But I'm right, aren't I, Dutchy?
Wow! Mame, I just realized that the word "sanction" is a homograph. Used as a noun, it means penalize; used as a verb it means support. Thanks.
bathsheba wrote:Hi,
I didn't read all 300 pages so this may have been addressed before.
Are you talking 'American English' here, or English as spoken by people in the U.K. and Canada?
For instance, in the States, people will say 'schedule'. In the U.K. and Canada, people say 'shed-ule'. 'Prog-ress' in the States is pronounced 'PRO-gress' in U.K./Canada....there are many other examples, but you get my drift.
American 'english' is a bastardized form of the English language. As such it really should not be called 'English' at all but 'American' since spelling and pronunciation are so markedly different.
Bastardized? Showing your bigotry, Dearie? There are five times as many people speaking the American language in the United States as there are people speaking the English language in the United Kingdom. I know of no Americans who say "shed-yule," but progress is pronounced with both a "long o" and a "short o"--pronunciations vary regionally just as they do in Merry Olde. Some people in the United States say "IN-surance" and some say "in-SUR-ance." These are not bases upon which to question the legitimacy of an offspring.
Bastardized indeed--if you don't like Mr. Webster's changes in spelling adopted in the United States, then i suggest that you return to writing musick and magick, and eliminate the impurities from you mother tongue.
What tripe.
I let it go....I knew someone else would be along soon.
But will youse Yanks please stop mucking up our language. :wink:
Letty wrote:Wow! Mame, I just realized that the word "sanction" is a homograph. Used as a noun, it means penalize; used as a verb it means support. Thanks.
My favourite is "quite"- I know I'm repeating myself here, but for new readers- and its two opposite meanings:
I quite like that. (not completely)
Have you quite finished? (completely)
McTag wrote:I let it go....I knew someone else would be along soon.
But will youse Yanks please stop mucking up our language. :wink:
People who cannot spell color or center live in linguistic glass houses, and ought not to throw stones . . .
(insert friendly "emoticon" of choice here . . . )
"quite" - i think it's "quite" useful just by itself .
a retired "british english professor" - one of our pool buddies - uses it with a certain panache when he doesn't want to waste words - and he is very good at not wasting words .
hbg
What about folks who describe others as having "taken" a decision about something?
He's taken a decision.
He took a decision.
He'll take a decisionÂ….
When did that become common?
Setana I just read your tripe, I think you have a few Kangaroos loose in the top paddock, work that one out in proper English.
Setanta wrote:bathsheba wrote:Hi,
I didn't read all 300 pages so this may have been addressed before.
Are you talking 'American English' here, or English as spoken by people in the U.K. and Canada?
For instance, in the States, people will say 'schedule'. In the U.K. and Canada, people say 'shed-ule'. 'Prog-ress' in the States is pronounced 'PRO-gress' in U.K./Canada....there are many other examples, but you get my drift.
American 'english' is a bastardized form of the English language. As such it really should not be called 'English' at all but 'American' since spelling and pronunciation are so markedly different.
Bastardized? Showing your bigotry, Dearie? There are five times as many people speaking the American language in the United States as there are people speaking the English language in the United Kingdom. I know of no Americans who say "shed-yule," but progress is pronounced with both a "long o" and a "short o"--pronunciations vary regionally just as they do in Merry Olde. Some people in the United States say "IN-surance" and some say "in-SUR-ance." These are not bases upon which to question the legitimacy of an offspring.
Bastardized indeed--if you don't like Mr. Webster's changes in spelling adopted in the United States, then i suggest that you return to writing musick and magick, and eliminate the impurities from you mother tongue.
What tripe.
Tripe, you say?
If some folks in America don't know how to pronouce words I suggest they check their dictionary.
Check 'american and british english' on wikipedia and also
www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
which explains the differences in the two languages quite well.
My point is
not how many people speak proper Queen's English, but that Americans have changed the way words are spelled and pronounced. Check Webster's against Oxford or Collins dictionaries.
I was questioning whether this thread is discussing 'English' or 'American', Setanta. It does make a difference.
Not only people in the U.K. speak 'real' English as opposed to 'American'. You forget the Aussies, New Zealanders, India, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, Falkland Islands - to name a few. Oh, Pakistan as well.
At least a billion folks speaking real English!
I do hope you have rounded up those kangaroos. They can be such a bother
when they run amuck!
If you just think of Americal English as an informal version of the real stuff, you'll get along just fine.
:wink:
On the train the other day there were two young men speaking at each other, apparantly in English. They were manic. They spoke just a few words in machine gun bursts between fiddling with their phones and music machines. I really couldnt understand what they were saying. On the way home a group of Russians were discussing something...do idea what I only know very limited Russian...but they were talking sense you could tell that!
Joeblow wrote:What about folks who describe others as having "taken" a decision about something?
He's taken a decision.
He took a decision.
He'll take a decisionÂ….
