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English and British English

Jonobigblind said:
It also provides a voice filter to help you pronounce words correctly.

e.g. Craig (Crayg) rather than Creg
Herb rather than Erb
Basil (Bazil) rather than Baysil

Good old Apple.
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This is good to know. The Australian voice on iOS pronounces names like Karen and Natasha very badly (Care-in instead of Kae-ren, and Natasha as if it's a Japanese word). It also says other words in a very un-Australian way. I find it irritating. Anyway, setting the language to British English fixes that (although it has a British accent). For some reason, setting the voice doesn't change the accent.

I also have a problem with the Australian regional settings, making Monday the first day of the week (which it isn't), so I have my regional settings set to NZ. I wish it was an option, because now all my phone numbers are formatted incorrectly (though I do prefer my calendar showing the week correctly over the phone numbers looking right).
 
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@hopejr, that's strange.
 
This is similar to the argument between Quebecois French and French from France-in fact while there are some anglicisms in Quebec their French in some ways is more pure then in France. :D Some old French from the 17th century that they kept unchanged plus both langauges developed in some different directions though Francophone countries have made an effort to standardise the langauge in recent times.
 
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decafjava said:
This is similar to the argument between Quebecois French and French from France-in fact while there are some anglicisms in Quebec their French in some ways is more pure then in France. :D Some old French from the 17th century that they kept unchanged plus both langauges developed in some different directions though Francophone countries have made an effort to standardise the langauge in recent times.
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Their accent is renowned for being awful though. The French were even in the US at one time and some people in louisiana speak French but is really limited to the older population.
 
It's a pity there isn't a Black Country English option...

op78.jpg


:D
 
vincenz said:
I didn't know about this at all, but it's actually really great info. I can use it the next time in a debate. Do you know of any examples?
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a great example is a the letter r. A great number of british dialects including the queens english don't pronounce it in a lot of locations. So a word like car becomes ca(h). There are only a few (east coast) american dialects with this affect such as the boston accent or southern although most southerns nowadays do say there r's.

another example is the word fall which english people no longer say, autumn instead.

american english also emerged as a combinations of various different british dialects (aka accents) therefore it acquired a much more neutral or flat tone.

bottom line is in terms of actual change, american english has changed less over the last 300 years than british english but both have definitely changed.
 
vincenz said:
I didn't know about this at all, but it's actually really great info. I can use it the next time in a debate. Do you know of any examples?
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It's not great info at all, it's complete garbage!

American English is no more a language of its own than Scottish or Irish English. Fundamentally it's just English with a few colloquialisms and grammatical miscarriages.
 
rovex said:
Their accent is renowned for being awful though. The French were even in the US at one time and some people in louisiana speak French but is really limited to the older population.
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Uk English and its' american variant are far far more similrar in grammar, expression; idioms and intelligibiliy between speakers Han Quebec French and standar parisian French--they've diverged to a bigger deree than any English variations around the world. Even if u speak not a word of French, try watching a clip from a popular quebecois tv show and some equivalent in france and just notice the rather harsh and unpleasant accent differences---the ebbs and flows of the dialects are nothing short of sunning. It is not a myth that they subtitle Quebec shows in France.the accent alone makes it tough and the very different common expressions are also very different,making it even more challenging. In formAl written literature they are about the same. He problem is when a quebecois opens his mouh!

For all the differences between us and uk english hyped all over...they really are extremely minor and mostly to do wig spelling and a small grop of words (nappy v diaper) (boot vs trunk) (flat vs apartheid) etc...griot trivial différences. Unies of course one talcs out horrindouy difficult to understAnd working class dialects of the north of englad which I myself would love to have subtitles when I'm watching--but that's again mostly due to the thick working class accent and not so much vocabulary.
 
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hopejr said:
This is good to know. The Australian voice on iOS pronounces names like Karen and Natasha very badly (Care-in instead of Kae-ren, and Natasha as if it's a Japanese word). It also says other words in a very un-Australian way. I find it irritating. Anyway, setting the language to British English fixes that (although it has a British accent). For some reason, setting the voice doesn't change the accent.

I also have a problem with the Australian regional settings, making Monday the first day of the week (which it isn't), so I have my regional settings set to NZ. I wish it was an option, because now all my phone numbers are formatted incorrectly (though I do prefer my calendar showing the week correctly over the phone numbers looking right).
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Why isn't Monday the first day of the week?:confused:
 
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Ryeno said:
a great example is a the letter r. A great number of british dialects including the queens english don't pronounce it in a lot of locations. So a word like car becomes ca(h). There are only a few (east coast) american dialects with this affect such as the boston accent or southern although most southerns nowadays do say there r's.

another example is the word fall which english people no longer say, autumn instead.

american english also emerged as a combinations of various different british dialects (aka accents) therefore it acquired a much more neutral or flat tone.

bottom line is in terms of actual change, american english has changed less over the last 300 years than british english but both have definitely changed.
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English people never used the term Fall. Fall is an American expression, Old English used the term Harvest for that time of year.

