No one should ever accuse the Brits of maintaining the purity of their own
language. Some of the dialects used in the UK are so full of slang and weird
pronunciation that they are very hard to understand or interpret. A lady friend
of mine came from London and her relatives speak Jordy {sp?) which seems to
consist of mostly guttural grunts. Her family has a recording they use to
refresh their Jordy each time they visit. I can understand some of it until
they get a few pints in their bellies then it's a lost cause. They brought back
a picture of a sign in a London store window that said "We Speak American."
/jim
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of RickM
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 10:07 PM
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Common language, was Cleaning Old Price Tag Goo Off
Body
Scott said:
> Heh. 'English' has been well and truly co-opted by those of us in the
USofA.
and very well co-opted too, thank you very much, you're doing a wonderful
job with it.... hmmm, glad you pointed that out actually... embedded
market, copyright infringement.... with sco going after linux, maybe it's
time we charged y'all a licensing fee, say a cent per spoken word, two cents
written, could even make it retroactive... ;)
> We outnumber y'all by what? Almost 5:1 (281,000,000:60,000,000 as of 2000
data)? Heck, there are over half as many Californians (~33,000,000 as of
2000) as there are residents of the UK.
thinking about it, isn't the queen's english still in a sense the de facto
language in india... plus they drive on the correct side of the road, so i
think we can claim them... then there's hong kong (c.h. ?)... that would
make it about 6:1 our favour... heck, we could almost claim virginia and
half the "south" from my experience... ;)
> So we're doing our best to keep 'English' a vibrant, dynamic and living
language. After all it's only the dead ones that remain static.
errrr, thanks, as mentioned, you are doing very nicely with it, and in such
a short space of time too... not sure we knew that we needed it, but we'll
take all the help we can get... ;)
> Consider yourselves lucky that we've retained its name. :-)
see point #1, but i'm sure licensing rights are negotiable... we could go
the ballpark way... for the right price, we could have "cisco english",
"bill's english", "mcdonalds english muffins"... i see great marketing
opportunities here... ;)
> Scott Gomez
> (And if *that* doesn't stir the pot a bit, I don't know what will)
yours truly, happily carrying on the family tradition of always being
available to stir,
RickM
actually, about the only change i've noticed during my linguistic missionary
work here in san fran, is that i can no longer spell, nor type....
hopefully the powers-that-be won't send me to cambridge (or coventry) for a
refresher course, as then i would have to deal with the brits again... ;)
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