Learn all the differences between the UK and US English?

The Office (the TV program) is located in Slough ['Sl au] to the west of London in what is known as the Home Counties of England. The general accent among the staff (or cast, including David Brent (Ricky Gervais)himself) is pretty typical of the area - a sort of modified RP with a touch of Estuary but nothing extreme - just standard for of (Southern) English English. To us here in Scotland it's sort of nondescript - it's English, and that's that.

I've only been through Slough on a train as it's between London and Oxford, and it looks to me as if it's full of "The Offices" - all concrete and glass and high tech with typical "The Office" staff but probably minus the David Brents, fortunately for the staff concerned - or maybe unfortunately depending on your sense of humour and level of tolerance of perceived lunatics. All I know is that The Office where I work is lacking a TV type David Brent but even so it's full of characters - mostly with Scottish accents naturally, but we do have several English people (and one Welsh girl!) on the staff who seem to have Slough type accents, come to think of it. The girl from Wales has the most heavenly lilting accent straight from some lovely Welsh valley.

I believe that the general accent in the Slough area is pretty much based on age factors. The older people - probably very old people now - in that area of the Thames Valley still have a sort of rustic type accent like you would expect in the countryside or small towns and villages of long ago in Southern England. The rest could be straight out of The Office I reckon. Discounting the immigrant non-native population, just standard Southern English English - neither straight RP nor straight Estuary (if you'll pardon the expression).

**just standard for of (Southern) English English**

typo - just standard form of....

<<a few people here have "hw" instead of my "w", for example "whine" and wine" but then that's not a vowel>>

This is quite the opposite thing. The whine-wine distinction is a conservative feature, which used to be whitespread but seems to be disappearing now, whereas the California vowel shift is progressive, an innovation that is likely to spread in the future.

"Dominant media? I wouldn't think so. Just some British guy slipped on Uncle Sam's suit and danced on the International stage. "

British media is the world's dominant media.

Americans rarely report on anything that happens outside the United States. BBC World Service has a far higher annual budget than puny CNN.

" Point is American English is perfered in these new markets. Even in traditional British English Asian speaking countries such as it's former colonies like Hong Kong, India, Pakistan,Singapore,etc. are slowly swapping to American English."

British English is FAR MORE widespread than American English. American English, spoken as a native language, is spoken almost exclusively in the United States. British English, though, is spoken in 54 countries around the world as a native language, and is the preferred English in countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Saying those countries are swapping to American English is stupid.

ADAM:

Unfortunately I am not able to download the article, but if you are familiar with the main local newspaper down in Bristol the front page includes a banner headline featuring a report just out titled:

"Why the English are Britain's Second Class Citizens".

I came across it while sifting at work today. You may find it interesting...as well as making you feel just a wee bit peeved! LOL

Never mind, pal.

I've finished work now until next Wednesday. You English only have next Monday 02 Jan off as a public holiday. We in Scotland also have Tuesday 03 Jan off! We need it......tomorrow is Hogmanay and I will be one of the 100,000+ people celebrating in Central Edinburgh. You'd have enjoyed our fireworks display here over the city last night, my wee Sassenach friend...guid fun even if it was furrreeeezing cold....

Hae a Guid New Year!

American spelling VS British spelling - Why it may be advantageous to use British spelling rather than American spelling.

There may be advantages in using British spelling in certain situations. For instance, two forms: programme and program exist in British English. The former can be a noun referring to television programmes or programmes of events (plans, conferences, a theatre programme etc.). The latter can be a noun referring to computer programs. Both forms can be verbs, but there is no spelling distinction between them except in the infinitive form (as in She learned how to program the computer to calculate the value of the pound against the Euro at twelve hourly intervals) and the present tense. If you wish to make reference to both meanings in your writing, then British English makes a useful reference (meaning) distinction between the two, while American English has only one form program to refer to both.


British English distinguishes between practice (noun):

I haven't done my cello practice yet.

...and practise (verb):

He practises the cello for ten minutes every morning.



However, American English tends to use practice as both a noun and a verb. Students taking Cambridge examinations are advised to adopt the British system as this reflects the underlying grammatical (part of speech) distinction.



sussex.ac.uk

"Why the English are Britain's Second Class Citizens".

Because we have a Scottish Government and a Scottish PM who spend more, per capita, on public services in Scotland and Wales than they do in England?

