Ginny, interesting about your old Connecticut farmer. Most probably the people he met on his journey would have never knowingly met and more to the point heard an American before. I wonder if these folk thought he came from a different part of the British Isles, does he mention this in the book?
Why did his walk prove 'life-changing?

Vee, I think you are probably exactly right in thinking that people hadn't met too many Americans, or that his accent must have been thought a regional British accent. But Olmsted never addresses the question in the book, which I read twenty years ago.

Olmsted was a bright young man from a well-off Connecticut family. He had not been able to find himself, as we would say, and the family supported his various earnest attempts to find his passion. He had decided to pursue agriculture--he was not really a farmer--and the trip to England was in part related to that career decision.

The big idea, the main concept that struck him so forcibly on his walking tour was the refreshing and healthy effects of nature upon urbanized people, especially the desperately poor in England's industrial cities. Some English nobles opened their estates to the public so they could enjoy the refreshment of nature. Olmsted was struck by the difference nature made to these people.

Olmsted returned to NYC, put aside his farming plans and entered the contest to design Central Park. He saw such a park as providing the same refuge to city-dwellers, including the poor, as what he had seen in England. His idea was not unique but his design, working with young Englishman Calvert Vaux, revolutionized urban planning and revolutionized the idea of public parks in cities around the world.

Frederick Law Olmsted is considered one of the great American geniuses. Some say he is our greatest artist (others vote for Frank Lloyd Wright). Olmsted went on to a lengthy and brilliant and passionate career as a landscape architect. In fact, he coined the term. He designed parks, estates, suburbs and so much more. He helped found the national park system and advocated for green, open spaces throughout his long life.

Olmsted also wrote a number of interesting books, starting with his walk thru England, short and fascinating. He may have been forty before he found himself but he certainly made up for lost time. Sorry this was so long--it got away from me!

Ginny, I think that is what once was refered to as a continental accent. I knew an editor with a very hoity toity continental accent who turnd out to be from San Antonio.

Louisville is one of the cities in which Olmstead designed the parks. We are extremely proud of them.

Olmstead laid out half of one of Baltimore's earliest suburbs - now well within city limits. And it is still a lovely area.

Olmsted gave much to the landscape of the US. Hope you don't mind if I note that it is spelled "Olmsted", without an "a".

His son and stepson took over the practice in the late 1890s, when he developed Alzheimer's and later died. That firm continued until the 1950s, I believe, so many Olmsted projects were the work of the sons and their firm, not FLO himself. But their work is highly regarded as well.

There's a ton of info in books and online too.

Ginny, you're right, Olmsted Jr did the layout I recalled and many others as well. When I went to verify it, with the correct spelling :D, I found that Senior did the parks downtown in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. Four of {{gwi:2114480}} come off the major compass points around the nation's first Washington Monument. He also did a suburb that is still outside city limits and remains a lovely neighborhood.

Kath, you nailed this American and her toonafish. :-) I'm more likely just to say toona nowadays, but when I was growing up in Iowa it was always tunafish. Is the /ch/ of your chooner like that of your 'chook'? Are /t/ and /ch/ often interchanged? I first heard 'chook' from my Yorkshire friend. She said it was chicken talk: chook-chook, chook-chook-choooook! All the chickens I ever knew said cluck-cluck-cluuuuck!! See, even chickens have accents.

Annpan, aren't 'sarnies' what Liverpudlians call sandwiches? 'A negg salad' - love that! My grandmother called the garment she never seemed to be without 'a napron'. I found out later that hers was the venerable pronunciation while we apron-callers were latecomers.

Ginny, fascinating info about Olmsted; many thanks. I can always count on learning something here at RP.

'Butty' is a word often used for sandwich over here, possibly from 'bread and butter'. A 'butty' or 'butt' is the expression in this area for a work-mate/friend (only between men). Still used among the older generation who 'speak vorest' when they greet each other "Ow bist old butt?"

