[Trinidad]

Hi all,

I have a silly question to all native speakers of English. My son needs to learn at school the proper English phrase for "driving while under the infleunce of alcohol". It needs to contain "driving" in the continuous tense and some form of the verb "to drink".

Please pick how you would phrase that. I am also curious about the variation of English you speak (UK, US, CAN, AUS, NZ, etc.), so I would appreciate it if you would provide that information.

Obviously, this poll is inspired by the fact that I was quite surprised about what they are teaching my son, but since I am not a native speaker and heavily biased towards American Midwest English (but, no, I don't use the phrase "I should have went to game"), I thought I would ask here.

Thanks,

Rik

[kuhchung]

here's one poll i didn't get wrong

USA here

[RMB1]

Delete this one before the votes get split?

[diana_eva]

RMB1, on 2015-January-09, 12:58, said:

Delete this one before the votes get split?

Yep, done. Actually I merged them, not sure if that saves the votes as well but at least from now on it will be OK.

Edit: poll votes were merged too.

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2015-January-09, 13:01

[gordontd]

I think drink driving is the phrase we use here in England, and Wikipedia says that's the UK & Australian usage, but I see RMB1 has given a different answer. I could say his answer doesn't count because he doesn't drive, but then he might say mine doesn't count because I don't drink.

[RMB1]

The use of a hyphen in a verb phrase would be odd.

But there is little consistency in the use of hyphens; and a tendency for two-word phrases to migrate from two words, to hyphenated, to one word (with no hyphen or space).

[Bbradley62]

US: Half of my life in each metro New York and Atlanta, if that matters...

I have never heard the phrase "drink driving" and it would never occur to me to use it.

"Drunk driving" and "drinking and driving" are equally acceptable, and popular slogans include: "don't drink and drive" and "drinking and driving don't mix". Of course, in American English, the "--ing" words in the last phrase are called gerunds, and are treated as nouns, not as verbs. One influential lobbying group is called "Mothers Against Drunk Driving".

[Trinidad]

Bbradley62, on 2015-January-09, 13:29, said:

US: Half of my life in each metro New York and Atlanta, if that matters...

I have never heard the phrase "drink driving" and it would never occur to me to use it.

"Drunk driving" and "drinking and driving" are equally acceptable, and popular slogans include: "don't drink and drive" and "drinking and driving don't mix".

I am planning to summarize the results in a few days. I will interpret your post as half a vote for "drinking and driving" and half a vote for "drunk driving" for US English.

Rik

[Bbradley62]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-09, 13:35, said:

I am planning to summarize the results in a few days. I will interpret your post as half a vote for "drinking and driving" and half a vote for "drunk driving" for US English.

Rik

That was what I intended. This poll might have been better in the "select all that apply" format.

[barmar]

[quote name='Trinidad' timestamp='1420832154' post='828747']
I am planning to summarize the results in a few days. I will interpret your post as half a vote for "drinking and driving" and half a vote for "drunk driving" for US English.
/quote]
I was also split between those two, and wished for a multiple response poll.

[RMB1]

gordontd, on 2015-January-09, 13:06, said:

I think drink driving is the phrase we use here in England, and Wikipedia says that's the UK & Australian usage, but I see RMB1 has given a different answer.

I read the poll as what I say, not what is common usage.

[barmar]

BTW, a good resource for someone trying to learn English is English Language Learners. This is the sister site of English Language & Usage, which is for more esoteric discussion of English usage. E.g. an appropriate question on this topic for the second site would be how it came to be that Americans say "drunk driving" while Britons say "drink driving".

[ArtK78]

Drunk driving or driving while drunk are the two I would use.

Drinking and driving is also acceptable, but I would use the first two primarily.

USA here.

[kenberg]

If "drunk" is part of the sentence I much prefer "driving while drunk" to "drunk driving" I am drunk, the driving isn't. But my choice from the list was "drinking and driving". I will explain:

Say that I have had 250 ml of red wine. The usual stuff, not port or sherry. I will not be drunk, not in the way that the term is used by most people. I won't be slurring my words or stumbling. But quite possibly my alcohol level in my blood will exceed the legal limit.

The law is that you cannot drive when your blood alcohol level is beyond a certain limit, and I think that it is best if everyone understands and accepts that that is the law. Whether or not you are drunk in the sense most people use the term is irrelevant.

I also think this is a very strange assignment. I would like it better if your son, after choosing, was asked to explain his choice. This would encourage him to think about phrasing..

To borrow from Auggie March on my origins "I am an American Minnesota born." (I think that's the way it begins, with Minnesota replaced by Chicago.)

Added: If we are choose between "drunk driving" and "drunken driving" I opt for whatever form is analogous to "carefu" or "careless", and I think that would be "drunken". But I much prefer "driving while drunk" to either of these.


