Fine-Tuning 15, British English/American English

Er, Dreamworld - there IS such a thing as "Australian English" - enshrined in the Macquarie Dictionary - and lifting its little head in the world after having a major inferiority complex for much of its life!

I would not mind betting that there is Indian English, too - any comments Gautam, or anyone?

I think the reason we seldom hear of Australian English is that we are so small and generally unassuming and polite and such.

I am not disagreeing with the entirety of your post - I will need to re-read it - but I do not think it fair to say that only Americans want their own English recognized.

Noyour right my posts havnt been removed, my computers playing up a bit perhaps. Now you see it now you dont kind of thing. As for been rude , well I still stand by what I say but am of course open to changing my opinion should someone offer me a sufficiently strong argument. I think the issues involved are complicated and deep. Hum,an like an identity and they like to have symbols, clothes language etc that distinguish themselves as different. They also like to think their group is best. Thus wars conflict etc. Perhaps we can stop considering ourselves as Americans, English, Iraquis etc and adopt a more global identity ie citizens of the world it would be better. This of course raises the issue of preserving cultural identity.

I mean :
I mean cultural diversity

Looking at one of the many linguistic websides (or just using 'Google'), you'll find besides 'American English' at least 'Canadian English', 'Australian English', 'New Zealand English', 'Indian English' and 'Pidgin English' mentioned on all of them.

(I've learnt British Emglish at school, the last three years American English was offered as.
And that's more than 35 years ago, grammar school (high school), run by the town (= state/public) in rural Westphalia.)

There definitely is a Canajun English, and i provide myself seemingly endless mirth when in the confines of our fair, northern neighbor by having my fun with them and with "it." They are unable to properly pronounce schedule, or to spell center, color, humor, savor and a host of other words--a failing i've noted in so many of our less-fortunate linguistic cousins. Their favorite snack food is the doh-nut, and no amount of effort can convince them of the proper spelling--doughnut--or the necessity to pronounce the word without stress on either syllable. No American can approach the pronunciaton of out, about or house as it is rendered north of the border. The Québecois are a whole 'nuther kettle of fish, and do violence to French and English with a lively enthusiasm.

(For the edification of Dreamworld, the foregoing is written with subtle ironic humor--which may not be comprehensible in a land in which the inhabitants are unable to properly spell the word humor.)

Having lived more than half of my life in the American south, and in different parts of the American south, and having travelled extensively in the American south, i can assure our ill-bred, ill-mannered fellow poster that there are as many if not more regional accents within that region as are to be found in the United Kingdom. The backcountry farmer of South Carolina is incomprehensible to the Texican living near the Mexican border. The farmers of North Carolina do not say y'all, but, rather, say yoh-all, and laugh at the linguistic ineptitudes (in their estimation) of the South Carolinians, whom they view as a source of cheap, unskilled labor, and to whom they refer as "geeks." The denizens of Georgia and Florida originally got their living primarily by herding cattle, and their liberal application of the bullwhip earned them the name of "whip-cracker" from other southerners, which is shortened to "cracker," a term the ignorant outsider frequently misapplies to all rural southerners. Southerners classify anyone from north of Mason and Dixon's line (the Maryland/Pennsylvania border) as Yankees, to the considerable ire of those who are not from New York or New England. One Floridian assured me that in his opinion, anyone born north of Interstate 4 is a Yankee. Yankees come in two classifications--the damned Yankee, who comes to visit, and make rude observations about the locals, thereby displaying his ignorance of centuries of culture and climate; and the goddamned Yankee, who comes to settle. Dreamworld displays all of the attributes of the Damned Yankee. I've only reviewed the major distinctions of a few of the Atlantic coastal regions--the American south stretchs more than a thousand miles to the west. I don't for a moment believe that Dreamworld knows whereof he/she speaks in referring to "smalltown deep south America." What is known as "the Deep South" has a very specific meaning--South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, to the exlusion of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. In short, Dreamworld's discursus on the American language was a tour de force display of ill-informed, hubristic and narrow bigotry.

If you're real nice, i'll let you send me your compostions before they're posted to correct your spelling and usage.

Pidgin is a separate language, now. And proud of itself! There appear to be different versions.