Frieda, the 'ch' of 'chooner' is exactly like chook (or chicken). There must be many other examples of the t sounding like ch but of course I can't think of any!
Aussie speak tends to be a bit slack. To your ears, I'm sure I say 'lie-bree' for library, li-tra-cher for literature (which I see now has four syllables, although we only allow three!) and many other nasty things!
BTW, it is interesting to find out what animals say in other languages. A German rooster apparently says 'kikeree kikeree kee', and a dog 'wau wau'.

Friedag: I only stopped in Liverpool once on my travels and never spoke to any Liverpudlian about sandwiches so I could not possibly comment!
I read somewhere that birds have regional accents but I do not know why. They are great mimics. There was a bird in my garden in Buckinghamshire that copied the mobile phone ringtone of a neighbour to his great confusion.
Regarding confusion, the cleaning product formerly known as Jif was changed to Cif and of course was called anything from Chif, Sif or Kif by an annoyed public.

Vee,then I am wondering of the American expression "buddy" (close friend, comrade, or pal) came from the "Butty" you mentioned?

Annpan, a mockingbird at my aunt and uncle's farm mimicked the turkeys. It was too funny to hear it gobble.

Here's another one that the Jeeves video reminded me of and has been used throughout this thread. Can't versus what sounds to me like con't, which leads me to say that can't sounds like ant, but then I start thinking about the differences between ant and aunt. I grew up saying these two the same, although many do not. Geez.

Yes, can't and aunt have the same sound to me, and aunt sounds like aren't too.
OTOH, cant (that you speak) sounds like ant.
The longer 'a' sound is used (mostly) in South Australia, in words like dance and castle and photograph, but the short 'a' is used in the eastern states.

In RP (standard) English can't dance castle etc all sound as though there is a 'r' in them, the further North you go in the country you hear can't=ant=aunt. However we RP speakers still pronounce can so it rhymes will van/man etc.
Is this an eg of yet another 'intrusive R' or maybe a rhotic pronunciation?

On various web sites and here at RP I occasionally come across the term 'British English' where Americans describe an accent from this side of the Pond and wonder if the writers realises that although the British Isles are made up of a number of comparatively small, heavily populated countries and a Principality, the difference in both accents and dialect are wide. Someone speaking in the accent of Glasgow will sound nothing like the people from County Antrim, Cornwall or Gwynedd. It is quite possible that they would not be able to understand each other.
Is this the same in the US?
I once read a magazine article written by an English couple driving through Georgia. They were able to understand the 'locals' but the GA's could make neither head nor tale of what was being said to them in English English. :-)

Veer: Having watched/listened to many BBC TV presentations and sometimes understanding only half (less?) of what was said (got the rest by context), I think its fair to say that I don't believe there is an equal amount of variation in American English dialect. This is not to say there is none, but I think, for the most part, we can converse with each other w/o needing an interpreter.

Vee, I have found quite a bit of variation in the various southern dialects in the US. The Piedmont area of North Carolina has a manner of speech which can be especially hard to understand. (I write this as a southerner who often visited NC as a child but even today, I have problems understanding my own cousins!) The accent of Mississippi is altogether another issue, IMHO, as is that of West Virginia.

I grew up pronouncing "aunt" to rhyme with "Pants". What a surprise when my Richmond cousins visited Atlanta and mentioned our "Ahnt" Rachel, to rhyme with "gaunt." Now, I'm living here in Tidewater where the old timers most often use that pronounciation, as well as calling an "outhouse" an "oothoose." Very quaint, and they don't even realize that they are. Some carry-over from whatever part of Britain the colonial settlers came from originally.

In VA, we also have some bizarre legal terms: e.g. "uttering" is considered a crime. (this means to forge a check). We used to have "Blue Laws", which meant liquor and other stores were closed on Sundays.

