was a result of 'cultural globalization', pointing to the impact of social media as well as streaming services that give Americans greater access to UK television and films. Love Island, for instance, has taught Americans about 'getting the ick' and 'grafting'; meanwhile, British musicians including Charli xcx and Harry Styles continue to make their mark in the US. British media outlets, including the Guardian and the Mail, have a growing influence on the US political conversation. And for the most part, Americans seem to welcome the linguistic imports. We have occasionally complained about British incursions into American English – a US literary critic named Richard Grant White, who coined the term 'Briticism' in 1868, was enraged by the use of 'awfully' to mean 'very', as Ben Yagoda notes on his blog, Not One-Off Britishisms. But generally speaking, the vitriol is reserved for Americanisms infiltrating Britain: Yagoda, perhaps America's premier tracker of Britishisms, didn't hear any complaints from Americans over his book Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English (adapted last year for a Guardian story). So why do Americans embrace Britishisms? Sometimes, Yagoda says, it's just 'Darwinian': 'it's better, it's more useful, it's more vivid'. 'Gobsmacked' is far more colorful than 'surprised'; the phrase 'go missing' to describe a missing person is so useful, and thus so embedded in American English, that most Americans saying it (including me) probably didn't realize it's borrowed. In other cases, Yagoda says, users of Britishisms – especially writers – are just looking for a new way to say something. In either direction, the exchange of phrases is a healthy thing, Yagoda says: 'It aerates the language a little bit.' Related: Think you know the differences between UK and US spelling? Take our quiz But of course, there is a charm in different dialects – who hasn't chatted with friends about regional quirks, whether between Dallas and Los Angeles or New York and London? Treasuring the differences between British and American English, and fretting about the increasing UK use of 'cookies' for biscuits or TV 'seasons' instead of series, is understandable. But Yagoda isn't worried. The difference between dialects is 'still very distinct, and there's no reason to think it won't be in the future'. While certain phrases are traded between the countries, countless other subtle differences hold – going 'round' someone's house (UK) rather than 'over to' their house (US); saying things are 'different to' rather than 'different from' each other; having 'an ice cream' versus 'having ice cream'. There's no reason for these usages to cross the ocean, Yagoda says: unlike 'gobsmacked' and 'surprised', 'different to' is no better than 'different from', so why would anyone make the switch? It would be bonkers. In the meantime, new Britishisms and Americanisms are enriching their home countries all the time, Yagoda says. 'Some of them will come over one way or the other, if they're cool and flashy and funny, but the majority, I think, will stay put.'
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bonkers for Britishisms: the UK terms Americans have embraced
The Americani(s)zation of British English is often described as a linguistic disaster – frustrations over imported words or usages, from 'awesome' to 'ATM', are well documented. But in recent years, there's been growing interest in the opposite phenomenon: Britishisms that have made their way into American English. These days, it's not uncommon to hear Americans describing a single event as a 'one-off' or noting that a perfect assessment is 'spot-on'. People on both sides of the Atlantic have complained about this exchange. Britons have long argued that Americanisms are 'poisoning' or even 'killing' their language, but it must be alive and well, since some Americans vent about the opposite; they feel that their compatriots are being a bit twee when they 'impersonate an Englishman'. Others, however, welcome the cross-pollination – not least, apparently, young Americans. Gen Z is helping to fuel the import of Britishisms into American English, according to researchers at Northern Arizona University, who collaborated with the language-learning platform Babbel to investigate the phenomenon. Using a database called the Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American Spoken English – a joint project with the UK's Lancaster University – the team analyzed 1,000 hours of spoken American English recorded between January 2023 and October 2024. In the process, they identified the most commonly used Britishisms in American English. The most common was bonkers, meaning 'absurd', which was applied to topics from politics to sports to internet trends, according to the language learning platform Babbel. The word is believed to derive from 'bonk', meaning 'hit on the head', and first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1943; at the time, a soldier wrote that losing contact with his family would cause him to 'go bonkers'. By 1965, it had appeared in the US, in a New York Times article describing a film character, and by the 2000s, it was common in the US. Back in the UK, it got renewed life from Dizzee Rascal's 2009 hit of the same name, which later appeared in the US show Rick and Morty, the researchers note. The rest of the top 10: Amongst (rather than 'among'), whose use has nearly quadrupled in the US over the past four decades Queue, whose frequent use on tech platforms such as Netflix has given its British meaning – what Americans would generally call a 'line' – new life in the US Wonky, meaning a bit off Cheeky, meaning a bit naughty or indulgent, as frequently used by Mike Myers (a Canadian with English parents) on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s Snarky, often used to describe early internet discourse and sites such as Gawker Cheers, which has long been used while clinking glasses in the US but has started to mean 'thanks' in some contexts Keen, meaning enthusiastic Maths, rather than just math, which has become more familiar in the US due to international academic work and social media Nil, meaning zero, which is turning up in online gaming In addition to the list of words, researchers examined the demographics of the speakers. They found that the use of 'bonkers' is most common among gen Z, whose members accounted for 77% of uses in the database. People aged 66 and older didn't use it at all. Meanwhile, 90% of 'bonkers' speakers were women, and 97% lived in urban areas. Esteban Touma, a linguistic expert with Babbel, said gen Z's use of Britishisms was a result of 'cultural globalization', pointing to the impact of social media as well as streaming services that give Americans greater access to UK television and films. Love Island, for instance, has taught Americans about 'getting the ick' and 'grafting'; meanwhile, British musicians including Charli xcx and Harry Styles continue to make their mark in the US. British media outlets, including the Guardian and the Mail, have a growing influence on the US political conversation. And for the most part, Americans seem to welcome the linguistic imports. We have occasionally complained about British incursions into American English – a US literary critic named Richard Grant White, who coined the term 'Briticism' in 1868, was enraged by the use of 'awfully' to mean 'very', as Ben Yagoda notes on his blog, Not One-Off Britishisms. But generally speaking, the vitriol is reserved for Americanisms infiltrating Britain: Yagoda, perhaps America's premier tracker of Britishisms, didn't hear any complaints from Americans over his book Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English (adapted last year for a Guardian story). So why do Americans embrace Britishisms? Sometimes, Yagoda says, it's just 'Darwinian': 'it's better, it's more useful, it's more vivid'. 'Gobsmacked' is far more colorful than 'surprised'; the phrase 'go missing' to describe a missing person is so useful, and thus so embedded in American English, that most Americans saying it (including me) probably didn't realize it's borrowed. In other cases, Yagoda says, users of Britishisms – especially writers – are just looking for a new way to say something. In either direction, the exchange of phrases is a healthy thing, Yagoda says: 'It aerates the language a little bit.' But of course, there is a charm in different dialects – who hasn't chatted with friends about regional quirks, whether between Dallas and Los Angeles or New York and London? Treasuring the differences between British and American English, and fretting about the increasing UK use of 'cookies' for biscuits or TV 'seasons' instead of series, is understandable. But Yagoda isn't worried. The difference between dialects is 'still very distinct, and there's no reason to think it won't be in the future'. While certain phrases are traded between the countries, countless other subtle differences hold – going 'round' someone's house (UK) rather than 'over to' their house (US); saying things are 'different to' rather than 'different from' each other; having 'an ice cream' versus 'having ice cream'. There's no reason for these usages to cross the ocean, Yagoda says: unlike 'gobsmacked' and 'surprised', 'different to' is no better than 'different from', so why would anyone make the switch? It would be bonkers. In the meantime, new Britishisms and Americanisms are enriching their home countries all the time, Yagoda says. 'Some of them will come over one way or the other, if they're cool and flashy and funny, but the majority, I think, will stay put.'
