Americanized English

[Mooshi]

If spelling and terms were only unique to England, I wouldn't have bothered making this thread. But facts are facts as this isn't the case. Alot of other Engish speaking countries use many of the same terms and spellings. I'm glad my best friend is Scottish because I feel alot more informed of the world around me. It's America that is different, from the rest of the world. (I'll save the use of F over C for temp. LHD vs RHD and unwillingness to adapt to metric for someone else. ) I feel sorry for anyone trying to learn English...it's confusing enough as it is.

[animagusurreal]

I disagree that it's wrong. It's just like different pronunciations. For schedule, we Americans say sked-jul, and the British say shed-yule. Neither is wrong. It's the same thing with spelling. When I see colour or zed, I don't think, "That's wrong because I grew up with color and z," I think it's charming.

I guess this strikes a nerve with me because I once had a girlfriend who told me that Californian English was the purest form of English next to British English, and so she spoke "better" than me because both her parents were raised in California, whereas even though I was raised in California, I picked up some of my mother's pronunciations from New York, which were "wrong." Of course, I believe neither is superior, they're just different.

I believe it's the same thing with the Spanish spoken and written in Spain and the Spanish spoken and written in Mexico, or Cuba or Argentina. I'm sure there would be some differences in spelling, pronunciation and word usage.

Even within one country, these things are known to change over time. Look at English from the time of Shakespeare, which if I'm thinking right, was around the same time that English colonists started settling in America. Both British English and American English are very different from that today.

With your France, the Netherlands and Germany argument, I agree that I would go with the Frenchman's pronunciation. However, French is not the promary language of the Netherlands and Germany, wheras it is the primary language of both England and America*, so it's sort of an apples and oranges comparison .


*Wikipedia lists it as "the de-facto national language", though of course, many other languages are also spoken in the U.S.

[Mooshi]

You got me there. France and Canada would have been a better comparason. I find it funny she'd say Californian English was "pure". I'll never shake of the images of "Like you know..whatever! And junk" and "Duuuuude." When thinking of that state haha. I'm not knocking regional differences. If I was, I'd drag the Glaswegian accent into this..now that is rediciously hard to understand.. Aye, languages change, but even jolly ol' England doesn't speak Shakspearian these days so I don't see a reason to bring attention to that. I'll echo my feelings again. For the sheer argument of simplicity, I still believe the core of English should be more unified. American English is so vastly different from the other versions that one could argue it isn't English. It's American. Even the smallest things are different in the US vs abroad such as the meaning of the word 'biscuit'

[animagusurreal]

You got me there. France and Canada would have been a better comparason. I find it funny she'd say Californian English was "pure". I'll never shake of the images of "Like you know..whatever! And junk" and "Duuuuude." When thinking of that state haha. I'm not knocking regional differences. If I was, I'd drag the Glaswegian accent into this..now that is rediciously hard to understand.. Aye, languages change, but even jolly ol' England doesn't speak Shakspearian these days so I don't see a reason to bring attention to that. I'll echo my feelings again. For the sheer argument of simplicity, I still believe the core of English should be more unified. American English is so vastly different from the other versions that one could argue it isn't English. It's American. Even the smallest things are different in the US vs abroad such as the meaning of the word 'biscuit'

Well, even within a country, words have different meanings. I call a carbonated beverage a "soda". My cousins in upstate New York call it a "pop." My mother, who grew up in New York City, always called it a soda. She moved to a small town in upstate New York when she was 12, and was put in "speech therapy" by the local public school for her heavy Bronx accent  . And that was within the same state!

I know from the intro to the novel "Plague Dogs" that there is a dialect in Northern England (I believe it was called "Geordie" or something like that) which is very different from standard English, and uses words that aren't used elsewhere in the country.

Getting back to that girlfriend, she didn't do the whole valley girl speak thing, although she probably should have taken that into account when speaking of "Californian English" . The local Central Coast Californian dialect is a lot less distinctive.

The whole point of bringing up Shakespearian was that England doesn't speak that way anymore, even though the English explorers who got on the ships to America at that time (whose decendants would eventually develop the first American accents) presumably spoke and wrote similarly to the people who continued living in Britain. Languages change over time, they always have, and they always change differently in different regions.

