british or american english?

<<
I also feel that Uriel, Candy, and Tiffany are all very intelligent, sophisticated, and classy ladies and I totally agree with most of what they say. >>

You're a man of excellent taste, Jason! :-)
<blushes at being called 'sophisticated' for the first time ever>

You Greek charmer, you! Keep up that attitude and you'll have the British girls swooning at your feet -- flattery'll get you anywhere! ;)



<<To me, a thick Cockney sounds almost like Australian.>>

They should. Australian is a direct descendant of Cockney.



<<However, when I saw the movie "Trainspotting" (about a group of young Scottish heroin addicts) I was barely able to distinguish the language they were speaking as being English.>>

You and me both, pal, as I was saying to Damian just the other day!



<<GAE HAS a strut vowel and its phonetic realisation sounds practically identical to the RP phonetic realisation of the aforementioned vowel. I mean, I would understand if it were the other way around, with Northern England having a foot-strut split and America NOT having one being that Northern England is a lot closer to Southern England (which HAS a foot-strut split and where RP is more common though not the rule) than America is. >>

Not sure on this (maybe Travis can elucidate), but I think the general American accent has its origins in SW English accents, which is probably why we both have that vowel.

No variation of Australian English is anything like Cockney English.

>>Not sure on this (maybe Travis can elucidate), but I think the general American accent has its origins in SW English accents, which is probably why we both have that vowel.<<

One cannot really speak of North American English dialects being descended from any particular specific set of English English dialects. Rather, it is descended from a range of different English dialects, and not just English English dialects either, which were spread out along the eastern seaboard of what are the US and Canada today. Dialects on the interior of the US are descended from something like a koine of the original English dialects brought by settlers while more coastal dialects maintaining more contact with dialect change in the British Isles. Furthermore, the dialects of certain areas of North America had significant influence from Scottish and Irish English dialects, in particular those of the Canadian Maritime provinces, while most NAE dialects outside of those particular areas are descended primarily from a range of English English dialects, albeit in cases with non-negligible non-English substratum influence.

The important factor is not simply which English dialects such dialects were descended from but also the degree of contact with dialects in UK, which made it such that further dialect changes in the UK managed to, in cases, reach coastal NAE dialects, but did not manage to be propagated to the interior of what would become the US and Canada. Consequently, the rhoticness of many English dialects in the US are not necessarily due to being descended from specifically rhotic English dialects in the British Isles, but rather simply that nonrhoticness had not developed in English in the first place during the original initial settlement of many areas, and when nonrhoticness did develop in various English English dialects, it only managed to be propagated to dialects such as those of the Northeast and the Coastal South, and did not spread to areas on the interior which had already been settled.

I thought we sounded like West Country, Trav. (And from what I've heard of them, in my opinion, we do.)

>>I thought we sounded like West Country, Trav. (And from what I've heard of them, in my opinion, we do.)<<

Yes, North American English dialects being descended from a wide mixture of English English dialects, with some Irish English, Scottish English, and even Scots influence in places, is part of why NAE dialects generally do not sound much like your typical southeastern English English dialects, especially once one gets away from the east coast of the US. That said, one cannot really ascribe the overall characteristics of most NAE dialects to just one specific subset of English English dialects alone, especially if one only takes present-day English English dialects into account, rather than taking the state of English in general in the past into account as well. This is more a factor than with the English dialects of Australia and New Zealand, which are more clearly tied to a particular subset of English English, that is, that of the southeast of England, and which postdate many of the changes that differentiated NAE from English English, in particular the development of nonrhoticness.

"I also feel that Uriel, Candy, and Tiffany are all very intelligent, sophisticated, and classy ladies and I totally agree with most of what they say."
You are some lick arse!!! I always had the feeling that Candy was a G.S.

'' There is a lot more tradition and education involved in becoming an Englishman. ''

you mean drinking tea?

I'm sorry, but my Coke is just fine :p

''You are some lick arse!!! ''

I am sorry but this A-word is not in my Webster dictionary.
Is it some slang of Brits'?

<<You Greek charmer, you!>>

Oh yes ;)

<<You're a man of excellent taste, Jason! :-)
<blushes at being called 'sophisticated' for the first time ever>>>
Also a first! Sophisticated... I could get used to that.

Well, you certainly know what you're doing in this arena, Jason.

****<<However, when I saw the movie "Trainspotting" (about a group of young Scottish heroin addicts) I was barely able to distinguish the language they were speaking as being English.>>

You and me both, pal, as I was saying to Damian just the other day! ****

That's because the Language they were speaking was NOT English! It was pure unadulterated Edinburghspeak! ... as I was saying to Uriel just the other day...or if I wasn't, then I am now! :-)

btw: Those ladies in question are intelligent, sophisticated and classy!. Who on earth ever seriously suggested otherwise????!

Kendra: Don't bother your wee head over that word....it's best you don't know, ok?

Talking of West Country.......I can assure you it is every bit a rhotic as the American. Oi've hurrrrrd the burrrr of the West Countrrrrreee when oi werrrrreee down thurrrrrr laaaahst yearrrrrrrr. Besides, it was from the West Country.....Plymouth.....that the Pilgrim Fathers first set sail in Mayflower, carrying all that rhoticism over to you guys ....and you sort of carried on with it big time.

rhotic not a rhotic. Could be confused with erotic......maybe rhotic can be seen as erotic, who knows........

rhotic not a rhotic. Could be confused with erotic......maybe rhotic can be seen as erotic, who knows........whateverrrrrr turrrrns you on.