Talk:Autumn

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Contents 1 Uncategorized 2 ..in North America 3 Why call it 'Fall' anyway? 4 Heavily nonNPOV article! 5 School terms in southern hemisphere

[edit] Uncategorized

(heading added in retrospect, feel free to add proper headings) --Tunheim 10:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

When did the use of "fall" become outdated? I've never heard of that and I have experience with both British and American English. It's still very much in use in Canada, which for the most part follows British English. 23skidoo 06:05, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nobody uses it in the UK, I'm not sure if they ever did. violet/riga (t) 09:55, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Canadian vocabulary is much (much, much) closer to American English than Brit English: "apartment", "elevator", "diaper", "fall", etc. etc. It's only closer to British English in the spelling of certain words ("colour", "centre", and so forth)

I started to write a fairly long reply here a couple of weeks ago where I traced the claim through H.L. Mencken to a nineteenth century original which he cited. Then the system barfed so I lost it.

Oh here it is:

From H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.

Chapter 5. Archaic English Words

• here

A very large number of words and phrases, many of them now exclusively American, are similar survivals from the English of the seventeenth century, long since obsolete or merely provincial in England. Among nouns Thornton notes fox-fire, flap-jack, jeans, molasses, beef (to designate the live animal), chinch, cordwood, home-spun, ice-cream, julep and swingle-tree; Halliwell¹ adds andiron, bay-window, cesspool, clodhopper, cross-purposes, greenhorn, loop-hole, ragamuffin and trash; and other authorities cite stock (for cattle), fall (for autumn), offal, din, underpinning and adze. Bub, used in addressing a boy, is very old English, but survives only in American. Flapjack goes back to Piers Plowman, but has been obsolete in England for two centuries. Muss, in the sense of a row, is also obsolete over there, but it is to be found in “Anthony and Cleopatra.” Char, as a noun, disappeared from English a long time ago, save in the compound, charwoman, but it survives in America as chore. Among the verbs similarly preserved are to whittle, to wilt and to approbate. To guess, in the American sense of to suppose, is to be found in “Henry VI”:

¹ J. O. Halliwell (Phillips): A Dictionary of Archaisms and Provincialisms, Containing Words now Obsolete in England All of Which are Familiar and in Common Use in America, 2nd ed.; London, 1850. See also Gilbert M. Tucker’s American English; New York, 1921, p. 39 ff.

(emphasis is mine)

Hmmm, several of these words should today be well-known in BE, due to the impact of American culture (Ice Cream, Jeans, Loophole, Trash at least...)

So there you are! --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:34, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nor is it used in Australia. It must have fallen out of use before conolisation. - Jim 18Mar05

I've had to delete the wikimedia commons link due to a)my poor knowledge of HTML and b)the pic seasons template. Could one of you add it in.

[edit] ..in North America

The article begins by saying that "Fall" is used in North America... I wasnt aware that the spanish speaking mexicans used that term. Perhaps a reprasing to "Fall is used in the US and Canada" or even "in english-speaking America". (unsigned, but by contribs) )

It doesn't say that the word Fall is the only word used on the entire continent, it says Fall is also used on the continent. You are reading something into it that it doesn't say, therefore your clarification is unnecessary. DreamGuy 14:43, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

== Changed 'leap years' to 'every 4 years' on the section about pres. elections /* Autumn in popular culture */ US Pres. elections are held every 4 years, not just on leap years. Read the article 'leap year' 66.81.154.186 01:38, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why call it 'Fall' anyway?

US citizens inherited their own version of 18th century English, so why suddenly stop talking about Autumn and make it Fall instead? I checked the Oxford English Dictionary and it is not an old usage, as some 'Americanisms' are.

Also what do Canadians say?

--GwydionM 20:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

From what I've seen, Americans use both "Fall" and "Autumn" interchangeably. I believe the same goes for Canadians. - 68.33.120.32 03:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

They're just idiots. It's like changing "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".

-G

Yep. Morons all of those evil Americans. How dare they refuse to conform to British English, the one and only correct way to speak the language?

Come on, no one calls them "freedom fries". - 68.33.120.32 03:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Here in Toronto, they're used interchangeably but "fall" is much more common in everyday conversation - mainly because it has one syllable instead of two, I think. Esn 06:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heavily nonNPOV article!

1. Subtropical regions also experience Autumn and the other seasons. So it is not correct to suggest that these are only 'Temperate' seasons.
2. Subtropical regions do NOT experience large differences in the length of the day between summer and winter.
3. On what authority can you suggest that every school in the northern hemisphere starts its school year in Autumn?
4. What is the relevance to the timetable of movie releases to Autumn? Perhaps this is the time of year that certain movies are released but that has nothing to do with the season of autumn.

I'm sure there's more. Enjoy your new tag. Jebus Kriste 20:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The article uses sufficient qualifiers:

Autumn is often defined as the start of the school year in most countries, since they usually begin in early September or early March (depending on the latitude).

The temperate latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. Thus the subtropical regions are in the temperate latitudes.

— Walloon 22:41, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] School terms in southern hemisphere

I think most southern hemisphere countries start school in late Jan/early Feb (i.e. summer), not March as it says in this article. That's certainly the way it is in Australia and New Zealand. See here: (NOTE: although the heading says school holidays, it actually gives the term dates (i.e. non-holiday dates).)