To my UK friends: don't lump all us americans together.

[willard3]

I love America, in my opinion it is far better than my homeland with regards to anything but the arts and language.

This made me laugh, having a music degree and working on a master's. It seems like our only good composer was MacDowell (who hated being called an American composer). You guys had all the great medieval composers like Byrd, Tallis, and Taverner, and the more modern greats like Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Britten.

Of course, there was that rather long period where everything in your country sounded like Mendelssohn, because Queen Victoria was basically a *****, so there.

 

[ace_of_something]

I'd much rather be stereotyped that I drink tea or than being stereotyped that I'm an idiot because of the school system.

when I was hanging out with some London youths when I was 15. They were completely baffled by the fact that I didn?t speak with a ?southern American accent? even though I grew up on a ranch.

Ever considered the possibility you were just hanging around with idiots?

And 15 year olds at that... there is a reason they aren't considered old enough to vote.

Not the only time that happened just the must vivid memory I recall. It happens a ton on this site but I'm not a big enough douchenozzle to start linking to individual posts.

 

[Camembert]

It is your right, but it is also my right to tell you in return that you are speaking nonsense.

One is fine within the social norms of basic manners. The other is not. Yours is the latter.

I invite you to try and find a spelling error in one of my posts. I very much doubt you will succeed.

I could've said that same thing before that one mistake. It happens to the best of us, even when we proof read. I even checked my spelling of streuth before making that post on Google, but apparently search engines are fail when it comes to recommending slang spelling. It's funny that it has never failed me before. Oh well.

I didn't point out your error - I even said you're welcome to spell it how you like; I only said that once some else corrects your error you should either tell them to be quiet and stop being pedantic, or accept that you have made the error and move on. Just don't try to argue that you're not wrong, because you clearly are. I couldn't care less whether people spell things correctly, as long as they acknowledge that there is a correct spelling.

Go ahead and be happy with your correctness. I'm glad that it makes you feel like a generally upper class citizen. Since I was doing an impression anyway, spelling came second to accent in my writing. Like dialogue. But I wouldn't know anything about spelling or artistic license - I'm just a holder of a Writing Major and the son of two English teachers. Please sir, would you review my understanding of English for me? I seem to have been learning German by mistake.

And kindly grow a sense of humour, no one meant to offend you in the first place.

I'm not offended. You might wish I was, troll, but I'm afraid not. Instead I've been amused and horrified with the speed at which I was corrected by the elitists on this forum on such an obscure, underused bit of slang.

Are you seriously saying these things? I didn't point out your mistake (I find people who point out errors generally very irritating, although at least the guy who corrected you did it with humour), and neither do I care whether you spell correctly. Hell, I probably would have spelled strewth incorrectly if I'd tried. Way to miss the whole point entirely. If you are seriously going to continue with this ridiculous misinterpreting of my words then what conclusion can I draw, other than that you are a troll (which you have actually already told me you are anyway)?

 

[thylasos]

Can we please get over the British/US English is purer thing? Every English sentence is a mouthful of mongrel influences. The two dialects diverged and changed due to growing and waning global influence, immigration, changes in education and so on. Some American pronounciations may be closer to the English spoken at the time of the colonisation, as may some spellings. But what're we reaching for here?

If an Anglo-Saxon farmer turned up from the 10th century, would he have bragging rights over all of us for speaking the oldest form of English? I doubt it, given that aside from a few verb-roots and prototypes of common nouns, we'd have great difficulty in understanding him.

Neither dialect is more valid than the other; one's grammar or pronounciation can only be wrong in the context of a stated dialect, all of which change, evolve, and fracture into smaller dialects, or amalgamate into more dominant ones, every day. Almost anything is valid in the context of informal communication. Formal communication follows rather more rigid rules, but is certainly not immune to change, either.

Right?

 

[bigqtfan]

The only thing that irks me is people from European countries calling all Americans "yanks". The rest of the stuff is trivial. Carry on thread.

 

[lee1287]

"i calls em like i sees em"

Most americans i've HEARD are twats. Until i visit america i can't really judge, but XBL is my only source.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The only thing that irks me is people from European countries calling all Americans "yanks".

So people outside of Europe can do it to their heart's content? Excellent!