A couple of years ago on Survivor was a guy from the Virginia mountains that others on the show and people watching swore they couldn't understand. To me it was the dulcet tones of not very distant family. There are also formerly isolated islands off the coast of Georgia where escaped slaves settled and whose language still includes many African words and rhythms. I saw a movie, "Daughters of the Dust" years ago filmed there in the Gullah patois with much needed sub-titles. Here 10 miles off the shore of Maryland in the Chesapeake Bay is Smith Island , still accessible only by ferry, where the language can be hard to understand and said to resemble the dialect of the West Country of England. Tom Horton's An Island Out of Time chronicles the two years he lived there.

You might enjoy this article from the Washington Post a couple of years ago about the Bay dialects slowly dying - with the exception of Smith Island - for a curious reason of kids holding on to their cultural identity.

When I was looking for confirmation about the Georgia islands I found this interesting survey of all the American dialects. I don't know how legit it is, I see more variation in Southern dialects, myself, but it looks pretty well researched.

chris, thanks for posting both of the interesting articles. We, here in Tidewater, VA. of course have our "Watermen", which is a vanishing way of life. When I moved to this area in the early 70's, if one drove out to Gloucester County, to a very remote, cut off rural area called "Guinea", the accents were very noticeable and difficult to understand. A few scholars went there to live and study the population and its cultures and wrote theses on the way of life and speech. Now, unfortunately, the old timers are dying out and the area is no longer remote. It's a bit of waterfront paradise, so newcomers (called "come heres") have been buying up much of the land and building homes. Thus the influx of outlanders has homogenized the speech patterns. I have friends who live in the area whom I visit, so I can observe the changes on a yearly basis. Still, the way of life is much slower-paced and I can pick up some of the nuances. One favorite story concerned an Irishman who was visiting the US and could never understand Virginian speech until someone took him out to talk to the Guineamen of Glouc. Co. and he said he felt right at home there, due to the pronunciations!

Many Americans outside of Louisiana say they have difficulty understanding the Cajun dialect and the New Orleans Yat accent. The latter refers to the habit of asking "where y'at?" N'awlins-talk quite mystified me for a while, especially the greeting "how y'mominem?" But I think "who dat?" was readily comprehensible

I've been on the trail of the NY/NJ glottal stop. See what you all have done! Still haven't run it to ground, but I did learn something from David Crystal in his book The Stories of English. Chapter 16 is about glottal stops as used in regional dialects of the British Isles. Crystal notes that the glottal stop is prevalent among Ulster Scots, so he speculates it was carried over by Scots to the Ulster Plantations in the seventeenth century and then gradually worked its way south and east in England in the nineteenth century. He notes that the glottal stop is used even in Received Pronunciation, and has been for more than a century because early recordings (1910s) of Ellen Terry, the actress, and Bertrand Russell plainly indicate glottal stops in their refined and upper-class accents.

But the following really caught my attention on page 418:
[Sociolinguists have noted]: If glottal stops are increasing in an accent, there is growing evidence that the change is being led by young middle-class women, who seem more ready to use the most noticeable type -- glottal replacement between vowels. This in turn leads to the intriguing conclusion drawn by some sociolinguists: it is the pronunciations which women use that become the prestige forms in a language. Men may be the dominant voice in society, but their accent has been given a female sanction.

Which reminds me of "prolly" the shortened pronunciation of probably -- the origin of this, to me, silly-sounding word is known. The well-heeled students attending the Seven Sisters colleges in the early 1900s enjoyed using affected accents and especially babytalk. To say something lazily, as if bored or world weary, was chic. It always strikes me as humorous when I hear a man today say "prolly."

Ah, that fits with the Aussie rising inflection? Where everything sounds like a question? And is especially prevalent on the eastern seaboard? And it's the young girls who do it?
Thank goodness, it isn't nearly so common in South Australia.

BTW, tomorrow (January 26th) is Straya Day...............

If glottal stops are increasing because of their spread by women surely it is just because women talk more than men do.

Frieda, I heard David Crystal talk on the radio the other day. I spent so much time trying to work out where he came from that I forgot to listen to what he said.
Unlike the academic/intellectual types (your eg of Bertrand Russell) of the past, since the '70's it has become almost de rigeur for university lecturers to have a regional accent to show them to be 'Men of the People'. Crystal speaks in the slightly flat dull tones of Cheshire (where the cheese comes from) edge of Liverpool.

