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I think Americans are taught better in their English classes in their schools. In England people learn about poetry and shakespeare more than actually concentrating on correct grammar and how to speak properly.
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Do you have any idea how many gramtical errors there are in your posting?? Hmmmm.....
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I think that Americans often do appear to speak a higher standard of English than we do, going by what I hear on TV and radio. This has nothing whatsoever to do with accent...more the confident way in which they express themselves without having to hesitate from time to time as they search for an appropriate word. Just listen to some general discussions involving audience participation on TV, or even radio phone-ins involving transAtlantic two way discussions. (Radio TalkSport is a good case in point.....late nights are devoted to all topics discussion and several times a week the London station is linked to one in Los Angeles).
Very often the Americans say their piece quite eloquently (again ignoring the accent) while some of the Brits stumble over their words a wee bit and do the erm, hum - ha type of thing in a whole range of accents.
I don't know if the US station screens their callers for such eloquence of style and verbal presentation beforehand and diss the mumblers before going on air, while the London station allows anyone to come on as long as their viewpoints are relevant to what's being discussed, whether or not they ever went to elocution classes.
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-American
I hate the British, so sorry
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Just kidding, I'm British too.
We are great!
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But do you "speak propah", "init" ?
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I'm just curious.
D62........whatever
D66........whatever
Are you from west Java ?
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Kabayan:
"D62........whatever
D66........whatever"
It's a computer-generated serial number system I use in Antimoon because anyone can use your name.
No, I am most assuredly not from West Java.
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A6027VA
Ohh..I see.
D ...........AB
D............BC
D...........and so on...
The letter D in front of a set of 1-4 numbers then followed by two letters, is indicating the police number of vehicles from Bandung, Capital of west java.
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All right, I would say nobody speaks it better than anybody, but the British accent to me is annoying. British people talk very lightly, like you're scared to say what you have to say. Like they talking right at the tip of their tongue. I like the way New England people talk, direct and heavy, because they dont sound like bitches.
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I hope my viewpoint can be objective enough, since I'm neither British nor American.
Judging from what I've heard on television and radio, the average American does seem to be slightly more fluent than the working-class Briton. I mean, when the news reporters and interviewers go "into the streets of England", it seems as if no one at all can string a sentence together without five seconds of hesitation! (Followed occasionally by unintelligible mumbling.) On the other hand, the average American is mostly able to get across his point, disregarding the occasional slip of grammar.
I have to say, though, that at the TOP of the social ladder, British politicians, executives, and academics are MUCH more articulate than their American counterparts. Many of the specialists and politicians interviewed on the BBC are true masters of the English language. For all their faults, for all their corruption or snobbishness, you've got to admit that many of them are rhetorical geniuses. It's a pleasure to listen to them.
The average American politician's speech is a extremely trite, and American academics speak waaaaaaaay tooooo sloooowly. Once, the BBC interviewed an American academic working for the National Geologic Survey... and he kept spouting generalisations and clichés in such a slow, boring voice. The interviewer kept prodding him to use his brain, but he just kept repeating the same things over and over and over again. (Dr Condoleeza Rice is good, though. She's the only articulate official in the Bush Administration, methinks.)
What's your take on this, then? I agree that average Americans speak better than the average Britons... but do you also find that the "top Britons" are better speakers than the "top Americans"?
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It's shame that even some BBC newscasters are using Cockney dialect on TV. Like that girl that was saying British televoting results at Eurovision song contest. [hoy oy ahm from you ki]
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American Latino,
you are a little biassed, aren't you? It is quite normal because you are American. BUT my question is: What kind of British accent are you talking about? There is no such thing as THE British accent. Maybe you are referring to the RP accent, the so-called BBC English (not exclusively RP any more, though still Standard English) or suchlike... But this is spoken by the minority of British people ( about 3%, I presume). There are plenty of other dialects in Britain: Cockney (London), Scouse (Liverpool), Brummie (Birmingham), Geordie (Tyneside, Newcastle), Estuary English (South-East of England - more of a sociolect than a dialect in my view) etc., just to mention the well-known English dialects in Britain, and of course there are the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh dialects as well. So, I dont't think that all of these speakers "talk right at the tip of their tongue". By the way, what do you mean by talking "lightly"?
A question to all of you: What do you think of Estuary English? Is it a dialect or a sociolect, or a modified / modernised version of RP? Is EE an exact term (since it is spoken not only and not everywhere around the Thames Estuary)?Why do people (especially youngsters) pick it up? I would like to hear (rather: read:-)) your opinion about this issue.
P.S.: Sorry for my inaccurate categorisation of British dialects... Of cousrse, it is not an exhaustive list, I just wanted to give some examples.
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Oops...a typo: of cousrse=of course :-)
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