Which we English speakers would know without any problem.

The culprit who nicks her knickers will be nicked and he may well knackered but he might also be sent to the knackers if she catches him!

And some people, no doubt thinking that "knackered" is derived from "knackers" and is therefore somehow "rude", will on occasion refer to themselves as "cream crackered".

Oh, and early music fanatics can, if they wish, play on their knackers, only they pronounce it "naykers", to avoid any confusion.
http://earlymusiclegend.blogspot.nl/...knackters.html

More on UK degree classifications: a 2:2 is referred to in jest as a "Desmond" (clue: think of the former Archbishop of Cape Town).

"The past participle "gotten" was also originally used in England; it's disappeared there"

Not exactly true, I still hear it used occasionally.

A crib is also that Latin translation that you hide under your desk-lid.

My son graduated from Manchester nearly thirty years ago. He was the only 2-1. There were no 1sts

>"British English" is a pointless redundancy....<

Considering the number of English-speaking people and the small number residing in the British Isles, I think I must disagree.

There are millions more francophones in the world than live in France. Do they speak French French?

I disagree with Flanner that there are not other versions of English besides that spoken here in the UK which are more than dialects. IME American english goes beyond dialect and is a distinct language ditto Pigeon English, even transatlantic english. Australian, NZ and South African not to mention West indian and Indian english would not IMO be described as dialects.

whereas Geordie, Brummy, and Scouse, even Cornish might well come under that umbrella.

but there is a definite crossover - what is spoken in Cornwall for example includes a significant number of words from the old Cornish language as well as what may also be described as dialect and i think that the same happens in Geordie.

Hi Ghgogal, you raise an interesting question about grades.

NYtraveler wrote: “Any class that gives a third of the students As is obviously slanted to make it much easier.”

Looking at the other side of the coin, students at Oxford and the top US colleges must be sooo bright and gifted to gain entrance that one would expect most of them to do exceedingly well.

Looking at the other side of the coin, students at Oxford and the top US colleges must be sooo bright and gifted to gain entrance that one would expect most of them to do exceedingly well.
________
There are some elite schools that are difficult to get in and difficult to get out and some that are difficult to get in and easy to get out.

And I am sure you have the same in UK, a certain percentage of Ivy schools and other colleges give spots to legacies, children or descendents of alumni. Hence George W. Bush going to Yale and Harvard.

>>and other colleges give spots to legacies, children or descendents of alumni<<

Not overtly. That would run the risk of a legal action for "indirect discrimination".

(From my experience, the grade inflation towards Firsts and 2.1s has come about in part through overt formalisation of the grading criteria when it comes to examiners putting together the different examination elements to make the final grading, particularly when it comes to "benefit of the doubt" in relation to marks around the classification boundaries. That, and the increasing inclusion of modular/in-course assessments, since those are known to the candidate at the time, and are therefore more open to specific challenge at the time. When the final grading is done on final examination with anonymous marking, it tends to be less open to direct or indirect massaging).

And I am sure you have the same in UK, a certain percentage of Ivy schools and other colleges give spots to legacies, children or descendents of alumni. Hence George W. Bush going to Yale and Harvard.>>

hard to believe that the USA would have any truck with nepotism. .

I've seen the occasional French book with, "traduit de l'americain.. Strange really because there are few differences in the written language

Now...how about all those wonderful Cockney terms?

apple and pears = stairs, for starters.

underhill - how about trouble and strife? [wife]

the ones I most like are where the 2nd rhyming word has been lost eg:

tifer = hat [titfer tat], syrup = wig [syrup of figs]

and who can forget one of the best two Ronnies sketches of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwyPDPlFA8

>Australian, NZ and South African not to mention West indian and Indian english would not IMO >be described as dialects.

No, linguists call these 'varieties' rather than dialects. A linguistic variety can have dialects of its own; Australian English has only a little dialectal variation but additionally has sociolects (variation based on social divisions) and creoles (the resultant language where two (or more) languages meet, such as Kriol (spoken in Queensland by Aborigines).

Lavandula

Oh, and there is also definitely a variety called 'British English':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English

Lavandula

According to these linguists there are eight different dialects in the US

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/

How many differences constitute a dialect?

"A crib is also that Latin translation that you hide under your desk-lid."

I thought so--also known, I think, as a trot or a pony.

It seems to me that American and British English are to a very large degree mutually intelligible--as on this thread, for example--so I wouldn't call them distinct languages.

Then there's berk...