Here in India, we use ‘in the back side of’ very commonly. Like we’ll say the tea shop is in the back side of the office building, coz we also say ‘in the left side of’, ‘in the right side of’, so ‘in the back of’ isn’t THAT bad.
divea: That sounds funny though. “In the backside of” makes me think it would be used in this kind of manner:
At half time, the coach was very unhappy with the team. Consequently, his foot was seen in the backside of the team captain.
I could care less.
Who cares? Since when is academic writing some kind of touchstone? The relevant question is do journalists, novelists, poets, and others who write daily for a wide audience use this form? The answer is yes.
Who cares? Since when is academic writing some kind of touchstone? The relevant question is do journalists, novelists, poets, and others who write daily for a wide audience use this form? The answer is yes.[/quote]
Fair points.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard the phrase “in back of”. “In the back of”, sure, but that has a different meaning.
Probably stems from laziness. Why bother learning “behind”, “before”, etc., when you can merely substitute “back” for “front”? I personally think it sounds ugly, and would never use it. But I suppose I’m a bit of a word snob/fascist. 
Oh, and knew what “kitty-corner” meant when I was a kid, because I heard it in a Neil Young song and looked it up in a dictionary. “Going Dutch” I knew as a kid, too. My parents used it frequently. And they are MOST CERTAINLY not American.
I know of “in back of.” Never used it myself, however. Not English, far as I’m concerned. “Roon’ the back-ey” is of course the grammatically correct usage.
[quote=“tomthorne”]
I suppose the point I’m trying to make in my usual ponderous manner is that perfect tenses are tending to get used less frequently. ‘Have you eaten?’ replaced by ‘Did you eat yet?’. ‘Have you finished?’ by ‘Are you done?’ That sort of thing. I just get the feeling that eventually they’ll drop out of common usage and the only people who use them will be geriatric old duffers like me.[/quote]
I find perfect tenses are used just as often as they used to be, but past participles have been dropped in favor of past tense. So ‘Have you eaten?’ becomes ‘Have you ate?’ and I see usages like, ‘The calendar method has proved to be unreliable.’ These sound wrong to me but I’ve seen them used for the past five years or so. I’m not so concerned with “correctness” as long as I can understand what people are saying. Langauge is not static, it evolves like everything else, otherwise we’d be speaking that horrifically ugly Old English making us sound like Klingon speaking geeks. The things I would call ‘wrong’ are changes that create confusion like spelling the past tense of ‘lead’ as ‘lead’ rather than ‘led.’
[quote=“jimipresley”]This is the first time I’ve ever heard the phrase “in back of”. “In the back of”, sure, but that has a different meaning.
Probably stems from laziness. Why bother learning “behind”, “before”, etc., when you can merely substitute “back” for “front”? I personally think it sounds ugly, and would never use it. But I suppose I’m a bit of a word snob/fascist.
[/quote]
I have about the exact opposite feeling. Before this thread, I hadn’t known “in back of” was an Americanism. Perhaps it doesn’t stand out like some of the obvious nomenclature differences etc. It seems wholly unremarkable to me; it was as hard for me to imagine it’s not a normal part of British English as it is for you that we Americans use it. I can imagine it now though 
It’s not laziness I’m sure; technically speaking “behind” has only two syllables and is easier to say than “in back of.” I haven’t been able to find an on line etymology of it though I’m very interested at this point.
I can understand not liking it; one might have such feelings about any word. I can’t really get though how if “in front of” is deemed proper and acceptable, “in back of” is not found at least fairly reasonable
EDIT: some info here, it seems to be fairly recent. books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP … &q&f=false
Oh, I despair. Soon we’re going to be telling our foes “Like, just, like, IN BACK OFF, MAN!”
Don’t you say that to your friends already???
Who cares? Since when is academic writing some kind of touchstone? The relevant question is do journalists, novelists, poets, and others who write daily for a wide audience use this form? The answer is yes.[/quote]
Fair points.[/quote]
What? Are you trying to start a fight by being reasonable? 
Also in some books I have seen a fringe described as ‘bangs’ a term I have never heard.
I always explain the international variations.
IELTS students in particular struggle with the variations.
My mate has 2 kids and reluctantly sends them to a cram school but he always asks to see teaching qualifications and always asks the teacher to teach ‘colour’ etc.
The schools say that British English is now highly desired and has become even fashionable with some high end schools.
My adult students approach me purely for this. It is however a niche market still.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]divea: That sounds funny though. “In the backside of” makes me think it would be used in this kind of manner:
At half time, the coach was very unhappy with the team. Consequently, his foot was seen in the backside of the team captain.[/quote]
Hmmm…a clear case of DADT… 
piping in… “in back of” and “in front of” are widely used throughout the U.S. Upon reflection, I’ve encountered these phrases in casual narrative speech. I don’t think I’ve encountered them in writing very often.
I dunno, all my US family are from the South-East corner (NC down to Florida) and I’ve lived in Tenn and Texas, but never heard ‘in back of’ (I may have heard it in Texas, but I was too young to remember it, probably). Friend from Indiana said he’d never heard it either; seems like a West Coast thing?
It seems normal to me (NYC.) In an unscientific check I just made, a google of “in back of my house” turns up 19,000,000 results, which seems like a lot. All ten results on the first page were the disputed sense.
It’s not just unscientific, i think that number is totally bogus … the same search gave me 47,200,000 results.
Just did it again, in quotes, same result, 19 big ones on the dot. Do you really believe A Moderator of this esteemed site would stoop so low as to fabricate the results of unscientific google word counts?
I did it again also, in quotes, copy-and-paste:
About 47,200,000 results (0.07 seconds).
Strangely, “In back of my” gets:
About 9,190,000 results (0.17 seconds)
How can this be? It’s all bogus I tell you …