I know, dlowan, and I use Nigerian Pidgin alot (when answering hundreds of emails, reasoned by The Annual Nigerian EMail Conference :wink:

dlowan -- I have the online version of McQuarrie's (sp.?) dictionary in 'My Favorites' file and can click on it any time either you or Margo become incomprehensible.

There certainly are a number of pidgins, all quite separate languages. I'm fascinated with the Papua-New Guinea pidgin. For example their word for museum is look-look house blong all. Gotta love a language like that.

'Namawan pikinini blong Kwin' (Number one pickanninny belong Queen) = Prince Charles, in "Wol Wantok", the pidgin English spoken in several of the islands of the South Pacific.

Hello,
Im really not hoping to get into an argument, so I resist trying to witty and use high browed put downs to discredit what the other person is saying , a vigorous healthy debate were one can be honest about ones feelings without being rude however is fine. I certainly didnt know there were so many different accents in the American south but I suspected there would be a few. However I have never heard an American accent which I could not understand, except perhaps a little bit when that deep south drawl occurs (or those). There are several UK accents which I cannot make head nor tail of :

Cornish (accent not language)
Geordie
Scottish (accent not language)
Welsh (accent not language)
Northumbrian
Lake district

I still therefrore believe there is more diversity of accents in the UK than USA. The U.S. of course was not just founded by English speakers and neither does it consist of only English speakers today. I believe Spanish was almost to be first language not so long ago , so in truth American English is a rich tapestry which loans words and expressions from several different source languages. As for being a bigot - its not true - some of my best friends are Americans.....
I was interested to learn about the various types of English around, but you never see them mentioned when if you have to say what sort of English you speak when joining internet websites, strangely enough I notice all of these sections have U.S. English blacked in automatically top of the list and all assume you live in the states. Some wont even let you join if you dont have a us postcode.. I found your reply condescending (please feel free to correct my spelling),and did not feel it adressed the main point which concerned language being used a tool for social status.

". . . some of my best friends are Americans . . . "

You have no idea how hilarious, and lame, that sounds to an American.

I recall the look of total bewilderment on the face of a Northwoods Minnesotan trying to comprehend the driving directions being given by a spry old Cajun matron in an off-the-beaten-path, Bayou-Country gas station/post office/restaurant/bait shop/boat rental sorta place that also sold polished cypress burls and fairly industrial fireworks.

Many of the accents heard in the more remote portions of South Carolina and North Georgia are incomprehensible to other southerners. Pat Conroy's book Conrack is interesting, because he taught coastal islanders whose English was then directly descended from Elizabethan English, as it was spoken by slaves three hundred years ago. I'm sure television has ended all of that. I read in university (more than 30 years ago, so the details escape me) of a study done in the 1930's by an east coast newspaper (NY Times?) and an Ivy league school (Harvard?) of the "functionally" illiterate in Appalachia. Many had beautiful old copies of The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunayn, and of the King James bible--which had been handed down the generations for as much as two centuries at that time. They could not read a daily newspaper, but could read aloud fluently from 17th century texts. The Cajuns, of course, came originally from Accadie, now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I knew Cajuns in my younger days who spoke a heavily accented English, but would always count in French, and often used their own particular brand of French in conversation, often forgetting that the "Onglay" around them didn't understand. In northern New Mexico, many of the families have been there for three centuries or more, and both their English and their Spanish are unique. In the days before mass media (in my childhood), the old time New Yorkers could tell Bronx from Brooklyn from Queens by the accent. The accents, as well as peculiarities of locution just from one region to another within the same state can vary widely, such as the great divide that separates the "down home boys" of southern Illinois from those born and bred in Chicago. I really doubt the contention that there is greater variety in the UK.

Dreamworld - speaking as a NON-American - I think the meat of your post would have been addressed more fully had the sauce not been so off-putting I suspect you found condescension arising to meet condescension perceived.

Of course language is used as a tool of social status - however, I wonder, England being still, I think, far more class conscious and ridden than either the USA or Australia, (do others agree with this?) if this is not more evident to you than to us?

When I was growing up, educated and richer Australians spoke with an accent sort of modelled on BBC English, and this was a noticeable demarcation, at least to those who used it! I grew up with this accent - though it has become way more "Strine" over the years.

Similarly to England, where BBC (or above!) English was once the accepted norm - and the accent heard on the media - more broad Australian accents are now acceptable, and the distinction is blurring, I think. (Although Australia does not have the sort of very strong regionalization found in both the USA and Great Britain).