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"I've finished work now until next Wednesday. You English only have next Monday 02 Jan off as a public holiday. We in Scotland also have Tuesday 03 Jan off! We need it......tomorrow is Hogmanay and I will be one of the 100,000+ people celebrating in Central Edinburgh. You'd have enjoyed our fireworks display here over the city last night, my wee Sassenach friend...guid fun even if it was furrreeeezing cold....

Hae a Guid New Year! "

That doesn't bother me in the slightest - the fact that you Scots are lazy Socialists like the French and the Germans probably explains why your economy, like France and Germany, and lagging behind the rest of the UK.

All that extra time off gives you Scots plenty of more time toe at your "healthy" Scottish food such as deep-fried Mars Bars, giving you the fattest children in the world.

A recent report showed that Scotland has Western Europe's HIGHEST murder rate - whereas England/Wales has Western Europe's second-lowest murder rate.

Now another report shows that Scottish children are the second-fattest in Europe and the most obese in Europe. Again, England/Wales set a good example by having one of the lowest rates of childhood obesity and fatness in Europe.

Scottish children are fatter even than their American counterparts.

That means that the fairly high murder rate in Britain compared to other Europeans nations and our high childhood obesity rates can mostly be blamed on the Scots, which make the rest of Britain appear worse than we actually are.
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The Times December 13, 2005








The fattest children in the world

By Shirley English

A third of Scottish 12-year-olds are overweight and a fifth are obese according to new statistics




IN THE home of the deep fried Mars bar, counting calories has never been a top priority.

But Scotland’s love affair with junk food — where the local chippy will batter and fry anything from a pizza to a Bounty bar — has finally won the nation a new epithet to rival its long standing reputation as the sick man of Europe.

New figures suggest that Scotland’s gastronomic eccentricities and laissez-faire attitude to healthy living, have caught up with the young to produce a generation of couch potatoes who are now officially among the most overweight in the world.

The Government research, published by the Information Statistics Division (ISD), revealed that Scots school children are now more likely to be obese than even their beef burger munching peers in the United States.

A third of Scots school children are overweight and one in five is obese by the time they reach the age of 12, compared to one-in-six in the United States and one-in-20 across Britain as a whole.

For a small country, already troubled by problems of adult heart disease exacerbated by the hard drinking and heavy smoking culture, it is a weighty timebomb that some experts fear is now out of control.

This year Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce, a network of European experts, said the situation in Scotland was at crisis point. “The obesity epidemic is escalating totally out of control and Scotland is worse than England,” he said. “This is more than just a warning signal, it’s a red light.”

Yesterday politicians reacted with shock to the findings and warned parents that their children are storing up serious health problems for later life. In fact, children are already contracting conditions associated with middle age, such as diabetes.

According to the ISD, obesity levels have risen by 4.1 per cent in the last five years in Scotland and children as young as three are now expanding faster than the rest of the country.

An over reliance on junk food and a lack of exercise have been blamed for the increase and the problems are not confined to those living in poverty. The middle classes are equally implicated.

“At all ages the proportion of Scottish children who were estimated to be overweight, obese and severely obese were higher than expected and in many cases double the UK expected rate,” an ISD spokesman said.

According to the British Nutrition Foundation, the diets of four-year-olds in the 1990s living in the fourth richest country in the world contained less iron, less energy and more sugar than in 1950s Britain.

But the reality is that children’s obesity is also inextricably linked to a lack of exercise. If that were not enough, another major hurdle in overcoming childhood obesity, is youthful attitudes towards it. Recent research suggested that most young people scoffed at diets, were happy with their shape and did not link diet to health.

Lewis Macdonald, the Scottish deputy health minister, said all developed countries had experienced a rapid rise in obesity levels. “Scotland is not alone in experiencing a rise in obeisty in the last two decades, all developed countries are experiencing a similar trend, but we do want to be in the forefront of tackling it,” he said.

The Scottish Executive claims to have invested record levels in improving health. But Nanette Milne, MSP, and the Scottish Conservative Party’s health spokeswoman, said more needed to be done.

“These figures are appalling. Scotland is currently recording rates that are twice, four times and five times higher than the projected UK average in these areas,” she said.

Shona Robison, the Scottish National Party’s shadow health minister, said the Executive had failed to end Scotland’s couch potato culture.

