Which english do you prefer?
- Thread starter lofight
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
theBB
macrumors 68020
There might be a liter vs. litre, but not letter vs. lettre.
cogsinister
macrumors 6502a
What's this British English thing? I speak English, from England. It's not quite the same as English as spoken in Scotland or even English as spoken in Wales. Therefore there is no British English.
I don't mind the American one though. It's completely understandable, although they do tend to speak frustratingly slowly
My English from Manchester is totally different from the English spoken an hour East in Liverpool !!!
zap2
macrumors 604
I like American English, because I was raised with it. But the idea that people using it are lazy, is true for speaking(personally I think the way we speak cuts down on unneeded rules)
Write, I'd guess it depends on who is writing it. But it isn't build from the ground up to be writing with mistakes.
But honest, I think they're both fine, and the difference are small.
Write, I'd guess it depends on who is writing it. But it isn't build from the ground up to be writing with mistakes.
But honest, I think they're both fine, and the difference are small.
Macaddicttt
macrumors 6502a
Agreed.
However, if I had one wish in regards the English language it would be that people stop referring to English as "British English" or even "International English." It makes it sound like a variant or a dialect when it isn't.
English is English. It has rules and a structure and it has bodies authorised with documenting and maintaining that structure.
"American English" *is* a variant/dialect and changes much more frequently. Pronunciation rules either don't exist or are highly variable. Then after a few years of pronouncing a given word incorrectly, the spelling is altered to reflect the "new" pronunciation.
I blame 100 years of that stupid "sound it out" instruction that teachers give kids in North America.
They might as well purposely teach kids to pronounce things incorrectly. Oh, wait ... they are!
That's ridiculous. There are no "authorised" (or authorized) bodies that maintain English. First of all, authorized by whom? Second of all, what are they? American English is not a variant of the "original." Who's even to say what the original is? As people have very nicely pointed out, the English in England isn't very standardized.
At one point, English was "standardized" by the queen's (or king's) English, but that's pretty arbitrary. After all, the English imported German royalty. Are we to base English on them? That is where we got the incorrect pronunciations of "neither" and "either" with a long i sound. Pronouncing them n-eye-ther and eye-ther is following German rules, not English ones.
I'm not saying either English is better (although I prefer American English due to it's more consistent pronunciation and spelling, more succinct diction, and greater preservation of the subjunctive), but to claim that British English is somehow the "authoritative," "regulated," "approved," or otherwise "more correct" English is ridiculous.
Gelfin
macrumors 68020
Frankly, I would hesitate to express such a broad preference, particularly with such limited choices. It should be noted that the right speaker can make almost any accent appealing.
To those Brits who say, "we invented it," surely you recognize that dialects drift over time as well as geography. If one accepts Midwestern and RP as exemplary of American and British English respectively, then the common ancestor of the two sounds nothing like either.
At the time American English diverged from English English, a rhotic variant was considered proper in England, and that accent formed the basis of American English. Non-rhotic English emerged later in England, and was widely imitated in the southeastern United States, resulting in the smooth "genteel" southern accent that many people still associate with the South, but few still speak.
My understanding is that hearing "proper" English as spoken in the 18th century would require traveling to extreme rural North Carolina, if I recall correctly, where an obscure remnant of that accent can still be found in use, or could. The ubiquity of television is crushing regional accents mercilessly.
But why stop at any particular point? Elizabethan speakers would sound more than a bit hickish to modern RP speakers, but they're closer to having "invented it" than anyone today. Perhaps Middle English would be better? Plant a stake anywhere you like; people will sound different a hundred years hence.
To those Brits who say, "we invented it," surely you recognize that dialects drift over time as well as geography. If one accepts Midwestern and RP as exemplary of American and British English respectively, then the common ancestor of the two sounds nothing like either.
At the time American English diverged from English English, a rhotic variant was considered proper in England, and that accent formed the basis of American English. Non-rhotic English emerged later in England, and was widely imitated in the southeastern United States, resulting in the smooth "genteel" southern accent that many people still associate with the South, but few still speak.
My understanding is that hearing "proper" English as spoken in the 18th century would require traveling to extreme rural North Carolina, if I recall correctly, where an obscure remnant of that accent can still be found in use, or could. The ubiquity of television is crushing regional accents mercilessly.
But why stop at any particular point? Elizabethan speakers would sound more than a bit hickish to modern RP speakers, but they're closer to having "invented it" than anyone today. Perhaps Middle English would be better? Plant a stake anywhere you like; people will sound different a hundred years hence.
Macaddicttt
macrumors 6502a
Actually, Middle English would be older than Elizabethan English. Elizabethan English is considered "Early Modern English." Middle and Old English are two languages that are completely different than Modern English. Old English looks more like German, and is completely unintelligible to us. Middle English is slightly better, but still extremely difficult to understand.
Gelfin
macrumors 68020
As an aside, for my money nobody delivers this particular expression like a Scot. I remember overhearing a Dean at my college, who happened to be Scottish, yelling this at someone on the telephone as I sat outside waiting to humbly beg his permission to change majors. I was terrified.
That's what I meant. If we care about "original" English, why not go back as far in time as we can while still maintaining somewhat recognizable English? If you strain you can sort of make sense of Sumer Is A-Cumin In or The Canterbury Tales, so we could certainly revert to that if we conclude that "original" implies "superior."
CalBoy
macrumors 604
I decided not to vote in the poll since it's too black and white for me.
In terms of everyday usage, I speak American English (or rather English with an American [and more specifically a Californian] accent).
However, if you were to ask me which accent is "superior" I'd have to vote for "British" hands down.
