English is English... Except if It's English

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So basically, we Americans do not speak English anymore, we speak American. I'll even go as far as to say that nobody speaks English. The Americans speak American, and the British speak British.

On another, interesting, note: Modern English isn't actually the english we speak today, it is what Shakespeare spoke. So that puts us in post-modern english, correct?

 

That "Sorcerer's Stone" thing was such a crock. The Philosopher's Stone is described in the book, for crying out loud! They should have just cut to the meat of it and just called it "Harry Potter And The Potion Of Life" if they were going to dumb it down that far.

Just about every North American I've met has mispronounced it as "Mel-born". They should have learned from the British that place names don't follow normal pronunciation rules.

Cases in point: Gloucester, Worcester (and as for the sauce, heh, good luck saying that correctly without help!)

But the core of that point is right; generally, make something as easy to pronounce as possible and you're halfway to sounding Australian.

 

So how do you say Melbourne? I always pronounce it like you described, although I do know the correct way to pronounce the other places you mentioned (the last syllable there is similar in pronounciation to "shire", right?).

 

US - Merrywidow
English - Basque

Mis-pronounced UK cities - Armagh & Glasgow

ar-ma
glaz-go

Tourist pronounciation

ar-mag-ah
glas-goui

[ November 08, 2005, 16:02: Message edited by: Cúchulainn ]

 

OK, I have no idea what either a merrywidow or a basque is. I'm not ever sure how one would pronounce "basque", although I'm guessing it would would be like bask.

 

They very similar to corsets. And your pronounciation of basque would be correct

 

Corsets? Now I'm really confused. In English, a corset is a garment, popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries worn by women between their breasts and waist. It had draw strings on it, and by pulling them really tight, it would make the woman look very thin. However, since those haven't been popular for over 100 years, I can't imagine that's what you're referring to as a corset.

 

http://www.figleaves.com/us/nsf/qwiser.asp?term=corset&original=corset&match=exact

You are behind the times my friend. Do yourself a favour and buy your wife some of these

Edit: I think its just certain brands that refer to Basques as 'Merrywidows', and not necessarily a US term.

 

That stuff is corsets only in name for the greatest part.

And you can't really define pure British or American anymore. BBC and CNN are everywhere, not to mention books, movies and games. Foreigners who learn English are especially screwed. I suppose my own sounds like a mix between British and American sometimes because I often can't even tell when it's text and there are no obvious particularities like or/our, er/re, have just done/just did etc.

 

In fairness, chev, most British folks are now using more of a mixture of UK/US English without even realising it's happening. When cross-pollination between the TV schedules is so commonplace it's difficult to filter out the turns of phrase that come from more "traditional" sources from those that originate across the pond. Particularly tricky in English, because we have so many different expressions and phrases that are - taken literally - meaningless, but we learn them from the context their used in in everyday speech. That's the part of the English language I'd find most bewildering if I was an EFL student, because it's so difficult to translate that sort of thing. I'd hate to think what it would have been like if there existed such a thing as Bavarian rhyming slang, and it turned up in a German listening test!

EDIT: I just realised that "across the pond" is just one of those meaningless-at-face-value phrases I was talking about... Which I think proves my point... maybe. *cough*

EDIT2: so is "at face value". Crap.

 

How about prima facie?

I think one of the tricky things is when words abandoned in British English (there's no such thing really, but hey...) return to English. Where the original language of settlers from England has been preserved to a large extent, it should actually be more conservative than what's spoken in Britain, for even more confusion, shouldn't it? Besides, I admit I was jaw-dropped when I saw "gotten" or "color" in 19th century British books.

When I was younger, my biggest problem was phrasal verbs and articles. Prepositions probably too, but I only realised that when I had learnt enough to notice. Sometimes I still make quite embarrassing mistakes when it's late and I'm tired. Or ommit difficult spots on purpose.

 

I hate it when people start every sentence with the unnecessary word "Basically, . . . . . "

 

It's usually "mell-bun". Of course, that's really because we're all lazy as hell and the extra consonant (r) is too much hassle, so it gets dropped. Either that, or it's a grand conspiratorial tourist-identifier method... I'm undecided on that.

@ chev - I can only imagine how annoying it must get (although I must say, yours is considerably better than the vast majority of people I know who use it as a first language). English has enough words already without trying to assimilate every dialect-specific word/meaning as well. I'm sure that there are similar problems in plenty of other languages - my limited German repertoire would probably be useless/laughable when conversing with a Bavarian (no offence meant to any Bavarians on SP!). Perhaps resurrecting Latin is a better option...

@ Magpie - Bavarian rhyming slang?

 

Strangely enough there is it's a sort of upper middle-class posh english that is still spoken in what used to be colonies of the British Empire, mainly by people who act as if the empire still existed. I've met some of these people and it is wierd the english that they speak and therby think in.

The only other time I have heard this type of english was in Russia when it was still the USSR and Andropov was premier, I had gone there to deliver a paper and was provided with a translator who spoke this same sort of perfect British english. It was only when I returned to England and was asked to identify my transaltor that I found out the bloke was KGB and learned english from Philby etc and thus a sort of perfect english with a Cambridge university overtone

 

Or "r" before consonants was already mute in English when you broke off from Mother England.

It was so littered already in the early dark ages that they had to import monks from the isolated Hibernia/Ireland to recover some reasonably uncontaminated Latin. But Latin is so fun for SMSes and e-mail.

 

To refer back a few pages:

Brit: oleo; Amer: margarine (chemist: toxic waste)

Oleomargarine, as it was then called, first came into wide use during WWII, due to the scarcity of butter, which was rationed both here and in Great Britain. It was packaged, at least in this country, in a white one pound block, along with a little packet of yellow powder that you could pound into it to make it look like butter.

It was after the war during the Bevan-Acheson negotiations of 1947, following some bitter wrangling by the Minister and the Secretary, that it was finally agreed that Britain would have "oleo" and the U.S. could have "margarine". This groundbreaking decision was the only fruitful outcome of the discussions, which soon afterwards deadlocked hopelessly over the word "mayonnaise".

[ November 10, 2005, 04:38: Message edited by: Cernak ]

 

I know this is from two months ago, but such injustices cannot stand...

Maybe this is just the particular region of the US I live in, but I've never personally vacuumed with a 'hoover'. I may have vacuumed with a Hoover brand vacuum cleaner at one point, but it's always referred to as a vacuum cleaner. Also, my mom enjoys going to 'garage sales' on saturday mornings, though use of the term 'yard sale' isn't completely unheard of.

 

Heh, I went to "Hoover Junior High School" right across the street from the Hoover corporate headquarters (in Ohio), and never heard "hoover" used as a verb (except by Brits)....

One good tell as to the spread of AmEnglish will be teenagers saying "like" twelve times in every sentence: "So she was like "I think he likes you" and I was like "no way" and she was like "yeah way" and I was like "omg"...

 

Some people talk like that here, also Bion, but it sounds worse with Belfast accents, as 'like' become 'leik'.

 

Armchair linguists...