British English is treated badly

FLORIDA TO ADAM   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:11 GMT
Adam,

--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. --


No because WE RULE your country, WE TELL you what you do.

UK is small, not the U.S!

You are the servants, we are the MASTER.

I don't lke british, germans, dutch, italians, french do what they want to do, they are proud.

Shut up browneye!
Sander   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:18 GMT
=>I don't lke british, germans, dutch, italians, french do what they want to do, they are proud.<=

Hmm,not sure that I get this sentance...
ZZZzzz   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:30 GMT
This is ridiculous, if it really bothers some British people that much to see a Z instead of a S, and the U dropped or CENTER and THEATER instead of centre and theatre, or DEFENCE instead of defense....then they need to get a life. These are miniscule differences and all this talk about "oh no my version of English is superior than yours" or "oh no I should not be forced to read your English because I want my English!" PUHHHLEASE! Get over it, everyone has their version that evolved over time, and if you can't handle a switch in a few letters then you have serious issues. This goes to Americans aswell, if you get that annoyed by British spelling, then you should also go get a life.
andre in south africa   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:32 GMT
Bravo ZZZzzz agree 100%!!! :)
FLORIDA   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:43 GMT
i don't like brits!

Theo others were quite nice with me. Brits just insult and provocate U.S fellows!
posts   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:48 GMT
I don't think it's because British english users are by the most part being treated badly, the web pages that use 'favorite' or 'traveling' and the like probably just happen to be American based pages. I agree that people should write or speak which ever countries' english they want to without having to conform to how someone wants it to be.

American english <<is becoming the preferred form of English>>. I disagree that most people actively seek it out just because they prefer it. American english is popular partly because America's population outnumbers that of other english speaking countries (or english as the popular language to learn) and has a presence that is easily seen and heard through many mediums - written and spoken, the singers, films, television, etc. Popular search engines like Google and Yahoo are American based too as far as I know. When we highlight the 'search web' box rather than the local outside the U.S. search box, we'll most likely get much more U.S. webpages up on our screen.

Pull up your socks - means the same as make an effort or you'll fail.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
Tiffany   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 17:58 GMT
British English is not the "original" English. Both American and British English are varieties of the English spoken before the separate Englishes broke off for different continents. Ditto for Australian. In many ways, American is closer to the language that it was broken off from, but I'm not trying to claim that everyone should speak my version just because it's "closer".
Kirk   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 19:17 GMT
<<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)>>

You might be surprised at how common they are here. I wear and have worn sandals in all those situations. I have three (parttime) jobs in addition to being a full-time student (so I do work, contrary to what you might believe) and I've worn sandals at each (altho one of my jobs, as a campus tour guide, usually requires me to wear close-toed shoes because I have to walk backwards while giving tours). Also, don't forget this is San Diego, so winter is a vague concept at best. It can get a little cooler but the only thing really making it stand out as winter is the shorter days. It's still plenty warm to wear sandals in the winter most of the time (actually, strangely enough, some of the biggest heat waves can come in December and January at times, while more foggy June is known for "June gloom" here), so many people do. In terms of going out at night, especially for restaurants (I can't imagine any even nice restaurants here refusing to let people in because they have sandals on), sandals are quite common. In terms of clubs, I've been to many bars and clubs with my sandals on--it's especially ok if you have a somewhat casual dressed-up look and combine it with sandals--normally if I know I'm going to be doing more heavy dancing (not everyone's sedentary :) ) I'll be more likely to wear nicer clubbing shoes, but even just last weekend it was a hot night and my friends and I didn't feel like wearing hot shoes so we went clubbing with our sandals and fit right in.

Anyway, back to the language question, what other places use "pull up your socks" besides the UK? Does anyone from Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa say such a thing?
andre in south africa   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 19:22 GMT
We use it too Kirk in both English and Afrikaans (trek op jou sokkies)
Frances   Saturday, May 28, 2005, 23:35 GMT
Kirk - "Pull your socks up" means essentially get your act together, get yourself together etc. For example, If Fred got a C for Chemistry at High School, then the teacher might say "pull your socks up", that is, I want you do better and get yourself organised to get an A.

It is commonly used in Aust.
Jack   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:00 GMT
Why does the British and American thing come up in every thread? I'm sick of this!! Adam if the Americans want to spell their English different from our British spellings I see no problem with that!! The main thing is we can still communcate without a translator!! Look at Afrikaans and Dutch and be thankful we still understand eachother after 400 years!!
Travis   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:09 GMT
Ai stil think dho dhaet wi sjud spel samthing laik dhis, ievyn dho sam me naat agri with mi aan dhis wan. ;)
Deborah   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:09 GMT
I've also never heard "pull up your socks" used that way in that way. But I've heard "roll up your sleeves," meaning "get to work."
Jack   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:31 GMT
LOL Travis :P
greg   Sunday, May 29, 2005, 01:33 GMT
Deborah : En <roll up one's sleeves> = Fr <retrousser ses manches>. Same meanings (proper and figurative).