[Mooshi]

I love conversing with you. Makes some things make a bit more sense. It still annoys me that when you're adding language packs to software, you have 2 of them instead of just "English" (Those who installed forum software know exactly what I'm getting at! ) You made valid points, well said. To be fair, the US is massive. I mean..I used to date this Dutch girl and my hometown was bigger than her country... Our states are literally like countries. Also as a side note, in Texas, we have a bad habit of calling everything "coke".

[animagusurreal]

I love conversing with you. Makes some things make a bit more sense. It still annoys me that when you're adding language packs to software, you have 2 of them instead of just "English" (Those who installed forum software know exactly what I'm getting at! ) You made valid points, well said. To be fair, the US is massive. I mean..I used to date this Dutch girl and my hometown was bigger than her country... Our states are literally like countries. Also as a side note, in Texas, we have a bad habit of calling everything "coke".

Thanks! Yes, this has been an interesting discussion.

What about "Big Red"? (I know someone from Texas who wrote a short story about that soda in college).

[Mooshi]

Oh wow. Haven't had a Big Red in ages...loved them. :p Closest thing where I live now is "red cream soda"

[Avan]

Everyone gets the alphabet wrong. 
They should just do it by each letter's natural phonetic state or something. French is pretty good at this.... until they get to the end of the alphabet, considering they don't have a 'w' for their own words, they merely added it in for compatibility with foreign languages and called it literally translated 'double-v', and then x,y,z all have totally bizarre names. All the others are just named phonetically.

[TashkentFox]

I know from the intro to the novel "Plague Dogs" that there is a dialect in Northern England (I believe it was called "Geordie" or something like that) which is very different from standard English, and uses words that aren't used elsewhere in the country.

Interestingly enough, that's not true anymore because of the immense popularity of a mid 1960's sitcom set in Newcastle called The Likely Lads and now Newcastle words are used all over Britain. They're called Geordies because the Jacobites had a lot of support in rural Northumbria during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion but not in Newcastle, so they were nicknamed "Geordies" because of their percieved support for King George.

[Spirit]

I am a gray cat. Or am I? Maybe I'm grey. Once I actually got a point taken off my spelling test because I didn't use the "traditional" spelling. I think one consistent English would be better. Spelt(oh look, the spellcheck says it's not a word!) sounds wrong to me just because where I live you never hear it, but if we'd pull together and decide which is correct we wouldn't run into problems like that.

[Yip]

Language evolves. If two groups that speak the same language are separated, the language in both groups will continue to change and if this happens long enough they will become entirely different languages. It's very similar to process of speciation.

Language is about communication. As long as people are able to use it to effectively communicate, then its not "wrong" in that context.  If you are just complaining that it'd be easier if all forms of English were the same, well you could extend that. It'd be easier if there were a World Language.

[Kobuk]

I don't see what the big deal is.  Some people say theatre, while others say theater, etc., etc. Even if someone uses a different spelling, etc., I'll still know what they mean. Sounds like your making this issue more of a deal than what it is, Mooshi. You're not going to be able to get all 7 Billion people on this planet to all speak and write "one form" of English. I'm sure at some point and time in the future when the world comes together in a unified manner, We'll all speak "Standard" or a "universal" language, but right now, that isn't going to happen.

[Avan]

 
Have fun trying to get all 6.5Billion people to speak english to begin with.

[Yip]

Have fun trying to get all 6.5Billion people to speak english to begin with.

If there ever is a universal language, it wouldn't necessarily be English.

[Avan]

Have fun trying to get all 6.5Billion people to speak english to begin with.

If there ever is a universal language, it wouldn't necessarily be English.

Yeah, I was referring to something kobuk said (he was saying trying to get them to speak the same dialect of english!)

[Yip]

Interestingly, if we continue to communicate with people all over the world, we may slowly move towards some universal standard. For example, if someone in the US commonly talked to someone in the UK, the US person would be more likely to mix in UK style English in my own speech, and the UK person would be more likely to mix in US style English in their speech.

[Avan]

Yes, afterall, these dialects developed out of isolation; the less isolation there is, the more merged it becomes.