I was reading an article in the Nat Geo mag and came across the word sheepherder to describe the occupation of a person who tends sheep.
Do you not use the word shepherd in the US?
"While sheepherders watched their flocks by night" lacks a certain rhythm :-)
Also hear Americans (on the radio news etc) say 'two times' when we would say 'twice'.

I have heard both shepherd and sheepherder used interchangably, but although I do live in one of "America's Gardens" most of the acreage is under crops, not pasture-the sheep raised in this area are raised by the farmer and his family-there are very few, if any, whose sole job is shepherd. It is a good 4H experience for young people to raise a lamb up. Probably in the western states, where the acreage and the flocks are enormous, it is a full-time occupation. But we don't eat as much sheep here-lamb, but not mutton-so the bigger group would probably be cowhand. I know a young man who attends school here on the east coast, but for three summers has been a cowhand on a ranch in Wyoming.
I use twice.

Vee, David Crystal recounts in one of his books (I forget which one -- I've read three recently) that his first language was that of north Wales where he was born; but when his family moved to Liverpool, from necessity he had to become bilingual and to keep his clothing intact his accent had to be Liverpudlian. During his summers when he spent time with his mother's people in Ireland, he did his best to fit in there as well. Then he moved to the south of England for education and career and had to acquire RP features to be taken seriously. The last was apparently only partially successful because he relates that when he presented English Now on Radio 4 he got letters that mostly complained about his accent. He's glad that regional dialects and accents are now received with less animosity, and he cites Welshman Huw Edwards reading the main news on television and Susan Rae with her Scottish accent being back on the radio after she was hounded off by intolerant listeners during the 1980s.

I agree with Cece re shepherd/sheepherder: the former brings to my mind a small flock, a relatively small pasture, and a minder or a couple of minders on foot. Sheepherders tend very large flocks and cover a huge range. They are likely to be on horseback or in a pick-up with the real shepherds (the dogs) in the bed of the truck, until they are turned loose to do their job.

I use both 'two times' and 'twice', but I can't tell you what my internal rule is for the choice.

When I hear "sheepherder", the Wild West comes to mind; when I hear "shepherd", I think of Christmas and the New Testament.

I've been reading a lot of English books recently and the use of "round" where Americans would use "around" has become glaringly obvious. So do Brits never say "around the corner"? I even recall a book title "Round Ireland in Low Gear", or some such. To me, properly written, one would insert an apostrophe in front of the word: e.g. 'round.

Another word that seems to be disappearing is "further." The last three books I've read have used farther when I would have said further.

Another is weaved for both wove and woven. Then there are the sportscasters who say winned for won.

I sometimes feel I've outlived my time.

new television show I just stumbled upon-Making Over America starring two British women-Trinny and Susannah. At least that is how their names are printed-but Trinny calls Susannah "Su-zann-er."

Can you say how you would pronounce Susannah, because I'm with Trinny on that one *g*?

I always say twice, have never heard of a sheepherder (but then we don't really have shepherds here, the flocks are too large for one person to look after) and would probably usually say round eg round the world ticket.

The two things said here by sports commentators that really annoy me are 'back to back' wins, instead of saying consecutive (although grammatically I suppose it isn't too bad) and verse. The latter shows a complete lack of knowledge of word origin - it is used in the following context:
'Today's game is Adelaide verse Melbourne'.
Latin scholars must feel even worse than I do!

Suz-zan-a. short a at the end. no "r" sound

here versus has been shortened to "v"...as in 3v3 volleyball.

Kath, because versus is usually written in the US as Adelaide vs Melbourne, American commentators often will say vee-ess. I sometimes wonder if they have any idea that it's an abbreviation.

