55 replies to this topic

[patrick]

Bloody Hell, I thought it was you lot that didn't get irony and subtle humour
Funny thing about the difference in American English and Engish english, whenever I hear a Brit or Aussie complaining that the Ameriacans mangle the written word, I love tou point out that the american spelling of color,program, armor etc is actually old engish. Our spellings colour programme,armour are actually affectations from the French.

[Macman]

Patrick - did you do that "tou" on purpose or was it a typo? I suspect it was on purpose. If sou , very, very goode. The spelling difference that always throws me for a loop when I see it is the "s" versus "z". We use the "ize" a lot, but I notice that the Brit/Aussie spelling is often "ise".

[exPat]

Actually I was quite serious when I referred to wearing body armor (or armour, if you like, although there is a brand of hot dogs named “armour” in the states, so I can’t help seeing that spelling without erupting into quiet chuckles). You may be thinking of tactical armor like the kind worn by soldiers, but the vest I wear is a concealable model similar to what many policemen wear under their uniforms. It makes the wearer look slightly bulkier than they would normally, but unless you know what body armor looks like under a shirt, you’d never notice I had it on. They make models for both male and female physiques also, as well as very ordinary looking jackets that are ballistically rated. As I said, guns are everywhere in the western US. Not just police and security guards carry them, but also taxicab drivers, shop clerks, truck drivers, pizza delivery men, janitors, and on and on. You even see high school kids with gun racks full of rifles during hunting season. I suspect that the estimate of 200 million guns in the US is a low estimate. I personally own 4 handguns, 6 rifles, and three shotguns (and two black powder cannons, if you want to count those) and virtually every other male I know owns at least one gun. It wouldn’t be a stretch to estimate that gun ownership in my hometown just outside Portland, Oregon is near 80 or 90 %, although most are shotguns or rifles since hunting is such a popular pastime. I suppose cities with large populations and strict gun laws like Los Angeles and New York even out the average though.

Now on to lighter tangential topics, re: the differences between English and American spellings. I’ve gotten very used to English spellings and pronunciations, having lived in Belize for some years and having many British room mates. I try to stick to American spellings as much as I can simply because I feel I would be pretentious if I were to change for the audience. I am who I am! Interestingly, I have noticed that I tend to use a different vocabulary when speaking with Brits and Aussies than I do when speaking with Yanks or Canucks. Vocabulary in America is a lost art, particularly on the West Coast where it’s considered sesquipedalian (love that word ) to use words with more than three syllables. I also have a tendency to alter my sentence structure and tonal inflection depending on who I’m speaking with. As a result, I often get accused of being Canadian, not something I mind terribly since Bush took the White House. By far and away though, it’s the Caribbean dialects that I have the hardest time with and have me asking people to repeat themselves most frequently.

[Macman]

ExPat - If the good guys and the bad guys all have both guns and body armor, wouldn't ... Oh, never mind.

That is a great word. I could never find it in a dictionary, but I hear that there's a word "hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianism", which means "showing off by using very long words".

I worked closely with a guy from Austrailia and found myself not only using his slang, but a lot of his inflections and pronunciations, for example "maite". It probably started as a joke, but I got so used to doing it, I found it just coming out naturally. It took me a while to get back to my world-famous NYC melodic dialect.

[Macman]

Oh, hey, Patrick and ExPat, I just read a post in Franck's Diary, and it reminded me of another difference in the language. It's the British/Aussie use of collective nouns. It always startles me when I see it. We Yanks consider nouns like "team", "group", "staff", etc. to be singular. So we'll say "the staff is friendly" versus "the staff are friendly". I first heard it from hockey announcers and incorrectly assumed that they were uneducated. It took me a while to catch on to the collective noun different concept. By the way, ExPat, I agree with you on the Bush/Canada thought. I won't comment beyond that because I don't want to insult any Forum members or start a big magilla.

[patrick]

Vive la difference eh. It's funny how often Brits and Aussies get put together in these debates, in fact there are differences, perhaps not so much in the grammar but often in pronunciation of the same word (mind you you can get big differences within the UK and US on that).
I have lived almost half my life in Australia (originally from England). I have never picked up an Australian accent, although my accent is certainly not as Yorkshire as it used to be. You begin to modify the way you speak when the locals don't understand you, so you slow it down a bit and knock the edges off your own regional accent. A good example is the word garage. In Australia it is pronounced garaje (properly) in England the pronunciation, by all but the poshest is garidge. I soon got fed up of Aussies chuckling at this and changed my pronunciation. Now I have to put up with "Oh laddy daa" comments when I visit England!
I think when adults move to another country, they only pick up the new accent if they want to, but we all tend to modify the vocabluary.
I remember going to the States with 4 other guys on a business trip. We'd flown 16 hours from Melbourne to LA and then we were on the short hop to Las Vegas. When the drinks service came round one of the guys asked for a tomato juice, I thought that sounds like a pleasant change I'll get one as well. By the time I gave my order I asked for it in the American pronunciation. My mate had about four attempst to be understood when he said tomarta juice. So fighting back my self consiousness I asked for a tomaytoe juice..."no problem sir, have a nice day"

[exPat]

One of the harder parts of understanding Brits in particular for me is the frequent lack of emphasis on "r" sounds. A room mate was once trying to describe the fish he had just bought for the fish tank, and I finally had to have him write the name of it down as I couldn't tell if he was saying goRmie or gOmie. He chuckled about that for a week.
As for the differences in pronunciations between English speakers, I'm amazed at the differences between dialects in the UK alone. It seems like such a small geographical area (relatively speaking - my home state is almost as big) that such wide variances should be minimized. I suppose that it's bound to happen through the milenia though

[Macman]

When I was in the service, a kid from Rhode Island told me that he hated to maatch. I asked him what he meant, and he said, You know, "January, February, Maatch." A girl from Georgia asked us if we had a laaht. I asked what she meant, and she said, "Fahr, fahr," and made a motion with her hands. That really was for a match, for a light or fire. Both true stories. I guess we all have them. I'm sure the kid from Rhode Island and the girl from Georgia are telling people about how dumb I sounded.