"Americanisms" that Brits hate

Not really. Regardless of whether or not the occasional "u" is dropped, English is still terribly non-phonetic.

 

Compared to the brits?

 

No... lol. Flipping the "re" and dropping a "u" does very little in the grand scheme of things.

 

If only it were limited to that.

 

Which it is, although I guess you could make the case for "z"s and "s"s being swapped in some words...

 

Over here it would generally be pronounced as 'on - ur', not 'on-or', so if either letter were surplus to requirement it would be the 'o', not the 'u'. Of course, presumably neither of us are pronouncing the 'h', so neither of us has any real claim to significantly greater phonetic spelling of the word!

Absolutely. Why is there an 'a' in 'reason', for example - why is it not 'reeson', for example? English, in any version, is a language which has few actual spelling rules, and those few that there are are broken almost as often as they are kept anyway!

I have had to plough through enough of it, though it gave me a cough!

It should be noted, of course, that what remains in modern times of the cultural and linguistic group generally known as the 'Britons', do actually spell their own native language phonetically (which actually makes it very easy to pronounce, despite the rumours to the contrary!).

 

With no thanks to texting and tweets, the world is facing the final death throes of beauty and expression of the spoken word. One defining ability of being human entails communicating thoughts and emotions into words. If One reads the eloquent dialogues in the days of Socreates and Aristotle,(excluding the dark ages) down to the mid 1930s, you may notice how much more the spoken word was cherished. In this fast paced world, the abilty to write has also suffered. People no longer have the patience to read or write with indepth expression, preferring abstactions of punctuated and abreviated, 147 characters or less. In more ways than one, we are devolving into another coming dark age.

 

The term "Spade" is a derogatory word used to describe African Americans, true enough but, the term is derived from the black ace of spades in a card deck, not the tool for digging. Besides there is a difference between a spade and a shovel. A shovel is used for digging holes in dirt while a spade is an impliment used for chopping up clods of dirt and making shallow rows for planting seeds

 

Funny that Brits have a derogatory name specifically for black Americans. Is there a separate derogatory term for black Britons?

 

As far as the spade/shovel thing goes - first off it was all tongue in cheek which seems to have been lost in translation...

Secondly, to me at least, a spade is always a shovel but a shovel isn't necessarily a spade. It is like a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle isn't necessarily a square.

 

Yeah, that's awful. I think I've done that unfortunately, it's what people say on Tv and in bad movies sometimes also.

 

48. "I got it for Free"...Yes I say that, and yes I say "I got it for Cheap"....would you say, "I got it two dollars?" I mean, "I got it five pounds?"

Because I would say "I got it for two dollars/Five pounds/Free/Cheap"

That's the only one I'll defend.

 

Both 'free' and 'cheap' are comparatives which do not require the conjunction 'for'. The specific amounts 'two dollars' and 'five pounds' are not. But I am sure I have used the term 'It was for free', and it certainly would not upset me to hear that. I have never heard 'I got it for cheap', though. The correct usage would of course be 'I got it cheaply'.

 

That would be interesting, although Berkshire would be of no interest to yanks. Whereabouts in Wales?

 

Ok. How about "Armor"? Do you guys pronounce it "Armoooooooor"?

 

Similarly, it would usually be pronounced 'Ar-mur', not 'Ar-mor'.

 

Curious observation. ALL of my German colleagues speak with an American-German accent. All of my French collegues speak with an Americanized-French accent. All of my Chinese, Korean and South American colleagues speak Americanized English. The only ones that speak with even a hint of British accent are my Indian colleagues (and Brits, that is).

When I visited Sweden, they all spoke American English, over half of the TV programs were American, in fact.
The majority of the modern world learned English to do business with America, not the UK.

 

I've known one or two Germans with an American accent, but many more that had a more 'English' kind of accent. I suspect it depends on things like where their school English teachers came from, proximity to army bases (and who was based there) where they grew up, and so on. I've never met a French, Spanish or Portuguese person who speaks with an American accent, but I'm sure some do exist. Most of the East Europeans I've known have spoken with more of an American accent, though. I've worked with lots of people from all over Europe (and the world), and I would say overall it's a pretty mixed picture of English accents, but in general, in my experience, the further they are in Europe from the UK, the more 'American' their accent is likely to be. Outside Europe, 'American' accents seem to be much more common, apart from in former colonies, although I've met a few south east asians who seem to be more Australian-sounding than anything else (even though they haven't lived there).

 

Curious, to you, perhaps, but it happens to reflect my experience. Could it perhaps be that the colleagues of whom you speak are resident in the USA, and have learnt their dialect from Americans? I know German, French, Swedish, and Chinese people, none of whom speak with an American accent.

So perhaps we can simply agree that our respective experiences have been different?

 

I've had the same experience. The only German speakers I've heard speaking English with an American accent were born here.

Anyway, I just finished watching Joyeux Noel... Amazing how far the West has progressed -- Germans learning perfect British English. We've come quite a way since, "Ein Feind ist uns'rer, und einer allein."

Conversely, almost all the French people I've met had American accents, although I've noticed that Christine LaGarde learned RP. When I lived in Spain, the people seemed evenly split between the two. It was often hard to tell, though, as most trilled all their Rs, anyways.

 

My encounters are almost strictly automotive business-related. I don't travel abroad for pleasure.

None of my European or Asian colleagues live in the US. They live and work at our foreign affiliate locations.
And all of the Chinese engineers as well as the majority of Indian engineers that I've worked with from the Big Three speak Americanized English. It's almost impossible to find a British accent anywhere in the automotive field outside of the UK and Australia.

 

Well, as you appear not to accept my experiences as valid, or the fact that it is possible for two people from very different societies, environments, and backgrounds, to have clearly differing experiences; I do not see what may be gained from discussing this any further with you. Thanks for your input.

 

Did I accuse you of lying or was I just adding additional personal observations?

It could very well be that since I work for a Fortune 100 multi-national company based in the US, our people only hired those foreign nationals that they could understand.

 

No, I didn't think you were accusing me of lying, but you seemed reluctant to accept that my experiences have been different from yours, while I readily accept that yours may well be different from mine.

Your explanation of the differences in our experiences is perfectly valid, and have a high level of probability.

 

That could make a big difference. If they are working for the large US manufacturers, it could well be they they have learned at least some of their accent through that (either learning English through working for them in some cases, or learning some of their technical stuff through them, or just picking the accent up because the native English speakers they are mostly dealing with talk that way). It could well be a feature of people working in that field rather than the population at large.