************************************
The British Nutrition Foundation found that diets of Scottish children in the 1990s contained less iron and energy but more confectionery and soft drinks than in the 1950s.


A WHO survey of 11-year-olds in Scotland found that 47.2 per cent of boys and 40.4 per cent of girls drank drank fizzy drinks every day.


Scottish youngsters ate more chocolate than any European country apart from Malta and Netherlands.
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Childhood obesity rates.

SCOTLAND - 19.4%
US - 16%
Malta - 11%
Spain - 9%
Ireland - 9%
ENGLAND/WALES - 5%
Sweden - 5%
France - 4%
Denmark - 2%
Netherlands - 2%
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Overweight

Malta - 36%
SCOTLAND - 34.1%
Spain - 33%
US - 30%
Ireland - 27%
Sweden - 21%
France - 19%
Fiji - 18.9%
ENGLAND/WALES - 15%
Denmark - 14%
Netherlands - 11%

guardian.co.uk
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The Times September 28, 2005

The Times

Hadrian knew the truth
by Ross Clark



“HAVE A WEE DRAM afore ye go,” runs the traditional old Scottish greeting — or, in the English translation: “I’m going to stuff this broken beer glass in your face.” According to the World Health Organisation, Scotland has the second-highest murder rate in Western Europe, with 2.33 victims last year per every 100,000 people. Another United Nations study goes even further, revealing that Scotland is now the most violent country in the developed world, with Scots three times more likely than Americans to suffer a violent assault.

We can be thankful to Scottish devolution for exposing the murderous habits of the Scots. In the past, homicides north of the border would simply have been lumped together with those in the South to produce a single British murder statistic, thereby allowing the violent Scots to defile us peace-loving English and Welsh. At a mere 0.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, England and Wales narrowly have the second-lowest murder rate in Western Europe after Germany. In fact, if you stripped out attacks committed by drunken McSporrans and McTavishes just arrived on the train at Euston, I wouldn’t be surprised if England came out as the most murder-free country in the world.

Yet in spite of evidence, we still tend to view England as the place with the crime problem. I was speaking to an estate agent in Edinburgh the other week who told me of the droves of English families who were looking to move to Scotland “to escape crime-infested London”. How can they be so stupid? It is hardly as if there is anything new about the Scots propensity for murder: when they sit down to read the particulars of some 19th-century fairytale castle in Renfrewshire, maybe these English house-hunters should stop to wonder: why were the Scots still fortifying their homes so late? It was because they all feared going the same way as the MacDonalds, 30 of whom were bumped off by their house guests, the Campbells, at Glencoe in 1692.

When even a former Scottish Labour Minister, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, ends up being jailed for setting light to the hotel where he had been drinking, there seems little hope in reforming the Scots. This week Charles Clarke will be blathering on about tackling violent crime by using more electronic tagging and other illiberal measures. There is an alternative: just rebuild Hadrian’s Wall.

Murder rates -

Scotland - 2.33 victims per 100,000 - 2nd highest in Western Europe.

England/Wales - 0.7 victims per 100,000 - 2nd lowest in Western Europe

thetimesonline.co.uk

I spent a week in Scotland a couple of years ago. I gained twenty pounds and got murdered twice!!

I think you struck a chord Damian. He's now focused on going after the Scottish and has dropped the "BrE is better than AmE in every way".

I can see that this thread has deteriorated into an England vs. Scotland war. Therefore, I will say good-bye for now and wish everyone a happy and peaceful New Year.

<<I can see that this thread has deteriorated into an England vs. Scotland war. Therefore, I will say good-bye for now and wish everyone a happy and peaceful New Year.>>

This is what often happens when Adam gets involved. Just ignore him and continue posting as normal.

<<This is quite the opposite thing. The whine-wine distinction is a conservative feature, which used to be whitespread but seems to be disappearing now, whereas the California vowel shift is progressive, an innovation that is likely to spread in the future.>>

Quite true. Also, I've very rarely heard people here without the "whine/wine" merger, even amongst older people. My parents are middle-aged native Californians from the Bay Area and are entirely "whine/wine" merged.

Strange, both my boss and a co-worker of mine are without the whine/wine merger. I know the co-worker lived in the Los Angeles befor and she was born in Korea. I am not sure if my boss is not native to this area.

"However, American English tends to use practice as both a noun and a verb."
American English tends to use practiSe as both a noun and verb, don't it?