The French speak French, the Spanish speak Spanish, The English speak?
- Thread starter Pilkingtube
- Start date
I'm Welsh and I speak English. I have never heard of 'British English' either. I don't care that it's called English, and probably shouldn't since it is English.ZombieGenesis said:
If iv'e totally missed something here I'm sorry, I'm kinda drunk.
Pretty sure 'European Spanish' and 'Latin Spanish' are different. Just like French Canadian, African French and European French.
You are wrong. Nobody speaks "British English", we just speak "English" correctly.
Also Americans are backwards people so they put the month first.
Also Americans are backwards people so they put the month first.
tbh, it causes confusion for people from anywhere.Watson767 said:Lol @ British English.
Id love to see how an American would react to hearing a common English folk from any region, the North East would surely cause some confusion
Regarding the dates:
We could switch, the problem is nobody in the current voting age demographic is willing to relearn something (how would you like being forced to switch how you write dates after you'd been writing it a certain way all your life) so it kind of just gets left the way it is, similar to why we don't switch to the metric system. It would work fine for younger people but the older generations don't really want to switch because we've been using the imperial system all our lives.
Also, it really doesn't have a major impact on many people's day to day lives so we kind of don't care. I know how many miles I need to drive to work, I know how many miles per gallon my car averages and I'm happy with it so how does it affect you?
Regarding english:
We speak english but not british english, frankly I just think it's because saying "I speak American" sounds pretty damn stupid (in that redneck 'Murican way). Anyway, the only language that really originates here is the various dialects of native tribes and if we all spoke that communication would be even harder then it already is.
We could switch, the problem is nobody in the current voting age demographic is willing to relearn something (how would you like being forced to switch how you write dates after you'd been writing it a certain way all your life) so it kind of just gets left the way it is, similar to why we don't switch to the metric system. It would work fine for younger people but the older generations don't really want to switch because we've been using the imperial system all our lives.
Also, it really doesn't have a major impact on many people's day to day lives so we kind of don't care. I know how many miles I need to drive to work, I know how many miles per gallon my car averages and I'm happy with it so how does it affect you?
Regarding english:
We speak english but not british english, frankly I just think it's because saying "I speak American" sounds pretty damn stupid (in that redneck 'Murican way). Anyway, the only language that really originates here is the various dialects of native tribes and if we all spoke that communication would be even harder then it already is.
Oh, thats interesting. In that case when the Germans and Indians migrated away from the place where they were all speaking the same language eventually they adopted entirely different cultures and the languages evolved with it. So the languages should be separated when Americans and the British cannot understand each other. Over time when our cultures evolve the languages may change too. But in this age of globalization it might take much longer then it did in ancient times.
I speak Australian, cause it's fun to slaughter the Queen's English. And watching the confused look on foreign peoples faces. "Can I bum a fag?" Is possibly one of the greatest things to say to an American. There are others, but I've not been out of bed for long and still can't think straight.
-heads for cappuccino machine-
-heads for cappuccino machine-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_WebsterPilkingtube said:
When the Americans broke free of English rule, they wanted to keep the language; but altered it to better suit their form of spelling/jargon - so most of the older rules of grammar were replaced by Webster. (like our superfluous "u"'s)
British English means English based in Britain, American(US) English means English based in America.
Language then grew with "Fanny" being far ruder here than there, "Fag" becoming Homosexual Man there while cigarette here; and then when Windows was released, because it was American based - there had to be a standard. Gates chose American English (And early versions of Windows actually crashed if you tried to choose British English).
For dates, the Americans use the shortened form of the spoken word (March 17th, 2011 (3/17/2011)[Middle Endian]) while the British use the the numerical order of day/month/year.(Little Endian) - The Americans still say the Forth of July though, in deference to their normal ruling.
Hope that helps
Please don't confuse a dialect with an entirely different language. There are many variations of English (Canadian, American, British, etc), just as there are many variations of Spanish (Mayan, Latin, etc). If you want to get technical, there are also pidgin and creole languages.Pilkingtube said:
Yes, there's quite a difference between "Castellano" and "Español" language. My father is from South-America, while my mother is Norwegian and thus has learned Castilian spanish. So whenever I travel to Spain or Bolivia, I always end up saying something wrong because of the two versions of spanish that has created an abomination in my head.yak_face said:
Yes, I'd echo the remarks of the two Escapists above in that the phrase "British English" is one I'd yet to come across until now. I'm familiar with BBC English and the Queen's English but they're more variants on pronunciation than spelling.tigermilk said:
As for cross-Atlantic attitudes to the English language, well I'll leave that to satw:
As an american who grew up with feet/yards/inches (which is meteric) and so on, I can tell you that I like metric's scale, as opposed to our arbitrary one, but metric measurements lack the "sweet spot" that ours have.AceAngel said:
For example, measuring something like the height of a person is a pain in metric, meters is too big, centimeters is to small. Feet is just right.
That, and Celsius lacks precision. 20 and 40 degrees is to small of a difference to mean such a large one.
English is English no matter where you speak it it is still English same as any other language. Like every other language English does have different dialects for examples Queen's English, American English, Hiberno English.
does anyone even read the first post anymore, or do u just read the title and reply, gah!
ive never heard british english before, but if i did i wouldnt be stunned by the USA's attempt to make themselves out to be origonal.
ive never heard british english before, but if i did i wouldnt be stunned by the USA's attempt to make themselves out to be origonal.
i like the fact the english guy has a monocle... because we all do thatIndianaJonny said:Yes, I'd echo the remarks of the two Escapists above in that the phrase "British English" is one I'd yet to come across until now. I'm familiar with BBC English and the Queen's English but they're more variants on pronunciation than spelling.tigermilk said:
As for cross-Atlantic attitudes to the English language, well I'll leave that to satw:
People tend to think of languages as monolithic things, but Chinese isn't *just* Chinese. It's Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukienese and Wu. Words differ in different areas of the US. You have things like Heros, Hoagies, Po'boys, Grinders and Subs, and each means a sandwich, just in a different area of the country.
And even in England, people from different areas of the country can sound very different- Midlanders versus Londoners versus Cockneys. Not all of them are going to sound like News presenters on the BBC. (aka the Beeb) And then there is Cockney rhyming slang, which is different yet again. "Have a Butcher's" means "take a look" which derived from "Butcher's Hook", which rhymes with "look". And Australian (or 'Strine) is something else again. (Ask an Aussie what "Mappa Tassie" means.)
So yeah, language differs, even in countries like England, America and China. I see no problems with differentiating British English with American English. They really are different
And even in England, people from different areas of the country can sound very different- Midlanders versus Londoners versus Cockneys. Not all of them are going to sound like News presenters on the BBC. (aka the Beeb) And then there is Cockney rhyming slang, which is different yet again. "Have a Butcher's" means "take a look" which derived from "Butcher's Hook", which rhymes with "look". And Australian (or 'Strine) is something else again. (Ask an Aussie what "Mappa Tassie" means.
)So yeah, language differs, even in countries like England, America and China. I see no problems with differentiating British English with American English. They really are different