Does this media change, and the acceptance of regional accents for broadcasting, reflect a softening of accent class barriers in your country, Dreamworld?

Is there an "uber-accent" in the USA, folks?

Dreamworld - I am similarly annoyed that American English is the norm for the net. However, I suspect it reflects the dominance of Microsoft, an American company, rather than a deliberate attempt to take over the English of the world! That is bycatch, I think.

US cultural dominance IS a problem, I think - but it is not, I think (though I get caught up in doing it, too) helpful to attack Americans over this as though they were individually responsible. It is a byproduct of the current status of the US in the world - and their energy in exporting their culture, and our fascination with it.

I do not think you can both say they are desperate to have their identity recognized, and that their identity is crushing ours!

There was a sort of "uber-accent" in 1930's America, and you'll hear it in the speech of motion picture actors from that era--they were given diction lessons by the studios. It has not survived, however. One rarely hears a southern accent, or a rural accent from anywhere in the country--on the media. By and large, media types put out a bland midwestern accent. Many northerners retain an irrational prejudice against southerners. I and a friend of mine in Ohio were watching a documentary, and they had a section narrated by a paeleoanthropologist (damned if i know if that is correctly spelled), who spoke with a very thick Carolina accent. My friend candidly observed (he knows i've spent most of my life in the South) that although he knows intellectually that the man is well educated and knows his subject thoroughly, he still has an automatic reaction of assuming stupidity in anyone with such an accent. The southerners most common reaction to a Yankee accent, is a narrowing of the eyes followed by the rhetorical question: "You ain't from around here, are ye?" After which, most southerners being good natured, they will try to have as much fun with the "victim" as is consistent with not being obvious or rude.

Yes - I think, similarly, there is some such feeling on the part of other Australians to the really thick "Strine" accent - a fact which was once played on with brilliant satirical dexterity by Paul Hogan - when he still had a brain. (His "Crocodile Dundee" character was a secret joke at the expense of the USA!)

Dunno if there's what ya'd call an Uber Accent here in The States, but there is a sorta defacto standard more or less known as "Network Standard". Ted Koppel, for instance, is very good at the dialect, but there are times his Canadian Heritage comes out. Another TV personality, Bryant Gumble, for instance, adheres more rigourously to the "Standard". Some, such as James Earl Jones, carry it almost to an artform. Another thought here, the differences of dialect assignable to ethnicity are imense. One born and educated in the American Northeast and a lifelong East-Angeleno or a South Side Chicago gang-banger would have considerable difficulty communicating if entirely dependent on their own particular patois, likely akin to a Cornishman attempting to discourse with a rural Southern-Irish farmer over there on the other side of the pond..

Actually, the British 'posh' accent is on the verge of becoming the über accent in the USA, I think. Apropos of your story, Setanta, about the friend who was tempted to disparage the South Carolinian because of his Southern accent, I find that most Americans will automatically perk up their ears and take very seriously whatever is said when someone with a London posh accent says it. That's why NPR lately seems to be raiding the BBC for newscasters. A person who speaks like a Pom is obviously in the know and way above us ignorant Colonials.

You do run across media-types whose original accent clings, though. Bill Moyers has traces of East Texas in his speech, even though he's spent probably 40 years in broadcasting by now. It took Peter Jennings a hell of a long time to stop saying "shedyule" and pronounce the word "skedjule." When he first started (i believe on NBC), his Canajun was so noticeable that i remember thinking to myself that he'd have to get over it, or his career would suffer. Obviously, he has dealt quite well with that. There have been actors, like Dub Taylor, who have made a career in supporting roles by preserving their original accents. Then you have a southerner like Burt Reynolds, and you'd never know it to hear him speak. I'm sure that starting in 1950's Hollywood television, he got rid of the corn pone as quickly as possible. But then, Dinah Shore never bothered to lose the Georgia girl honey, and it possitively helped her career.

On a side note, it just cracks me up when people decry the export of American "culture." I don't watch commercial or cable television--but if Bay Watch is popular all over the globe, it's not a product of anyone having had it shoved down their throats. It's global because it sells--the bottom line determines what in the way of American goods and media get consumed elsewhere, not some nefarious American activity.

Most of the crappiest American-made shows are far more popular overseas than they are here.