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US English vs UK English

US English vs UK English

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That statement was a bit influrbious!

P-

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Originally posted by Phlabibit
That statement was a bit influrbious!

P-
Can you translate that for me in Esperanto? Nothing changes there, ever.🙂

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Originally posted by fjord
You sound like a purist. That makes languages dead as doornails. Why do you want to freeze your language? It is quite normal that expressions, sentences, words, grammar, syntaxes, and pronunciation change.

Fjord
Yes, they do. Changing aluminium to aluminum, or vice versa, is a case in point.

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Originally posted by fjord
Can you translate that for me in Esperanto? Nothing changes there, ever.🙂
Esparanto neither changes, nor should it even exist!

If I had to try to translate it I would say..... "mallarg^a menso."

Hehehehe! Oh, too funny!

All I really know about Esparanto is William Shatner did a movie in it?

😉

P-

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Originally posted by Phlabibit
Esparanto neither changes, nor should it even exist!

If I had to try to translate it I would say..... "mallarg^a menso."

Hehehehe! Oh, too funny!

All I really know about Esparanto is William Shatner did a movie in it?

😉

P-
Thanks. That broadens my horizont 😀

I agree with you about Esperanto. Good intentions, bad fruit.
But you can learn it within 2 days. Try that with Pali.

Fjord

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Originally posted by Phlabibit
Esparanto neither changes, nor should it even exist!

If I had to try to translate it I would say..... "mallarg^a menso."

Hehehehe! Oh, too funny!

All I really know about Esparanto is William Shatner did a movie in it?

😉

P-
It was suggested to a US Senator around 1900 that Esperanto be made the official language of the United States. The Senator responded:

''If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me.''

Perhaps we should all lighten up on Dubya's errors of speech 😛.

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Originally posted by fjord
You sound like a purist. That makes languages dead as doornails. Why do you want to freeze your language? It is quite normal that expressions, sentences, words, grammar, syntaxes, and pronunciation change.

Fjord
It's true that thriving languages are constantly evolving, but it's also true that dialects with the most clout behind them - those spoken by the richest or most populous nations - tend to eventully become predominant. So it's entirely natural that us Brits should feel hot under the collar about the encroachment of US English, becuse we feel, perhaps subconsciously, that it's another form of cultural imperialism. As a test of that, I tend to find that Brits get much more annoyed by the transatlantic differences than Americans do.

I guess it's pretty inevitable and there's not much point in whingeing about it, but it is a personal bugbear of mine that these days many Europeans learn American, rather than British, English.

Rich.

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Don't ask me why but the one that really annoys me is zeds instead of esses - realise / realize 😳

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Originally posted by richhoey
It's true that thriving languages are constantly evolving, but it's also true that dialects with the most clout behind them - those spoken by the richest or most populous nations - tend to eventully become predominant. So it's entirely natural that us Brits should feel hot under the collar about the encroachment of US English, becuse we feel, perhaps sub ...[text shortened]... ar of mine that these days many Europeans learn American, rather than British, English.

Rich.
You are right. It is not just that we learn American instead of English.
Even if we try to use English, the text editor will change our labour into labor 😠
(That is the secret reason why I want to get the UN HQ out of NY) 🙂

When I left Gymnasium I was a dutch purist myself and stumbled on every mistake I read or heard. That changed rapidly when I married a foreign lady who had to learn Dutch from scratch. I gave up my purism and realized there were more important things in life. Slowly I could discover the beauty of all these intermingling variations of our Dutch language. I think it is a reality we have to accept if we believe that we live in a multi cultural world.

Fjord


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Originally posted by Phlabibit
... we drive on the other side of the road!

Oh, and my car has this.. A hood, and trunk, and a roof! It even has a dashboard!!!!!
What's worse than the other side of the road is the other side of the car! At least, it was for me. I've yet to actually stray back onto the right side of the road, but many times I've tried to enter my car on the passenger side, and at first I hit a lot of curbs on that side too.
As for the car's anatomy, I cannot bring myself to say the car has a bonnet and a boot.
I've picked up a few Australianisms. I say 'no worries' for example. But I can't ask 'how are you going?' instead of 'how are you doing?' or 'how's it going?'
Certain differences just won't roll off my tongue. Fortunately the Aussies don't seem to mind if I retain some Americanisms.
They never can guess my nationality by my accent. I have a midwestern American accent (Ohio), but the guesses I get tend to be Canadian, Irish, South African, English, and once even Swedish 😕🙂

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I should read the entire thread before replying. Sorry for the rehashing of the same information. Although the Alcoa link was pretty interesting.
re: Aluminium and the americanization of its pronunciation. It appears that YES the second "i" is being dropped.

http://www.aluminum.org/

http://www.alcoa.com/

If Alcoa has dropped the second "i" then the second "i" is truly gone.

And to complain about colloquialisms is silly. You can't change it. Why fight it.

Irregardless I could care less about it all and what not.

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Here's one that bugs me (not a regional thing, just a common mistake):
PIN stands for "personal identification number", yet people always refer to the "PIN number", which is redundant.

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Originally posted by richjohnson
Here's one that bugs me (not a regional thing, just a common mistake):
PIN stands for "personal identification number", yet people always refer to the "PIN number", which is redundant.
Don't forget about ATM machine.

-Ray.

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I hate when people say...

"I was doing this or that and I got electrocuted!"

I always say, "oh, you died"?

P-

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I believe the American phrase may have evolved from a previous, longer one: "I could care less, but not much," which was itself a development of the British one, and then later syncopated to "I could care less." A clear case of linguistic jazz inverting the melody.