I honestly had never heard anything but ‘flautist’ except from children who hadn’t yet come across that word, so this whole blogpost and comment thread have been very interesting to me.

And thanx – i didn’t know ‘shirty’ was a Brit thing. (You’ve got me collared with that, so i’ll button up now.)

If I sound a bit “shirty” (a British colloquialism), it’s because I have had a number of people try to tell me (regardless of that I’ve played the flute for 40+ years, am ABD on a doctoral level degree in music and have several rave reviews in The New York Times) that flautist is correct, and that I am wrong.

I actually agree that divergences in dialect are really quite wonderful, and that the increasing homogeneity of language is not necessarily good. Just don’t insist that one dialect is correct!

In my view, British English is one dialect, and not the majority dialect of English in the world. It certainly is the majority dialect in Britain, so those of us whose native dialect it is can offer our experience of words here.

As i said in comment 2, ‘I love happening upon a divergence’. :0)

In every other language, the term for a flute player is the word for flute plus a modifying suffix (e.g., in French, flûte, therefore flûtiste). Therefore, I think “flautist” is a bit affected. However, if one is to insist that British English is the standard, I assume that “vitamin” is pronouced “vit-uh-min,” that words such as “colour” and “grey” must always be spelled as per British usage. In short, I refuse to be held to the standard of British English for the word for the instrument that has been my life’s work.

Lorrie, lol but what are Flautas?

And Suzanne, we wouldn’t dream of saying British English is posher? … Would we? … ;0)