Do the Americans speak English better than the British?

>>Travis is not entirely correct. The languages are not cross-intelligible or identical. Standard Danish has a completely different sound to Standard Norwegian. I originate from the Kola Pennisula and I don't understand most of these languages.<<

That is largely due to Standard Danish's phonology, which does have significant differences from both Norwegian and Swedish standard languages. However, aside from phonology, the standard languages are quite similar, especially in the case of Standard Danish and Bokmål. One way or another, all the continental North Germanic standard languages are still far closer to each other than *any* of them are to North Germanic dialects such as Elfdalian (which is what I mean when I say "Dalecarlian") and South Jutish.

And on that note, for sake of comparison, General American and Received Pronunciation have very different sounds and quite marked differences in phonology, and yet beyond that they are highly crossintelligible, and are still very similar compared to some other English dialects such as the aforemntioned Geordie and AAVE.

>>I can speak some Standard Norwegian and Finnish but I mostly speak my native Saami language (and English, of course).<<

Which Sami language do you speak, just out of curiosity? North Sami?

Yes Travis, I am a Saami with a northern dialect/language. I am a little reindeer helper who grew up in the north.

(Anybody who calls me Elf or Lapp wont get any presents at Christmas).

What if we promise to leave you milk and cookies? ;)

>>>>American broke off from English hundreds of years ago - they are the beginning of what will eventually turn into 2 completely different languages.
French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian all came from one language - Latin. They were 1 language once - now they are 4 different languages. This will one day happen with English and American<<<<<<.

This seems wildly assumptive to me. The world where Vulgar Latin evolved into various Romance languages isn't today's world. Those languages grew in relative isolation, a condition which is less available, and should things continue as they are, will probably be even less so. The global village being what it is and the technological capabilities for global communication which exist now, and will no doubt be expanded upon, suggest greater standardization of English globally rather than divergence into more dialectification. Unless we blow oursleves collectively to smithereens and end up foraging and living in caves again, I think it less likely that American and British English will become separate languages than English will evolve to some new global standard dialect. This assuming of course that English will continue on the path to being accepted as lingua franca. Who knows, within a century or so that status may have been coopted by Chinese. In two centuries we may be Borg - inexorably interfaced with a global computer system through cranial wireless adapters that facilitate direct thought transferrence with little need for spoken language at all. This prognostication is no less supportable than the one to which I'm responding.

I strongly disagree with that standpoint. For starters, the spreading of features from one dialect to another requires direct day-to-day interaction, and not merely hearing someone else's dialect in media content, which can only familiarize one with their dialect. Furthermore, dialects are largely not conveyed over most written media, especially more formal written media, and most non-local media content similarly does not really reflect individual English dialects well.

Another important factor is that North American English is for all intents and purposes isolated from the rest of the English-speaking world as a spoken language. Yes, NAE-speakers are generally familiar with hearing Received Pronunciation, but their familiarity with English English stops there. With such lack of real familiarity with the rest of English combined with the lack of opportunity for actual interaction between NAE-speakers and speakers of other English dialects, I doubt that there is much likelihood for there to be significant influence between NAE dialects and other English dialects. Consequently, I would tend to find the possibility of any sort of convergence between NAE and other English dialects overall to be rather slim.

However, North American English is not a fixed bloc either, and has been undergoing its own internal dialect divergence which has no end in sight at this point. For example, there have been a number of large-scale vowel shifts going on in various NAE dialects, such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the California Vowel Shift, the Canadian Vowel Shift, and the Southern Vowel Shift. The NCVS and California Vowel Shift are significant in that they really show the degree and speed of divergence in the near past; they both apply to dialects which overall were nearly identical only 50 years ago, and yet they have shifted low and mid vowels in opposite directions since them. As a result, they have diverged faster from each other than either has from General American, despite them having been very similar not too long ago.

<<American broke off from English hundreds of years ago - they are the beginning of what will eventually turn into 2 completely different languages. >>

Well, it's gonna be a while, because I understand every word Damian and Pub Lunch and for that matter, Jim, write -- and I'm sure I could understand their speech just as easily. And I don't agree that we are all that isolated from each other -- in fact I totally agree with TBD, that just because it happened a thousand years ago with illiterate pigherders and farmers doesn't mean it will happen the same way here and now. I find some American dialects like Southern and New England just as unusual-sounding as RP or Scottish -- and they live right next door to the rest of us. So I don't think distance is quite the facor you all seem to think it is.

I would have to say niether one speak English better than the other. 200 years of being across the Atlantic would change any language. At one time most of Europe spoke Latin, now because of isolation, they all speak different languages but you can still tell they are related. I personally think it is easier to understand an American because the accent is flat in comparsion to the British. Now here is the question, is English even it own language. One born in the year 1200 would have a horrible time understanding a Brit born today. The language it's self changed that much. English is nothing more then many languages coming together to form it's own language. For example, Poultry...it orgins are from the French language meaning chicken. It just sounded far more sopisicated so the English started using it. it became a social object. When it comes to spelling, the Americans just simplified some of the words. Why spell a word like color with a U (colour, British spelling), it is silent, not neccesary. At the same time Americans left some words alone like Glamour. It all boils down to what you prefer.

I would disagree. The core of English is West Germanic, and this has not changed, even though English is the most divergent West Germanic language in and of itself even if one completely ignores all outside influence upon English. English is still clearly West Germanic morphologically and syntactically, even if it has shifted in word order to being largely SVO without V2 and lost much of its inflectional morphology. All outside influence on English has been relatively superficial, with the exception of influence from Old Norse, which, while not having contributed that many words in Standard English, has impacted the core vocabulary of even Standard English significantly, and has even more strongly impacted northern English dialects. While there has been many words contributed by Old Norman, French, Latin, and to a lesser extent Greek, a very large portion of these are literary, and only a small portion of them such as "person" can be said to be anywhere near being core vocabularity in English.

Johnny Depp's accent was very funny in ''Pirates of the Caribbean'',
I didn't understand whether /lAst/ pirate meant LOST PIRATE or LAST PIRATE ;)

My teacher taught me americans are very ignorant so I don't know if they can speak a language well

Your teacher is frankly retarded.

<<Those languages grew in relative isolation, a condition which is less available, and should things continue as they are, will probably be even less so.>>

It's true, however the next stage of language evolution will take place on farly separated planets, taking many years (up to 50+ years if extrasolar system, a few months to years if in solar system) to travel between. So it depends on which languages will conquor which planets. Even communication will be extremely difficult in distant planets (ie 4 light years) so there will be HUGE evolutions.

"My teacher taught me americans are very ignorant so I don't know if they can speak a language well "


1: Your teacher is an idiot.
2: Americans can speak and write their language much better than you, which is quite obvious based on the one sentence you wrote - incorrectly.

The sentence was written correctly. The only slight error was a small A rather than a capital, and that doesn't prove that he hasn't learnt his grammar correctly.

For all you know, he might know that the word "Americans" has a capital A but, as is quite common when typing with a keyboard, accidentally wrote it with a small A.

I can also bet that the amount of Americans on here who make similar mistakes must be quite high.

"My teacher taught me americans are very ignorant so I don't know if they can speak a language well "


1)Your teacher must be very wise and has the courage to say what all people think
2)The sentence is correct so you don't know even your language, proving guest is right!
3)Darling, I hope a mothertongue can speak his own language better than a person who aquired it, otherwise you'd be really idiot