I've just been reading about the upward inflection at the end of sentences, prevalent in Australia and firmly catching hold demographically (with mostly young woman, again) in the US. Sociolinguists have traced it back to New Zealand in the 1970s, but possible it arose simultaneously in other parts of the world, though why hasn't been ascertained. It seems, on the face of it, that users of this inflection might feel insecure and want validation of their statements, thus making them into questions. Possibly. At least the initial use might have been for that reason, but I think it's mostly habitual among users nowadays.

I particularly notice two British uses in books and speech that contrast with American ones. The first is the use of an article before days of the weeks; e.g. I will go to Coventry on the Saturday or I last saw him on the Monday. Americans don't use the article in this case, but we do use it before hospital: He was taken by ambulance to the hospital. This reminds me of the film Murder by Death where the Truman Capote character rants at the Peter Sellers character (a parody of Charlie Chan, the Chinese-Hawaiian detective), "Just say the damned articles!"

The other use is the phrase different to. Americans usually say different from or more and more frequently different than. The latter has long been considered "incorrect" by American pedants, but its long-time use has been attested in the speech and writings of educated Americans and Britons. Judging by the number of times I've heard newsreaders say "different than" without distinguishing it to mean an elliptical comparsion, I'll bet the pedants are fuming.

Cece, the 'v' shortening is used here too, and thank goodness is more common than 'verse'.
I can say 'Su-zan-a' if I really try, but my mouth feels funny doing it LOL.

Frieda, I would say the rising inflection is becoming less common, either that or I just don't notice it as much.

I say both 'different from' and different to', but I would never say 'different than'.

With regards to using an article before the name of a day, I might in the following way.
"We went to the Barossa for a week. On the Monday, we had lunch at a restaurant'.
(As a side note, I often get into trouble with my family's use of 'this' and 'next' in regards to days of the week. To me, 'this Tuesday' is the next one we get to, 'next Tuesday' is the following one, in the next week.)

The example about 'hospital' is even more interesting. Certainly I would say 'he was taken to hospital' but if the institution is named, the article is inserted and the word 'hospital' often left out.
"He was taken to the Royal Adelaide for treatment'.

This is a fascinating thread.

The rising inflection is used by a certain type of American teenage or twenty-something girl, enhanced by a breathy, rapid delivery.
Their conversation is mostly about the delivery-not much substance.

I have even heard the rising inflection among young men. When I hear it, as for instance, "My name is Mary?", I want to immediately say (split infinitive there), "Well, is it or isn't it?" And, of course, let us not forget "like" used every other word!!

Heh! leel, it's uncanny how often I will be reading about something, then I come to RP to find someone has posted about that very thing. This time it's the split infinitive, which David Crystal -- the professor of linguistics whose books I've been devouring -- says is the biggest con job perpetrated by the prescriptive grammarians of the nineteenth century. A century and a half later, we still cannot shake the artificial constraints of these misguided rule makers. The trouble is they were trying to make the English language fit the rules of Latin. In Latin an infinitive cannot be split because it is just one word, but in English the infinitive form is two words (to + verb) and it is perfectfly plausible to split the two and insert intermediate words, particularly adverbs. Things might get confusing if a speaker/writer sticks too many words between to and the verb but an adverb or a short phrase will not confuse most listeners/readers. Besides it's the natural thing to do in English; it's been done for centuries and probably since English became English.

I think Crystal does a good job of explaining why the split infinitive is a characteristic construction of English. I have heard it explained before but never quite as clearly. Here's what he says in his The Fight for English, page 126:
[Crystal gives the example to boldly love]: The basic rhythm of English is a 'tum-te-tum' -- what in the main tradition of English poetry is called an iambic pentameter, with strong (stressed) and weak (unstressed) syllables alternating...when we split an infinitive we are striving to achieve this rhythm. Let us see why.

The to part of an infinitive carries no stress. And adverbs in English usually end in -ly, which also carries no stress. So of the three options [of the example phrase], only one follows the natural heartbeat of English:

boldly to love strong--weak--weak--strong
to love boldly weak--strong--strong--weak
to boldly love weak--strong--weak--strong

That is why we do it. If you want to use one of the other possibilities, you can. It is a matter of stylistic taste, and that's all it is. But the split version is more native.

