Is English English comtamined by American English?

<<That is why in Britain you have one million dialects and accents, because you do not have an official regulated British accent and no British linguistic Academy >>

LOL! How do you regulate an accent? Stiff fines?

one undred quid for each dropped aitch. That'll raise a lot more money than fining people for saying 'skedule'.

Would you stop attacking Uriel on the pretext of anti-Americanism. As you know all American girls are jolly good and don't deserve this.

If you said mall in the midwest USA but rhymed it with pal and not pall, no one would have any idea that you were referring to a shopping center.

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***fining people for saying 'skedule'***

How on earth would the fining process be supervised in this case and who would be the appointed pronunciation invigilators do you think? For heaven's sake let's not have even more bureaucracy added to what we have here in Britain already, a country which surely must be the most rigidly watched and spied on in the entire world with sinister looking CCTV cameras gently scanning back and forth from all their vantage points on practically every street corner in every town and city, and those irritating yellow speed camera units placed at regular intervals all along our roads? A smidgeon over the speed limit and the bloody things flash and a few days later you get a fine notice for £60 or so in the post with seven days to pay up or else...surely the easiest way of raising revenue for the authorities that could ever be devised by Big Bro Britannia.

"Skedule" for schedule - some people here do pronounce it that way, while the rest say "shedule" as per the "British Way of Doing Things"- are we going to have the "shedulers" of the UK reporting the "skedulers" among us to the newly organised Government Controlled Pronunciation Police? And it won't end with just "skedule" will it? We'd have all the "aloominumers" and similar being frogmarched down to the nearest nick wouldn't we?

I'm going to play safe and do my best to make sure I always say "PRI-murry-lee" from now on....or something like that.

You could probably program your cameras with voice recognition software and make the accent fining process as automated as getting a speeding ticket.

Conversely, in these hard economic times, it might be a stroke of genius to wire them with mikes and have crews of professional eavesdroppers manning the receiving stations, for a net increase in both revenue and employment. Think about it. We could be on to something here!

Here in Chicago we have two types of cameras, traffic cameras and blue light special police cameras (for scary neighborhoods, like, apparently, mine) that rotate 360 degrees and allegedly are miked so they'll face towards gun shots and the like. I'm sure with all its cameras, the UK could rig up a system to detect the unauthorized use of skedule.

Excellent idea, Uriel - enlisting an army of Government controlled eavesdroppers therefore slashing the current unemployment statistics at a stroke. A strict program* would have to be adhered to in the snooping process whereby all disallowed Americanised pronunciation miscreants on the streets of Britain would be apprehended immediately and carried off in shiny cop cars down to the nearest cop shop and all successful eavesdroppers would be paid at the going rate of so much for each guilty party, on a sort of piece rate basis exempt from income tax therefore acting as some sort of incentive.

Let's hope everything runs to skedule otherwise it could all go pear shaped, pri-MARRY-lee the most important consideration I guess.

WRP: Gun shot detectors? I don't think we've quite reached that stage here yet - except perhaps in Nottingham......or maybe Moss Side, Manchester.....or possibly Tottenham, North London......

We're being just a wee bit silly now, aren't we? Oh, I don't know.....this IS Brown's Britain after all isn't it? - anything's possible with his crew....a frag'l society indeed. I have to go now - thankfully the nick isn't too far away and I've always enjoyed riding in a cop car anyway. Cheers.

*Program - looks much nicer than the idiotic programme, don't you think? I really think you Americans are more logical than we are. I don't know who it was who said that the Americans were consistent, but I think it was Jasper who sort of accused the Brits of being very inconsistent, which indeed we are, as I've said before...Jasper was right. We've never been any different.

Damian, when I referred to the Brits as "inconsistent", I had its spelling and pronunciation customs in mind.

English has never been a particularly phonetic language, but in the UK oftentimes even Americans, who nominally speak the same language, need a dictionary to learn how to pronounce UK words. I remember as a teenager having to look "Worcestershire" up in the dictionary, and later hearing that the pronunciation of "waistcoat" was "wiss-kitt". Countless other examples could be offered.

I remember this conversation because it was fueled by an Englishman's irritation of having his name pronounced "Ger- ARD", which is how I myself would have pronounced it until you explained it.

I hope I didn't offend; I merely meant to explain.

Gun shot detectors? I don't think we've quite reached that stage here yet - except perhaps in Nottingham......or maybe Moss Side, Manchester.....or possibly Tottenham, North London......


Damian: I suspect what they mostly detect is cars misfiring and illegal Indiana fireworks being set off.

If the English sound so American, then why is it that all of my expatriate friends in the UK are confused by the slang?
Sure, plenty of Americans have heard "bollocks" and "wanker" and all of that but when they hear "taking a piss" and "wotcher" they may scratch their heads.
And while it isn't trendy to use English terms/slang/whatever here, I often do. It makes me smile. But hey, I like to be different.

another thing is how current is some of the pop culture and slang that crosses into other nations from america? i have seen the parle a ma main video by fatal bazooka and i know that i havent heard talk to the hand in maybe a decade. and even then i only heard people on tv use the term and rarely in person unless the person was just trying to be funny

Jasper.....absolutely no problem at all, my fine friend.....it would take something pretty earth shattering to offend me to tell you the truth....as a wee lad I was bullied mercilessly for various reasons and it's continued ever since on and off, and I still encounter prejudice and bigotry to a certain degree but thankfully the job I now do has hardened my skin to the consistency of reinforced concrete, metaphorically speaking.....water off a duck's back, sort of thing. You really wouldn't survive for long in my profession if you took offence easily.

I know exactly what you meant over this "inconsistency" thing, British style, and I agreed with everything you said because it's all true. The British have often appeared to be "at odds" with our Continental neighbours in so many ways other than in linguistic terminology or driving on the "wrong" side of the road. Why do you think all our Continental friends are so consistent in their trashing of the UK each year in something as banal and dumbcrap as the Eurovision Song Contest - no matter how great, how fantastic the British entry may be in real terms very few of the other European voting public will vote for it. It's no secret that the British as a whole are probably the "least liked" people in the whole of Europe for various reasons, and not just because of the much quoted "War in Iraq".

This apparent dislike of us as a nation doesn't seem to prevent them crossing those 22 miles of choppy grey Channel waters in mega droves all the year round though! Here in London I seem to hear a myriad of Continental Languages all around me more often than I do our native Engish, or so it seems to me! "Hate" us they may, perhaps, yet still they come here....maybe they just like our crispy back bacon sarnies with HP sauce washed down with Earl Grey tea.......or to cross Abbey Road via that black and white zebra crossing of Beatles fame! It's got to be something......I wonder what exactly? ;-)

I really don't think you are capable of giving offence anyway, Jasper - at least not from what I can tell from your style and mannerisms in this Forum.

Cheers, mite!* (OMG - I've been in London far too long now......nah, not really.........it's an amazing city, I love it to bits yet I don't want to stay here permanently....I'm too Scottish for that).

*That's "mate" in Londonspeak.