Then again Scottish, Irish, Australian, and Kiwi accents are all great.
It's our American accent that is epic fail.
In terms of everyday usage, I speak American English (or rather English with an American [and more specifically a Californian] accent).
However, if you were to ask me which accent is "superior" I'd have to vote for "British" hands down.
Then again Scottish, Irish, Australian, and Kiwi accents are all great.
It's our American accent that is epic fail.
I work with about 16 Brits at work and all but one has jokingly criticized my use of the English language on at least one occasion.
At least I think they did... because, honestly, half the time I can't understand a ****ing word they're saying. I just smile, nod my head, give them a sarcastic double thumbs up, then walk away mumbling swear words under my voice in my thick Brooklyn accent.
It was even worse when I visited our main office in Ireland.
In all honesty - we Americans murdered the English language, but they need to get over it already. American English is here to stay.
And we're not renaming our version of football either.
Peace
At least I think they did... because, honestly, half the time I can't understand a ****ing word they're saying. I just smile, nod my head, give them a sarcastic double thumbs up, then walk away mumbling swear words under my voice in my thick Brooklyn accent.
It was even worse when I visited our main office in Ireland.
In all honesty - we Americans murdered the English language, but they need to get over it already. American English is here to stay.
And we're not renaming our version of football either.
Peace
MacSamurai
macrumors regular
educate yourself on the use of the word footballAnd we're not renaming our version of football either.
Macaddicttt
macrumors 6502a
I'm plenty educated on it. Thanks
LizKat
macrumors 604
Couldn't vote on the poll... have heard too many dialects of both that seemed close to incomprehensible and plenty that are just irritating.
I was asked in Louisiana once if I wanted a glass of water with my meal and someone had to translate the question for me, the waitress' accent was so thick. Once I got that translation, I could understand almost everything else she said. Talk about rosetta stones.
In upstate New York near the city of Rochester, they make one-syllable words with a flat a in them (like "back" or "rack") into excruciating, invented diphthongs like "beeeyak". I will not live long enough to get used to that.
So with those two examples you'd think I could vote for the British English but I've heard enough dialects of that to realize that not everyone sounds like a BBC newsreader. Anyway some Brit dialects are much more interesting to me but might strike a Brit the way Bronx English strikes some Americans.
In American speech, I do love hearing the little regional giveaways and the even odder constructions that individual people tack into their speech. A friend of one of my brothers uses "or what" as a kind of filler expression instead of the much more common "you know".
He'll say something like "So then this guy just takes, or what, his hammer and pounds the nail straight in as if he didn't even, or what, hear me tell him to check the alignment first." Where he got "or what" from is beyond me, not that "you know" is such a choice bit of filler.
I was asked in Louisiana once if I wanted a glass of water with my meal and someone had to translate the question for me, the waitress' accent was so thick. Once I got that translation, I could understand almost everything else she said. Talk about rosetta stones.
In upstate New York near the city of Rochester, they make one-syllable words with a flat a in them (like "back" or "rack") into excruciating, invented diphthongs like "beeeyak". I will not live long enough to get used to that.
So with those two examples you'd think I could vote for the British English but I've heard enough dialects of that to realize that not everyone sounds like a BBC newsreader. Anyway some Brit dialects are much more interesting to me but might strike a Brit the way Bronx English strikes some Americans.
In American speech, I do love hearing the little regional giveaways and the even odder constructions that individual people tack into their speech. A friend of one of my brothers uses "or what" as a kind of filler expression instead of the much more common "you know".
He'll say something like "So then this guy just takes, or what, his hammer and pounds the nail straight in as if he didn't even, or what, hear me tell him to check the alignment first." Where he got "or what" from is beyond me, not that "you know" is such a choice bit of filler.
That's it. Good movie.
GfPQqmcRKUvP
macrumors 68040
I prefer to hear someone speak English who is from London than from someone who resides in California or New York. I like the sound more and I think it's an awesome accent. I will assume, however, that this is due to it being 'different' than what I have grown up with.
And while our English (American version) may not be the original English, that in itself doesn't make some of its speakers less articulate or linguistically competent, so stop with the feelings of superiority.
And while our English (American version) may not be the original English, that in itself doesn't make some of its speakers less articulate or linguistically competent, so stop with the feelings of superiority.
me_94501
macrumors 65816
Oh, there are vowel shifts going on in various regions in the country. For example, California:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_English
me_94501
macrumors 65816
Well, for the sake of clarity and habit...
Both Americans and Britons refer to their repsective mother tongue as "English," after all.
And just because the variation of English I speak is different does not make it "lazy." There is "proper" American English and "improper" American English, and what is considered proper is ever-evolving.
bigandy
macrumors G3
There's a well put together article on Wikipedia about the differences between the two dialects, and another decent one on spelling differences.
From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In many ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is.
Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).
I'm all for calling the Americans lazy ( ), however I'd have to say that, in my view, American English retains more similarities to "Modern English" (circa 1800), than British English does - which brings us to the logical conclusion that American English is more established than British, in their most modern forms.
From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In many ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is.
Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).
I'm all for calling the Americans lazy (
), however I'd have to say that, in my view, American English retains more similarities to "Modern English" (circa 1800), than British English does - which brings us to the logical conclusion that American English is more established than British, in their most modern forms.
Ish
macrumors 68020
Flemish
Unless lofight is from Wallonia of course.
I stand corrected!
Hhrmph!
I see you've all been talking about me while I was asleep! And all I wanted to do was defend the poor poster who got picked on!!
Don't apologise. The comment was aimed at people being critical of people's posts when they're not writing in their native language. You're doing great.