\n\nI\u2019ve come to notice, in listening to reels of Americans speaking in the 30\u2032s, 40\u2032s, and 50\u2032s, that in certain subtle ways some constructions in English resembled what some Romance languages do, in ways that would sound strange to my ears now. In this way it seems like English may have \u201cde-Romanticized\u201d a little bit in past decades. (Although it should be pointed out that I don\u2019t know how the following constructions generally work in non-Romance languages and wonder if what\u2019s really happened is that English de-Europeanized.)
\nFor instance, in Spanish and Italian (and I\u2019m pretty sure also in French and Portuguese), when talking about the entirety of something one says \u201call the X\u201d \u2013 for instance Spanish todo el mundo or Italian tutto il mondo, translating literally to \u201call the world\u201d, which seems to have been standard English 70 years ago but sounds a little quaint today. During my lifetime, we prefer to say \u201cthe whole world\u201d. Similarly, it seems normal in a speech from the earlier half of the 20th century to hear \u201call the day\u201d, \u201call the time\u201d (in contexts like \u201cI knew it all the time\u201d), and \u201cin all the land\u201d, which today would be rendered \u201cthe whole day\u201d, \u201cthe whole time\u201d*, and \u201cin the whole country\u201d respectively.
\nWhen verbally specifying dates, in Italian (and I think in Spanish, although I\u2019m having trouble remembering this from Spanish class) the day of the month is given as a bare number without putting it in its ordinal form \u2013 for instance, \u201cthe four of July\u201d instead of what we would call \u201cthe fourth of July\u201d. I haven\u2019t specifically heard \u201cthe [number] of [month]\u201d in 1950-ish English speech, but I recently noticed that it was apparently common to say \u201c[month] [number]\u201d as in \u201cJuly four\u201d instead of \u201cJuly fourth\u201d. Also, it seems that, at least in formal speeches, it was normal to state the name of a year as a single four-digit number rather than two two-digit numbers, e.g. \u201cToday in the year nineteen hundred and fifty-four\u2026\u201d vs. nowadays \u201cBack in the year nineteen fifty-four\u2026\u201d. Of course, Spanish and Italian, and I imagine most European languages, do the former. (To be fair, we did refer to the first ten years of the 2000\u2032s almost exclusively as single numbers and many people still do this for the years in the 2010\u2032s and beyond. But I don\u2019t remember either in my childhood in the 90\u2032s or since then hearing someone refer to a year in the 1900\u2032s with a single number.)
\nAnother thing that has bemused me, as someone who has watched footage of American political conventions and speeches from the first half of the 20th century, is that instead of chanting \u201cFour more years!\u201d in support of a president seeking reelection, back in the 40\u2032s or so American\u2019s would chant, \u201cFour years more!\u201d This again more closely resembles what I think is the usual construction in Romance languages \u2013 I don\u2019t remember for certain whether \u201cFour more years!\u201d is rendered \u201cCuatro a\u00f1os m\u00e1s!\u201d rather than\u00a0\u201cCuatro m\u00e1s\n a\u00f1os!\u201d\n\n in Spanish (although I think it is?) but I know that it would be \u201cQuattro anni in pi\u00f9!\u201d in Italian, at least as the closest grammatical equivalent.
\nI feel like I noticed more examples of de-Romanticization and might edit them in if I remember. Has anyone else noticed examples of this trend?
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* Another subtlety I\u2019ve become aware of with \u201call the time\u201d is that in contexts where its use is normal in today\u2019s English \u2013 e.g. \u201cI do it all the time\u201d \u2013 Italian at least prefers to use the word for \u201calways\u201d. I had it pointed out to me early on when I was in Italy and constantly using the phrase tutto il tempo \u201call the time\u201d that this wasn\u2019t exactly incorrect but saying this instead of sempre\u00a0\u201calways\u201d made my speech sound a bit peculiar and foreign; it was only then that I consciously noticed how Italians when speaking English often seem to use \u201calways\u201d a bit excessively.
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\u201cAll the time\u201d vs. \u201calways\u201d in English is interesting because it seems like the meaning is subtly different; \u201calways\u201d implies \u201cevery time a specific occasion arises\u201d or \u201ccontinuously, for all time\u201d whereas \u201call the time\u201d is more like \u201chabitually, but sporadically\u201d.
Google Ngrams seems to corroborate some of the switches mentioned here:
![\"image\"](\"/media/84a554590ba13ad19e39f269126847863bb1e2a1_432a15fdaecf.png\")
![\"image\"](\"/media/0d4a4120a75cf9fa0ddd02d2c16f8930683b0779_33757d8d0011.png\")