American accents developed geographically dependant on population demography, there is no one accent. Cajun for example, hardly flat or neutral is it? I think also the number of Irish, Germans, Dutch and Italian (etc.) immigrants will have contributed largely to regional accents over the years.

There is no possible way to substantiate the claim you make about languages having changed more or less than each other. If anything American English is more likely to have evolved purely as a by-product of the influx of immigration from various parts of the world, at least enough to be called American English, and not simply English.
 
NutsNGum said:
English people never used the term Fall. Fall is an American expression.
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Really?

http://www.bartleby.com/122/31.html

Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born in Stratford, East of London 1844.
NutsNGum said:
There is no possible way to substantiate the claim you make about languages having changed more or less than each other. If anything American English is more likely to have evolved purely as a by-product of the influx of immigration from various parts of the world, at least enough to be called American English, and not simply English.
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The rule of thumb is Americans have kept more "older" English words than British English which has become more Latinized. Although American English has also created a lot more words as well. Almost non of these words are based in other languages or immigration unless it's about food. Reason being is and this actually pretty sad but in general americans have been very closed and prejudicial society. When people went out west they didn't want to take anything from the native people and so didn't adapt any of the culture instead they stayed as English/American as they could be and when people immigrated from other countries they were forced to assimilate.

The regional accent of dialect or certain areas have diffidently been affect by immigration but those are all considered accents and not reguarded as standard american english and even then they greatly vary depending education i.e. more educated = less regional accent.

Not pronouncing r (the majority of the time) is probably the biggest change in the English language over the last 300 years infact all dialects/accents are first classified if they do or don't say it.
 
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Ryeno said:
The rule of thumb is Americans have kept more "older" English words than British English which has become more Latinized.
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Erm....... English came from Latin. It is "Latinised" by definition. I'm still waiting for you to give any tangible evidence that American English is more true to original English than what we speak over here. I'm not against the idea, but just saying it's a rule of thumb is not a good way to prove a point :)
 
Ryeno said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

Also I forget to add there is a really unusual phenonium of people who are non-rhotic (most british people) to add r to the ends of words, mostly words ending in the letter a. So area becomes air-ee-er or idea becomes i-deer.
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What? Your last example completely contradicts the point you are trying to make. If anything, Americans pronounce "idea" like the way you have said.
 
Ryeno said:
The rule of thumb is Americans have kept more "older" English words than British English which has become more Latinized.
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Now for that to be true the settlers that founded the Plymouth Colony (aka Pilgrim fathers) would have had to have left before Guillaume le bâtard landed at Hastings.

By the time of the settlers English had already taken on most (if not all) the Continental influences.
(What the house of Hanover brought over is another matter… ;))
 
keeno said:
Erm....... English came from Latin. It is "Latinised" by definition. I'm still waiting for you to give any tangible evidence that American English is more true to original English than what we speak over here. I'm not against the idea, but just saying it's a rule of thumb is not a good way to prove a point :)
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No English is a Germanic language at heart, the common words are of German/Dutch (well the modern decedents) languages. On that French (obvious descendent from latin) was added, notice the word add, those words are added in layered way. For instance the English word battle is from the french but you wouldn't say I got into a battle at school, you'd say I got into a fight. Again common i.e. everyday words are from germanic origin. Then on top of that words directly borrowed from latin were added, again in a layered way so that usually only applies to high level academia.

Obviously we use the latin alphabet but the language is germanic in origin.
 
keeno said:
Erm....... English came from Latin. It is "Latinised" by definition. I'm still waiting for you to give any tangible evidence that American English is more true to original English than what we speak over here. I'm not against the idea, but just saying it's a rule of thumb is not a good way to prove a point :)
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I agree that Latin is very prominent in the english language, but English was derived from the Saxons who came from Germany. So technically it's Germanic, although I still struggle to see such similarities between the two.
 
rovex said:
I agree that Latin is very prominent in the english language, but English was derived from the Saxons who came from Germany. So technically it's Germanic, although I still struggle to see such similarities between the two.
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Technically Germanic at the birth of the language, however as the language evolved and new words were "invented", basically all new words were formed from Latin as this was the language the intellectuals spoke. You are completely correct that it was based from Germany (and I agree you can't really find many modern links between the two - which I class as a good thing!) but by far the greatest influence on the language as it was at the time the USA came to exist was Latin.
 
rovex said:
I agree that Latin is very prominent in the english language, but English was derived from the Saxons who came from Germany. So technically it's Germanic, although I still struggle to see such similarities between the two.
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A lot of English words derive from the French language after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
 
I suppose American English might be considered the dominant form given there are 308 million Americans vs. 62 million citizens of the UK.

Besides, without us Americans the British would be the largest German-speaking province of the Soviet Union. :p

[EDIT: corrected my spelling - lol]
 
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keeno said:
I agree you can't really find many modern links between the two.
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The similarities between languages doesn't necessarily correlate into ease of understanding, translating or learning. It's definitely easier to learn a language like Spanish over German because of vocabulary but it's easy to tell the grammar and syntax is radically different from English.
 
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