Fwiw: My father never got involved with my schooling and my mother rarely did. But I recall a time when my mother decided that the teacher was wrong in the way she was presenting grammar. My mother was intelligent and capable, but she had had about a year and a half of high school some thirty plus years before tis confrontation took place. And confrontation was what it was. With me, not with the teacher. I still rcall the details. We were in Weber's Bar, my mother had been consuming, and she decided she had to set me straight about all the wrong things I was being taught.
To go to the opposite extreme, I knew Sergei Brin when he was a school child and I knew his father. His father taught his son that whatever the teacher said was correct, at least for the current school year. If the teacher said San Francisco was the capitol of California, then it was. Next year it could be Sacramento again. Or San Diego.
This seems to have worked.
Still one more: I used to joke around with thsi Japanes graduate student I knew. Once she told me she had to run off and tutor mathematics to this Japanese child that she knew. I said "I though all of you Japanese had mathematics ingrained in your DNA". "He is going to an American school" she replied.

So good luck!

[Trinidad]

kenberg, on 2015-January-09, 16:27, said:

I also think this is a very strange assignment. I would like it better if your son, after choosing, was asked to explain his choice. This would encourage him to think about phrasing..

This is a misunderstanding. This is not part of an assignment. It is part of his English class. Each chapter in his English book (as a foreign language) has stories in English and a list of new words and phrases to the stories. He needs to look them up in a dictionary and will be tested on knowing them in the vocabulary tests.

He has found this nice little website to train his vocabulary: You can upload lists of words with their translations, and the website is quizzing you. So, I just happened to see that the website was prompting him for the English translation of "rijden onder invloed". He typed an answer and was about to hit the "enter key" when I asked him: "Are you sure?" because I was sure he made a typo. He laughed and said that his mother had said exactly the same thing, but that this was what the book said. And when he saw my face, he showed it to me right there!

So, my poll is really an idiot check on my (and my wife's) knowledge of English.

Rik

[Trinidad]

barmar, on 2015-January-09, 13:56, said:

Trinidad, on 2015-January-09, 13:35, said:

I am planning to summarize the results in a few days. I will interpret your post as half a vote for "drinking and driving" and half a vote for "drunk driving" for US English.

I was also split between those two, and wished for a multiple response poll.

I am a fan of the Dutch democratic system. This means that everybody gets exactly one vote and everybody's voting power is equal to that of all other voters. You can split your votes anyway you like by posting them, and I will divide them into two, three or four if needed when I make a final tally.

Rik

[Vampyr]

Having lived in both the UK and the USA, I have noted the difference in usage; that is, drink driving in the UK and drunk driving in the US. In both places drinking and driving is also used.

EDIT: I almost forgot that "drive drunk" is also used in the US, such as in the slogan "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" or in a sentence such as I've never driven drunk in my life. I don't know whether this is used in the UK but I think that "driving whilst drunk" is sometimes used.

[kenberg]

Trinidad, on 2015-January-09, 16:47, said:

This is a misunderstanding. This is not part of an assignment. It is part of his English class. Each chapter in his English book (as a foreign language) has stories in English and a list of new words and phrases to the stories. He needs to look them up in a dictionary and will be tested on knowing them in the vocabulary tests.

He has found this nice little website to train his vocabulary: You can upload lists of words with their translations, and the website is quizzing you. So, I just happened to see that the website was prompting him for the English translation of "rijden onder invloed". He typed an answer and was about to hit the "enter key" when I asked him: "Are you sure?" because I was sure he made a typo. He laughed and said that his mother had said exactly the same thing, but that this was what the book said. And when he saw my face, he showed it to me right there!

So, my poll is really an idiot check on my (and my wife's) knowledge of English.

Rik

You mentioned you were not so happy with what he is being taught. Could you give details? I am guessing that "rijden onder invloed" translates fiarly literally to "driving under the infuence". I would hate to see that marked wrong.


In college I took reading German. We read these little stories and translated them. It was long ago so I don't recall the exact German phrase but the story was about a ship that was sunk. The literal translation from the German was "went under" and I translated it that way. This was marked wrong. "Sank" was right. I really hate this sort of thing. Who gives a whatever whether the ship sank or went under? He said he would have accepted "went down".


I have learned about "lie" and "lay" and "who" and "whom" so I don't sound like too much of a rube but I really hope that a large number of reasonable choices for the translations of "rijden onder invloed" would all be acceptable.

[Bbradley62]

Vampyr, on 2015-January-09, 17:52, said:

... but I think that "driving whilst drunk" is sometimes used.

"whilst" is not a word on this side of the pond.

[Bbradley62]

kenberg, on 2015-January-09, 18:03, said:

I am guessing that "rijden onder invloed" translates fiarly literally to "driving under the influence". I would hate to see that marked wrong.

Agreed. Both "DUI" (driving under the influence) and "DWI" (driving while intoxicated) are completely acceptable terms; there's no need to specifically use any form of "to drink".