Vestitor: Just because many people adopt it doesn't make it meaningful..

Gotta disagree there. It is obviously meaningful. Languages evolve, everywhere, period - no judgement on any particular form is required or warranted.

For what it is worth, I've not heard of Shimmy or Shinny in reference to climbing or dancing. To my crowd, a shimmy is an unwanted machine vibration (and very rarely, a lady's undergarment) and a shinny is a friendly match of some team sport. Who cares? I would translate these into Eo in terms that would be understood by an Eo audience. It seems that Robb's use of shimmy is not some 'yokel' term that needs to be somehow translated as a colloquialism to capture the gist. Rather, it appears the term is widely understood.

As an audience member from an area of English speakers who do not use the word after the op's fashion, I still get the idea; sounds like the lad is swiftly slithering, or sliding up the trunk. I would likely use gliti in some form, maybe as part of a compound, to express this.

Vestitor:I don't see how that can be. They are from the same word get and express exactly the same thing.

They don't express exactly the same thing at all in US English, which is why it sounds illiterate when a British person chooses the "wrong" one (wrong for US English, perfectly fine for British English, of course). Got expresses possession or ownership (She hasn't got any money) or sometimes an imperative of sorts (She has got to go). Gotten expresses the process of doing something.

Therefore, "She hadn't got any money" means that she didn't possess any money. "She hadn't gotten any money" means that she did not yet go through the process of acquiring money yet - the implication is that someone owes her and hasn't given it to her yet, or perhaps that she is planning on working to earn some money but hasn't done the work yet and thus hasn't been given the money.

All languages evolve through use. Period, they just do. Sorry if you aren't happy with that but if linguistic change bothers you then you are welcome to return to Chaucer's English, or Shakespeare's, or Aethelred the Unready's.

US English came from a certain time in history and evolved through certain influences, and British English had different influences in that time, and also evolved from those influences.

erinja:

Vestitor:I don't see how that can be. They are from the same word get and express exactly the same thing.

They don't express exactly the same thing at all in US English, which is why it sounds illiterate when a British person chooses the "wrong" one (wrong for US English, perfectly fine for British English, of course). Got expresses possession or ownership (She hasn't got any money) or sometimes an imperative of sorts (She has got to go). Gotten expresses the process of doing something.

Therefore, "She hadn't got any money" means that she didn't possess any money. "She hadn't gotten any money" means that she did not yet go through the process of acquiring money yet - the implication is that someone owes her and hasn't given it to her yet, or perhaps that she is planning on working to earn some money but hasn't done the work yet and thus hasn't been given the money.

Not much difference to informal English in the UK. Though maybe it's because the first one is supposed to be "She hadn't any money/she didn't have any money" (already possess). If anything is 'illiterate' it's the substitution of 'got' for 'have' where it doesn't belong.

I haven't got any money
I don't have any money
I hadn't got any money (same meaning as gotten)
I didn't have any money
I didn't get any money
I hadn't gotten any money

Get is acquire/come to have. Have is posses.

Could you afford the car? No, I hadn't got enough money (or I couldn't get enough money). Oh, from where?

vs

Could you afford the car? No, I didn't have enough money. Oh, that's a shame.

The seeming fact is that American English uses two words that actually mean the same thing to express to different things. Super.

erinja:All languages evolve through use. Period, they just do.

Well, they change, which is not to say they improve or decay either way. It's more like devolution, or simplification. Not a bad thing in some cases.

vejktoro:sounds like the lad is swiftly slithering, or sliding up the trunk. I would likely use gliti in some form, maybe as part of a compound, to express this.

Yes! I think that gets to the meaning quite well. So perhaps "li glitgrimpis la arbon".

erinja:US English came from a certain time in history and evolved through certain influences, and British English had different influences in that time, and also evolved from those influences.

I couldn't concur more. American English is not derived from British English, or to be precise: 21st century American English is not derived from 21st century British English. They have a common ancestor, which might be Early Modern English from the early 17th century. Both have evolved since them, both have influenced one another, some changes have been adopted by both, some only by one of them. Some changes were made willingly, some just happened. Nor is American English a local variation of British English. Both are local variations with sub-variations and sub-sub-variations (geographical, social, economical, religious, ...).

The same way as Yiddish is neither a derivation nor a variation of High German, although they have a common ancestor.

I think it is also important to make a clear distinction between different variations and different registers, and not automatically push any variation which is not one's own, into a lower "yokel" register.

That two words like "shinnying" and "shimmying" which are both semantically (movement) and phonetically (only one nasal changed) similar can (and will) merge is to be expected and happens all the time. That this merger doesn't occur everywhere is also to be expected.

Re: "Just because many people adopt it doesn't make it meaningful."

The people at Oxford's Dictionaries see this differently. I think especially the part about "getting irate" and the example of "strait-laced" vs "straight-laced" are quite interesting.

