The state of British English

Adam   Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:06 pm GMT
I can agree with him about American English, but not about Imperial, which is the measurement that put man on the Moon.
Adam   Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:11 pm GMT
Plus, which is more widespread and more used? British English, of course.


"who have the weight of numbers - British style language users or American style users? I would hazard a guess that it's the Brit. style users. When one considers that the countries on the following list and a multitude of other nations have deep historical if not current connections with Britain and British English, I think it is quite likely that the use of Bitish English is far more widespread and popular than one might think at first glance.

who have the weight of numbers - British style language users or American style users? I would hazard a guess that it's the Brit. style users. When one considers that the countries on the following list and a multitude of other nations have deep historical if not current connections with Britain and British English, I think it is quite likely that the use of Bitish English is far more widespread and popular than one might think at first glance.

British English

Aden (Yemen)
Ascension Island
Anguilla
Australia
Bahamas
Bahrain
Barbados
Basutoland (Lesotho)
Bechuanaland (Botswana)
Bermuda
British Cameroon
British Guyana (Guyana)
British Honduras (Belize)
British Somaliland (Somalia)
British Solomon Islands
Brunei
Burma (Myanmar)
Canada
Cayman Islands
Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Cook Islands
Cyprus
Falkland Islands and dependencies
Egypt
Fiji
Gambia
Gibraltar
Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Kiribati & Tuvalu)
Gold Coast (Ghana)
Grenada
Hong Kong
India (included Pakistan & Bangladesh)
Iraq
Ireland
Jamaica
Kenya
Kuwait
Malaya (West Malaysia)
Maldive Islands
Malta
Mauritius
Montserrat
Newfoundland (Canada)
New Hebrides (with France) Vanuatu
New Zealand
North Borneo (Sabah)
Nyasaland (Malawi)
Oman
Papua New Guinea
Palestine (Falestin/Israel)
Pitcairn Island
Qatar
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia)
Sarawak (East Malaysia)
St Helena
St Kitts
St Lucia
St Vincent
Seychelles
South Africa
Swaziland
Tanganyika (Tanzania)
Tonga
Transjordan (Jordan)
Trinidad
Tristan Da Cunha
Trucial Oman (United Arab Emirates)
Turks and Caicos Islands
Uganda
Western Samoa
Zanzibar (Tanzania) Aden (Yemen)


American English

America
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:37 pm GMT
ADAM...in spite of all your anti Scottish jibes I'd still buy you a pint if you ever manage to get a visa inserted into in your passport and are permitted entry to Bonnie Scotland. Deep down I'm awfie shuir you're a freenlie laddie.

TRAWICK: Maybe I have placed a bit too much emphasis on the alleged spread of Estuary English. As ever, RICK has got it spot on...the South East of England is still the main base and breeding ground. When I was at uni I went down to a place called Milton Keynes several times - it's right in the heart of Estuaryland where Estuaryspeak is endemic......it's a cool "happening" place where anything other than Estuary, whether mild or strong, stands out, as did my Scottish tones.

I still maintain that traces of Estuary are insidiously seeping into speech outside the South East of England though. To respond to you, I don't think Scotland has yet succumbed to Estuary in a big way. Here in Edinburgh it is becoming slightly evident in some words. ... barely perceptible, but it's there if you listen. It depends who's speaking..invariably people under 30 or so. The T in Scotland is more or less silent for most people but I don't think that's due to Estuary. It's just much easier to say "Scaw'(h)land" with a slight aspiration mid word. It is for me anyway, but as ADAM says ....I'm not normal....I'm Scottish.
Trawick   Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:57 pm GMT
Damian: I suppose it would be hard to completely guage Estuary's influence on Scottish English, since glottal stopping has existed in Scotland for centuries.

Adam: Ireland, Canada, and the Carribean nations you mentioned do not fall into the British English column. They have their own unique language models, and are not simply offshoots of either British or American English.
Rick Johnson from Manches   Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:25 pm GMT
An example of an accent which drops letters in the middle of words is Geordie, but this is probably one area in Britain which is more robust to change and influences from outside than anywhere else. Some people might listen to the accent and say that they drop letters because of estuary influence, but I can't imagine someone with a southern accent lasting very long in a bar in Newcastle without getting his head kicked in.

Adam makes some good points, but there's one important difference between Estuary English and scots. Standard English represents the speech and pronunciatiation of people in South East England in the 15th,16th and 17th centuries, simply because most printing presses tended to be situated in London. Estuary English derives from this same area and the fact that pronunciation sounds different from what is written shows how speech is changing in that area. Scots on the other hand has totally separate roots from southern english and in fact developed originally alongside northern english. In the 9th Century the Kingdom of Northumbria covered Most of Northern England and South East Scotland upto just above Edinburgh. The Kingdom of Strathclyde covered The area from Glasgow down the bottom of Cumbria in what is today England. The fact that Scots doesn't sound like South East (standard) English is therefore hardly surprising since it has little relationship to it.
Bubbler   Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:01 pm GMT
And Adam, I'm sure it's *England's* prominence that's driving the global proliferation of English. <snicker>
Sander   Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:22 pm GMT
Adam you fucking idiot! If SOMEONE said that on ANOTHER forum then by all means react on it on THAT forum!!!

You are the biggest loser I've ever seen in my entire life!If there was ever a waste of life it'd YOU!
Guest   Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:16 pm GMT
"And Adam, I'm sure it's *England's* prominence that's driving the global proliferation of English. <snicker>"

I think the main driving force behind the growth in English isn't down to any one nation, but the fact that it is already a global language spoken in so many different nations. If English were only spoken in Britain and the USA it would be about as popular as Russian.
Bubbler   Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:36 pm GMT
Make no mistake, the economic juggernaut that is the U.S., not to mention the widespread exposure to U.S. media, is the driving force behind why people continue learning English.
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:45 pm GMT
The world's economic juggernaut of the near future will be CHINA..without a doubt. CHINA.....it will soon be the world's most powerful economic giant. It is fast hurtling towards that accolade.

That is why the rest of the world had better start learning Chinese...probably Mandarin? Not sure on that point to be honest.

The Future is China and Chinese.
The Swede   Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:53 pm GMT
Well, I have been in Gambia and they don´t speak a brittish english. English is the official language but they speak other languages there. They learn English at school and use it becouse they don´t have alphabets to their own languages.
Rick Johnson   Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:21 pm GMT
Damian

While your probably right about China becoming an economic juggernaut, I don't its language will become so well known. For two main reasons:
There is more than one language
The languages (politically) are only really present on one continent. English by contrast is heavily present in Europe, North America, Asia (especially India), Large parts of Africa and the Middle East and Australasia- I imagine its well represented by the few people who spend time in Antartica, although I'm not sure they really have any political power.
Adam   Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:24 pm GMT
"Adam you fucking idiot! If SOMEONE said that on ANOTHER forum then by all means react on it on THAT forum!!!

You are the biggest loser I've ever seen in my entire life!If there was ever a waste of life it'd YOU! "

Get that chip off your shoulder.
Adam   Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:25 pm GMT
"ADAM...in spite of all your anti Scottish jibes I'd still buy you a pint if you ever manage to get a visa inserted into in your passport and are permitted entry to Bonnie Scotland. Deep down I'm awfie shuir you're a freenlie laddie"

Anti-Scottish jibes? You're the one who makes anti-English jibes, so I respond to them.

And how the hell would I need a visa and a passport to travel to Scotland?
Sander   Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:27 pm GMT
=>Get that chip off your shoulder. <=
...die