Rant US English

haha good point, but so politically incorrect!

 

This was started as a little light-hearted rant and has turned in to a semi-serious discussion!
Oh well, all good.

 

love this point, you should maybe get someone to try it?!!

 

There seems to be a certain amount of ignorance in the states about the rest of the world (sorry if i'm repeating whats already been said), i'm not condeming the whole country, i love it over there, my GFs parents moved to Texas for work, and means i get wicked cheap holidays!

But i've spoke to many americans who don't have a single clue about the rest of the world, especially britain, when playing golf with a chubby tiger woods look alike, we chatted about the Uni we went to in the UK, and he asked "So is that the only University in England?" to which we were shocked, but he was pretty honest with his reply and admitted ignorance saying "ah wow, well i wouldn't really know, i've never left Texas" and this man was well into his 40's.

It's all well and good being shocked by this, but they do have a bit of a point, they've got everything they need in their country! places for holiday, places that are richer, places that are poorer, bigger, smaller, older, newer, hotter, colder etc. and they don't even have to learn a new language or get their money changed!

However, it really got on my nerves when an American turned around to me and said "i don't understand, speak English", i felt like making some comment such as "i am, you should learn it some time", or "shut the f**k up" lol, but i just laughed in a sarcastic manner (somthing else i don't think he understood) and shugged it off.

America, is the biggest superpower in the world, so unfortunally i feel we have to put up with this.... and if you can't accept it, then laugh as this video of some REALLY stupid americans... the KFC bloke is my fav!

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

 

Instead of being concerned about the American dialect, maybe we should be concerned that not even in Brittan is "proper" English spoken. I believe the American accent/dialect is choice for software programmers because it's easier for most to understand and it's generally less specific about pronunciation, this compounded with the fact that American phrases are wide spread it makes it easier for just about anyone to understand. That being said I've always wanted to pick up the British English version of Harry Potter XD

I'm not saying it's an illegitimate claim, but that's kinda cherry picking not unlike the youtube video, which I can't even watch all the way through. Yep there's stupid people everywhere, I think I too could find a couple people who've never left Brittan either However it's quite shocking that he's never left Texas. I don't think you can blame the other man for not understanding you, some accent's in the states are so strong that I can't even communicate with them ie: Brooklyn, Southern, not to mention a nearly complete vocabulary of slang. Most educated Americans do speak Spanish btw, I'm learning French myself. Personally I've been attempting to drop my Kansan accent which is quite subtle and speak properly pronounced English, thankfully the vocab is already there.

 

yeah, i've got no doubt that a large majority of people weren't as bad as the ones shown in the video, and there are definatly people that stupid in every country!

One thing about the English language that comes most apparent when you start to learn another language is how poorly structured and unorganised it is, the amount of worlds that mean more that one thing, but are spelt the same, the amount of slag there is, and how confusing this could all be (especially to people learning English, which so many people do as it's the main world language), when you consider the fact "Bad" can mean "Good" (i know it's a total cleche, but it's true)

I think in many ways we could say that the British has ruined our language just as much as the Americans have!

 

I feel sick . . .

BTW I DO realise that this is probably the bottom rung of your society, I know all americans aren't the same lol, I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to make a documentary of retarded british people either (unfortunately).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mkwB9ayK4
Already done

 

haha yeah, really is the dregs for society, i shudder to thing what they teach in schools a when i kid of that age doesn't know how many sides a triangle has!

 

Doesn't make economic sense? In what respect? It's widely known that software purchased in the United Kingdom costs significantly more than the equivalent product in the US. Developers often cite localisation costs. Surely this should include translations? You wouldn't sell software in Germany and not provide a German language option, would you? And, seeing as the languages differences are "slight", there should be no excuses not to add separate versions.

I can't help but laugh at your second sentence, though.

If you want to talk about 'our' language, go and learn something about it. Chaucer wrote in 'Middle English'. Your point is so ridiculous it's like saying - "If you want to learn about the modern (British) man, go and read how Edward III lived!".

Silliness aside. The differences are minimal. The biggest differences are punctuation and vocabulary, I guess. The British use a much superior and logical system of punctuation. Most American academics, as well as science and medical institutions all use British English. It's already quite wide spread throughout the masses as well. Simply because American English is counter intuitive.

Anyone interested in reading about English, then you can't go wrong with something like 'The adventure of English' by Melvin Bragg. It's quite light and describes how the language developed from 500AD to 2000AC.

 

interestingly enough the americans have the ize/ise distinction... right. the english have changed that from -ize to -ise.

tbh the whole thing doesn't bother me for most things. sometimes it grates, however. mostly the writing style, not so much the spelling/grammar.

 

Maybe true, but the cost of localizing from en-US to en-GB is next to nothing*, at least as compared to a translation to a different language entirely. The significantly higher cost is because the developers can get away with it - everything (at least for technology) tends to be significantly more expensive in the UK than in the US. If you could arbitrarily double your prices and do nothing but increase your revenue as a result, wouldn't you?

*If the developer did a decent job designing the software anyways. If strings are hardcoded instead localization-friendly then costs go up quite a bit (enough that they wouldn't bothered for just different locales of the same language).

 

If you look at the orginal basis of this post, i feel if the developer of that program, who ever it may be, had just written "English" (instead of "English (United States")) no one would have known the differnce, had it been British or American!

I guess it might affect certain programs for example Microsoft Word... but doesn't the localisation of that depend on the default settings as set from the installation of the OS?