English

[billy]

what other languages besides english do you all speak. i'm really good at most of the english dialects at home and abroad. but thats it apart from a few words of spanish and tagalog (enough to get a drink and say thank you etc)

[Leanne]

More evidence that we're a bit of a mongrel bunch

[billy]

my daughter has 4 languages beside her own what really pisses me off is she's fluent in all of em.
but back on topic. while elevator seems self explanatory lift works better.

on the other hand side walk works better than pavement. the yanks tend to be good with swearing but no one says bastard like an ozzy or someone from the uk. ever hear a french person say fuck off...it incites laughter. while i like most of the yank accents i don't like some specially from the deep south :blue: sorry if anyone here's a confederate

[Wildcard]

Like you didn't know :p

[billy]

sorry, i forgot about scarlet o'hara

what i mean is things like the john wayne films, and gone with the wind, the confeds always come across as snidey lying bastards hehe. i thing the Oxford/Cambridge english sound great.

[Wildcard]

the confeds always come across as snidey lying bastards

That is because we lost

They can make us look however they like :p

[arbil_poieo]

English is my 2nd language and Texan is my first language.

It took me awhile to realize "ya'll" isn't a real word, and I'm still learning.

[serge gurkski]

I agree with Ava, as Aish likes to call him....it was fascinating! The Belgian snippet was very similar to 'Allo, 'allo (TV series) and the late Peter Sellars .

I think Americans can be self-centred, but linguistically, I fancy every native English-speaker is. Off-topic, the mind does boggle in a cliche kind of way, at the parochial world-view which sometimes emanates from the US, which I put down to not travelling outside the country. It is hard, when abroad, not to get into the stuff that concerns the natives: when I had a flat in France, I turned to the French press, and the things which were of importance to my neighbours, (or layabouts at the Cafe du Quartier) and made up my French political mind with just a hint from the values of home.

The idea of tracking people by accent was of course at the heart of Prof Higgins in Shaw's 'Pygmalion' /'My Fair Lady', an excellent production of which I saw at the Old Vic a couple of years back, done by Peter Hall. I can detect a certain type of East Ender, of the old sort, as they find difficulty with 'l' 'r' and 'w'.(eg, 'Alright Terry?' has to be 'A wite Te-w?' My grand-daughter, on the other hand, had tears streaming down her face have been 'South of the Wa'er' (where I live) and heard some old girls extolling their meal 'wiv red sauce 'n awl'. I privately thought she was bang out of order.....

That's an interesting opinion. I'm American. I've traveled far and wide, I speak Portuguese (with a Brazilian accent), Spanish (with a Mexican accent), French (with a Nova Scotian accent), Latin (with a Harvard accent), Patwa (with a Jamaican accent), and several American slang dialects in Spanish and English including ebonics, Southern, New England, Midwest and Puerto Rican slang, and I can get by conversationally with these just about anywhere in the world; but I cannot, for my life, order food at a restaurant in the UK.

and what about ordering just a simple fucking cup of coffee in the States?

[serge gurkski]

That's an interesting opinion. I'm American. I've traveled far and wide, I speak Portuguese (with a Brazilian accent), Spanish (with a Mexican accent), French (with a Nova Scotian accent), Latin (with a Harvard accent), Patwa (with a Jamaican accent), and several American slang dialects in Spanish and English including ebonics, Southern, New England, Midwest and Puerto Rican slang, and I can get by conversationally with these just about anywhere in the world; but I cannot, for my life, order food at a restaurant in the UK.

and what about ordering just a simple fucking cup of coffee in the States?

Cream and sugar? Or black?

;-) As if it was that easy!
http://www.wikihow.com/Order-Coffee
(never been there but ... to starbucks and san francisco coffee shops.)

[rayheinrich]

English is my 2nd language and Texan is my first language.

It took me awhile to realize "ya'll" isn't a real word, and I'm still learning.

Yes, except it's spelled "y'all", and it IS a real word.
And, by the way: It's not just a plural second-person pronoun,
it's a singular one as well. But don't get me wrong, I respect you
even if you speak Texian (correct nomenclature when you include
its Mexican roots).

P.S. Iz y'all git di'lects, tain't us'un. (Gott mit uns!)

P.P.S. Old saying: "Any task a Texan sets himself to, he can accomplish;
if not with ignorance, then with stupidity.

P.P.P.S. All the above was composed and written by a native-born,
half-bred Texian.

P.P.P.P.S. And Philatone, a thanks from me as well; this site IS awesome:
http://accent.gmu.edu/browse.php

[billy]

english is my 2nd and 3rd language