When did that become common?
That's not common where I live. We westerners still use the word "made".
Hi Letty - you're welcome. And someone else posted about "cleave", which I'd forgotten about. And I like the use of "quite" as McT and hbg have suggested it - great word. English must be a very difficult language to learn.
Joeblow wrote:What about folks who describe others as having "taken" a decision about something?
He's taken a decision.
He took a decision.
He'll take a decisionÂ….
When did that become common?
That's not common where I live. We westerners still use the word "made".
Hi Letty - you're welcome. And someone else posted about "cleave", which I'd forgotten about. And I like the use of "quite" as McT and hbg have suggested it - great word. English must be a very difficult language to learn.
Bob from Boston said it best, y'all.
Poem of English
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!
bathsheba wrote:
Tripe, you say?
If some folks in America don't know how to pronouce words I suggest they check their dictionary.
Check 'american and british english' on wikipedia and also
www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
which explains the differences in the two languages quite well.
My point is
not how many people speak proper Queen's English, but that Americans have changed the way words are spelled and pronounced. Check Webster's against Oxford or Collins dictionaries.
I was questioning whether this thread is discussing 'English' or 'American', Setanta. It does make a difference.
Not only people in the U.K. speak 'real' English as opposed to 'American'. You forget the Aussies, New Zealanders, India, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, Falkland Islands - to name a few. Oh, Pakistan as well.
At least a billion folks speaking real English!
BrE is not the real English in any way shape or form, B. It is merely one variant among many. There have also been many changes to BrE along the way.
Changes in spelling really have nothing to do with language. The written portion of language is artificial anyway. Those little marks that you see on paper could easily be changed to a completely different form and you'd still pronounce them as you do now.
You say that your point is not [in bold] about how many speak one form or the other, then you go on to tell us about the number of countries that do speak the 'real' English.
I'm sorry to disappoint you but the English spoken in countries where English is the native tongue, like Canada and Australia, hardly resemble BrE. They are unique dialects all their own.
Like it or not, AmE is having a much greater effect on BrE than the reverse. And this in areas that matter, the areas that people can't control [spelling is controlled, writing too, but not so much], the internal structure of the language.
Bathsheba displays her ignorance. It wasn't "Americans" who changed spellings. It was one specific American, Noah Webster. As i alluded to earlier, the English have adopted some, if not all, of those changes. The English write "music" and "magic," rather than "musick" and "magick." Additionally, there are variations in pronunciation and in spelling as between those who are English-speakers who are not Americans. Canadians, for example (at least in Ontario) make two-syllable words out of one syllable words such as known and grown--it is common to hear them say "know-wen" and "grow-wen." This is not colloquialism, either (although it may be an Ontario regionalism)--you hear news readers on radio and television pronounce those words in that manner. They also make a two syllable word out of iron--pronouncing it i-ron. One might argue that it is already a two syllable word, but it is almost universally pronounced as a one syllable word. The contention that there are a billion speakers of English who speak a standardized version of the language is laughable--Steve's post is a case in point. Chavs speak a language almost incomprehensible to other speakers of English . . . innit?
The American language is formal, and it is widely spoken. Increasingly, non-native speakers of English learn to speak the American language, as opposed to other forms of the language. The reason is simple and obvious. Non-native speakers overwhelming learn the language for business reasons, and the largest single consumer economy in the world is the American economy--so it just makes sense to learn the language from Americans. China will undoubtedly soon surpass the United States as the largest single consumer economy--and the evidence that the Chinese look to Americans to learn English is all over this web site.
Setanta wrote:Bathsheba displays her ignorance.
The American language is formal, and it is widely spoken. Increasingly, non-native speakers of English learn to speak the American language, as opposed to other forms of the language. The reason is simple and obvious. Non-native speakers overwhelming learn the language for business reasons, and the largest single consumer economy in the world is the American economy--so it just makes sense to learn the language from Americans. China will undoubtedly soon surpass the United States as the largest single consumer economy--and the evidence that the Chinese look to Americans to learn English is all over this web site.
Ignorance with respect to language issues is actually quite widespread, Set, so maybe you shouldn't be so hard on B.
AmE is not any more or less formal than any other dialect of English. Non-natives learn English whether it is taught to them by a speaker of BrE, AmE, CdE, AuE, NzE or any other kind of English. We all share a structure of language that is, by and large, the same.
The piddling differences that are often discussed in threads of this type are insignificant in the overall scheme of the language.
People can function in business after having learned English from any native speaker. After all, business is done by all English speaking countries of the world and none of the "others" have to take refresher courses in AmE before they can do so.
My point, which you either ignore, or failed to grasp, is that those who are now learning English as a second language are eager to learn from Americans. I saw this in Korea and Japan, and it can be seen among the Chinese, as well. Additionally, many people who are not native speakers of English are exposed to English through English-language entertainment media, which are far and away a majority from American sources.