So, don't be fooled when a grammarian tells you, 'Ah, but one is clearer than the other.' It isn't. The three forms above convey exactly the same meaning. If you let yourself believe otherwise, you have been taken in by the big con.

It was certainly a con that I swallowed hook, line and sinker while in school. It wasn't until I took university classes that I began to suspect it was hooey -- that and it was so hard for me not to split infinitives.

re Susannah, I want to underline what CeCe wrote: take note, putting the "R" sound on its end is precisely the "intrusive R" that we Americans keep hearing from the English. ;-)

re the rising inflection among the young in America: is that part of the so called "Valley Girl" talk?

I've picked up the Brit usage of often dropping the American "the" in front of hospital, etc. Thus, I now write "when I was at University, many years ago...." Americans normally would say, "he was taken to the hospital yesterday...."

Carolyn, "winned"? Ouch!

As for split infinitives, I am sure that daily I commit many peccadillos....

I heard one pundit theorize that the subconcious fear of a split infinitive is what caused the Chief Justice to muff the oath of office. "To faithfully execute" was eventually mangled into "to execute faithfully."
I think he was just nervous, and he didn't have it written down! He wanted to do it from memory. Bad call.

Here in the 'burbs where I live we have all sorts of confusing ways to delinate just which Tuesday we did anything. For instance...."this Tuesday" means tomorrow, January 27th. "Next Tuesday" means a week from tomorrow, Feb. 3rd. Last Tuesday is the one last week, and so on.
The only time I can really see using an article in front would be to say "the Tuesday before last."

My theory:
We go to the hospital just like we go to the library or the store-because we are going to a specific place to do a specific finite act: get well (we hope), get a book, get food. We go to school (without the article) because that is the on-going act of getting an education, not so much the travel to and from a building. If I am going to a basketball game, I go to THE high school to see it. But my children went to high school from grades 9-12.

I've never heard different than used; quite the wrong word. It is different from.

cece, re Trinny and Susannah, they are what is 'laddishly' described as posh totty in England. One of them (can never remember which is which) used to go out with Prince Andrew. Listen to how they speak, rather than what they say and you will hear 'proper' RP English. They would probably never say Suzan-a (or 'ah') because they are SO English and would never 'date' a swain who sang to the accompaniment of a banjo on his knee. ;-)

As Kath says, I have never heard anyone in England say "on the Wednesday" unless it referred to a particular one "The Wednesday of my birthday" "It was the Wednesday of the storm."

Woodnymph/Mary In 'English' English around and round are different parts of speech, although sometimes their meaning is interchangeable . .. too complicated to go into it here but check in a dictionary.
Your eg of the book 'Round Ireland. . .' The title is correct because the writer actually travelled the circumference of Ireland ie 'round the edge', he made a circuit of the country.
Had he travelled around Ireland it means he could have gone in any direction, 10 miles North, 50 miles East back the way he had come . . .

Never a dull moment at RP!

Frieda, CeCe, did you see Steven Pinker's deconstruction of Justice Robert's rewriting of the oath? Worth the read.

Veer, I suspect that we've lost that definition of round here in the states. It just sounds incredibly wrong to me. If I walk around a field, I walk the circumference.

My thanks to England and Australia for upholding different from. Different than is my greatest pet peeve. I always want to stand up and shout that one thing differs from another, not than it. Pedant forever!

Chris, thanks for the link. Steven Pinker is an excellent man!

Vee, I will wager that you have heard or read different than, but perhaps it didn't register. 'Course, there's no way I can prove it. :-)

Here are a few examples from well-known writers, cited in the OED:
She, too, had one day hoped for a different lot than to be wedded to a little gentleman who rapped his teeth. -- William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis

Oliver Goldsmith used different than. 18th century

...and when Helen handed it to me, I said, "I thought these things were different than they used to be." -- James Thurber, letter, 31 July 1952

I'm no different than you. -- Frank Shorter, quoted in Springfield (Mass.) Daily News, 3 June 1986

Different than isn't always wrong -- even to pedants. 'Than' is sanctioned when a comparison is made with a full clause following; e.g., The town is different than it was in my youth. It can be argued that it is the more economical, less clumsy construction. To say the same thing with from: The town is different from how it was in my youth.

