British English is treated badly

Oops I forgot to put Louis' comment in quotes in my most recent post. Hopefully you can see that first paragraph wasn't mine, but what I was responding to :)

How about sandals :
1/ at work or on a work site - oh I forgot, many people don't work
2/ for sport - I guess many people there are sedentary
3/ in the middle of winter - people don't go out in the cold?
4/ for going out at night, like clubbing or restaurants? (not McDonalds)

;P

"It would be nice if in the UK they adopted U.S. english language and norms, so that there would be a standard in spelling, grammar, etc. "

What a stupid thing to say. Why should be adopt American English? It's not our language. We'll keep speaking English the way it should be spoken.

And everyone should speak the same English, then Americans should adopt British English, which is the original English.

What next? Will you advocate that the French should all start speak Canadian French, or the Portuguese start speaking Brazilian Portuguese?

Have to agree with Adam there

I disagree...

=>And everyone should speak the same English, then Americans should adopt British English, which is the original English.<=

Nobody SHOULD speak the same English,everybody should search in whats best for him or herself.

"Increasingly American English is becoming the preferred form of English"

I disagree. British English is still the preferred English in the world, probably because most people learning English prefer to learn English, rather than a bastardized version.

Go to India and you will see that British English is more popular there than American English, as it is in most Commonwealth countries.

Go to Australia and Canada and Ireland and nearly every other English-speaking nation and they spell "colour" as "colour"and not "color."

=>And everyone should speak the same English,<

Oh OK missed that part, disagree with Adam on that.

Apparently, there is a growing fashion to speal British English in the United States, although hardly anyone in Britain speaks American English.


"A growing number of British English phrases have entered American English in recent years. The expression "went missing" or "gone missing" provides a case in point. In 1994, "went missing" or "gone missing" were used just eight times in articles in the Washington Post and New York Times in the whole of 1994. By contrast, in 2004 the expressions were used 91 times in the same newspapers. Similarly, neither National Public Radio nor NBC used "went missing" or "gone missing" in 1994 but by 2004, however, NPR used one or the other 31 times; NBC, 38 times.

According to former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, the reason for this lies in the greater vividness and precision of some British expressions: "Gone missing," he says, is "more active" than "disappeared". Professor Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information suggests that using British expressions "makes you sound pragmatic, a little cynical." The increasing reach of British media in the United States, such as the BBC America television channel, has also been cited as a reason for the growing fashion for British English in the United States. "

[1] (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kenny22mar22,0,2498777.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions)

"And everyone should speak the same English"

No. I typed it wrong. I meant to say "If everyone should speak the same English" but I agree that we should all speak different varieties of English.

>I agree that we should all speak different varieties of English. <

Thank you Adam then we agree :)

No, you didnt typ it wrong ...

=>And everyone should speak the same English, then Americans should adopt British English<=

You clearly said that ,according to you, everyone should speak British English.

I think what Adam meant was that IF everyone spoke the same English it should be British English (which is fair, since Britain is where English came from) but that we should rather speak our different varieties of English

No, He said that the American (and other Anglophones) should all speak British English and,and I quote, "bastardized version"

and,and I quote,NOT THE "bastardized version"

OK I missed that....