[Mooshi]

But we DON'T live in isolation. The UK is our biggest ally and just an ocean away. Thanks to television and the internet, we're able to communicate no problem.  Australia is alot further away from England than the US is and yet with all their own unique dialect, the core of their English is closer to British English. Seems no one even acknowleged Spirit's post. Getting docked points for spelling a word right all because it wasn't the "right" English for where she lives. That's just a bunch of nonsense plain and simple. That is exactly the issue I have with Americaized English. Edit: Why are some of you seemingly against a unified version of English? o.o Don't accuse me of making a big deal or this and that. . Gimme a valid reason why you prefer seperate versions of English. (regional slang does not count, every country has that) To me, it makes more sense than living in confusion and docking points of people's grades because they used the "wrong" version..to each their own I guess.

[Spirit]

Some people say theatre, while others say theater, etc., etc. Even if someone uses a different spelling, etc., I'll still know what they mean.

You're forgetting my spelling test! Now that I think about it, the word wasn't gray, but it was some word that I used the "traditional" spelling with and got marked incorrect.

[Mooshi]

Spirit is the youngest in the post and also making the most sense. No one is saying anything about understanding. When spoken, proper grammar and spelling are non existant. When written, that is where the problem starts. With a unified English, that problem wouldn't even exist. I should not be faulted by some "English teacher" or a rubbish spell check if I in fact spelled a word correctly. See, we all speak English on this forum. You must try to look at it from a different perspective. Someone who doesn't speak it and wants to learn. Imagine the hard time they will have if they learned the "wrong" version and lived in the "wrong" country.

[Spirit]

You must try to look at it from a different perspective. Someone who doesn't speak it and wants to learn. Imagine the hard time they will have if they learned the "wrong" version and lived in the "wrong" country.

Even though I agreed with you from the beginning, your perspective makes a lot more sense now.

[Mooshi]

Why, thank you, Spirit. - Let's take a kid that was born somewhere in eastern Europe for example. For the sake of argument, this kid is 5 and his parents moved to an English country. Let's also say they were also learning English before the move to be prepared. - Their son writes the following "My favorite color is red." Unless he was living in America, that sentence would have red marks all over it by the teacher. The majority of English speaking countries would tell the kid that the correct way of spelling would be "My favourite colour is red." Majority rules. British English is more accepted worldwide. This is why unified English makes sense. Anyone care to counter?

[Yip]

But we DON'T live in isolation. The UK is our biggest ally and just an ocean away. Thanks to television and the internet, we're able to communicate no problem.

Language changes over time, but it's a slow gradual change that occurs over generations. Television and the Internet are relatively recent in our history. And honestly, even with television, I think most of what's watched in the US is made in the US, and (I might be wrong on this) but I think a similar thing could be said of the UK.  I suspect the internet will help reduce the separation a lot, but there hasn't been no where near enough time to truly start seeing it's effect.

Why are some of you seemingly against a unified version of English? o.o Don't accuse me of making a big deal or this and that. . Gimme a valid reason why you prefer seperate versions of English.

Rejecting a claim does not require accepting the counter-claim. Similarly, not being -for- something doesn't mean you are against it. And I don't think anyone here is -against- a unified English. It's just that it's not all at unexpected given the relative isolation of the two, and that neither language is necessarily "wrong".

Majority rules.

Since language is all about communication, majority rules only in the sense that what is understood by the majority of your target audience is what is best to use. And if you are in the US, that would be American English.

You accuse everyone of ignoring Spirit's post, but why do you ignore mine? That is, why are you not instead arguing for a unified World Language?

[Mooshi]

Sorry if it seemed like I was ignorant it, mate. I read. A unified language would make communication easier in theory, but of course you'll probably get "Why don't we switch to one government and one form of currency while we're at it?" It seems damn near impossible. What isn't impossible, though, is being interconnected. In fact, we're all ready there with the globalization of the world's market. I was focusing primarily on English because of my own experiences. I too grow up with American English being the correct form. It wasn't until I've gotten older how different American English is vs British English. Both in spelling and word meanings.

[Avan]

But we DON'T live in isolation.

Isolation is decreasing, but not entirely gone. Anyways, the divergence /formed/ in the isolation, that's what I was saying.