Whichever sounds better to you is the way you should say it, but with the awareness that a person who says it the other way is not wrong, though that person may be willing to say that you are!

Different than follows the same model as 'other than' and 'rather than.'

The different from/to/than controversy began in the late nineteenth century (1897), according to the OED. All three forms had been used prior -- as far back as Shakespeare -- but the pedants got together to impose their exalted opinions on all the common speakers, and it's been hell ever since. ;-)

I have used and heard used an article before the name of a weekday, as in, "Next week, on the Wednesday I'm going to the circus but I'm free on the Thursday".

One construction that grates on my ear is 'bored of', although it follows the model of 'tired of' or 'sick of'. I much prefer 'bored with'.
It is truly scary to me how many Australians write 'I should of/could of/would of'. I know it sounds just like that in our accent but still.......

BTW, I don't think 'different than' is wrong, it is just not something I would say.

With regards to the split infinitive, I find the different constructions do seem to have different meanings to me sometimes.
To boldly go - suggests the going itself is bold and brave as the situation is dangerous.
To go boldly - suggests that the person is going in a bold manner, looking brave

I don't think these ideas would hold up grammatically, but it is my interpretation.

Oh-"should of/could of/would of" drives teachers nuts! I usually teach a lesson early on in the year to demonstrate the correct spellings....it makes me feel better, anyway! And there is usually a collective "OOHH" when they see the two words that make up what they think they are saying.

I agree with Frieda in that I have heard "different than" used in specific instances.

I still maintain that " round" when substituted for "around "is wrong.

"We dance around the circle and suppose;
The Secret sits in the center and only knows."

(Robert Frost).

"Ring around the rosy, pocketful of posies;
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down."

(nursury rhyme describing the Bubonic Plague symptoms).

Despite the sleet outside today, I am going to walk around the block....

On the other hand, "round" used as a noun, e.g. "I will have a round of cheese for lunch."

Woodnymph: That is an interesting variation of the version I learnt. Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies,A-tishoo A-tishoo, we all fall down. I was told that a roseate circle (ring) of a rash and sneezing were some of the Bubonic plague symptoms.
I notice that American nursery rhyme books are called Mother Goose books. Is this the same one who is in the Jack and the Beanstalk pantomime? Or am I getting confused?
BTW What brought about the "First of all" followed by "Second of all"? I thought it was a joke but have heard it used seriously on TV programmes.
CC: Bad call indeed! I heard of a radio personality who has his OWN NAME written down in case he forgets it when he opens his programme.

I remember my Grandfather's funeral when I was 5, playing "Ring around the Rosey" with my cousins at the gravesite. How creepy is that? Even creepier is that's where I'll be buried. So I can say I've done a macabre death dance at my own gravesite. Guess that's what's called a southern gothic sense of humor? ;D

I thought I would check my copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage (I do realise how old this book is, but it is still interesting to check) on the around/round discussion, and found this:

Around is, in British use, a variant of round disappearing until recently but now coming back under American influence. It is still the normal form in cerain combinations, as a. and about, all a and can be used without being noticeable in a few of the senses of round, as in seated a. the table, spread destruction a. But it is hardly possible to say winter comes a., all the year a., sleep the clock a.
American usage is quite different; among the examples in an American dictionary are the following, all of which are still unnatural for an Englishman: He went through, but I ran a., the church a. the corner

This is most interesting, as I find the 'American' examples sound OK to me either way. But I think it shows that 'round' is well used and not wrong, just different.

I don't hear "round of cheese" so much, but at Friday teacher happy hour, we are always happy to hear someone say they will "get the next round." (of coffee, of course.)