No matter which language we are talking about, what today is correct, tomorrow will be incorrect and the day after tomorrow absurd. What here is standard, is odd in the next town and wrong in the next county.

Merely a common ancestor? English was already a functioning language in England (not radically different to now), and was then transported to the colonies. We then have diversion, though not anything like the sorts of diversion you see in other common languages. Dutch in The Netherlands and Dutch in Belgium, for example, are far more splintered.

Your remark, with a Darwinist veneer (common ancestor), makes it seem as though they both acquired the basis from somewhere else before developing. No. English shares a 'common ancestor' with e.g. Dutch. English went to America as a fully-developed and recognisable language (of a certain period of course).

Nothing like the relationship between Yiddish and German either.

Whatever approach is taken - and the common view now is to insist that all change is positive evolution - it doesn't alter the fact that these are mistakes caused by misinterpretations and in some cases sheer incompetence, which are then spread. Once that happens it only takes some 'authority', Oxford, Websters etc to declare it as accepted.

It's no wonder English is such a bloody mess.

So now that we have hashed out the many meanings of the idea and how to express it, let me add that I like the flexibilty of Esperanto and find both 'glitgrimpi' and 'raŭpgrimpi' good for translating the film I saw - not that I am going to translate the text but merely in my mind translate what I saw. I often watch TV with my Esp dictionary and look up words that I cannot immediately translate. It is my way of improving my Esp vocab.
After reading the posts, I now sort of undertand the lack of hospitality of the people in Brussels last summer when they made us speak English (I speak fluent French but some of them insisted on speaking English). They 'corrected' us several times (hmmm) because we speak American and they must feel that the language they learn in books is somehow 'the correct version'. I then simply switched to German, since it is also an official language in Belgium. They did not like that but they did understand.
We generally spoke Esperanto together and some of them had no idea what language we were speaking and one man in the train was rude to us when he heard us speaking Esperanto together and he blocked our passage. I was really pissed off and we switched to Portuguese and that threw him - he quickly routed and went to the other exit on the other side of the car. Uff - Belgium is a linguistic mess.

Vestitor:Merely a common ancestor? English was already a functioning language in England (not radically different to now), and was then transported to the colonies. We then have diversion, though not anything like the sorts of diversion you see in other common languages. Dutch in The Netherlands and Dutch in Belgium, for example, are far more splintered.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Old High German was a functioning language too, and that didn't stop its descendants from separating.

I would never argue that US and UK English are presently separate languages, but it's not out of the realm of the possibility that this would happen in the future.

But you seem to imply that language evolution is only ok if it happens on a language's home turf and never ok if it happens in the colonies. I am not even sure what the implication is - that today's UK English is the rightful heir of Shakespeare's English, and today's US English is nothing but a jargon dialect spoken by some uneducated colonists and bastardized by their contact with their neighbors from non-English-speaking backgrounds? If that's the case, then modern UK English is the same, only sub in uneducated Brits and their contact with immigrant neighbors who came from the colonies. Sorry, but if you didn't want colonists messing about with your language, you shouldn't have sent out colonists.

The very long development of many Germanic languages is a a bit different than the colonial transplantation of intact English some 400 years ago.

I didn't send out any colonists.

The rest of the reply does not represent anything of what I said. So I'm going to try really hard to just not say anything more about it.

Vestitor:

Bemused:I am a native speaker of English. I am not from UK or USA. To shimmy up a tree is easily understood by any native speaker in this part of the world as to ascend a tree rapidly and seemingly effortlessly.

There must be a lot of lizards. It's only time I've ever heard someone say it about a creature climbing a tree.

Bemused:Dictionaries are descriptive of the language as used by the authors or editors, they are NOT authoritative.

Who are not members of society using the language I suppose? The statement is rubbish in any case.

Bemused:The ultimate arbiter of "correct" English is the consensus of native speakers. That consensus differs from place to place. If a dictionary disagrees with this consensus the speakers are not incorrect, the dictionary is incorrect or incomplete.

Really? A consensus of people who say: 'I could care less'...for example?

"I couldn't care less." is a FULL statement, but "I could care less." is usually intended as an ABBREVIATION for "If you think I could care less, you are greatly mistaken." and is therefore - since the hearer has to fill in the blanks (much like having to carry the cross that you will be crucified on) - a much stronger rejection, much like the difference in strength between “No.” and “Hell no.” Remember that a great percentage of discourse is adversarial in nature, or is at least tinged with an adversarial nature. “I couldn’t care less.” is a neutral factual statement that you make to a friend in private. “I could care less.” is the same idea packaged for a punch against an adversary. Brevity is the soul of wit, and wit does not mean merely a shared laugh with friends, but also the winning whirl in those encounters where no quarter is asked, and none is given.