We all seem to be getting overwrought over a few minor differences.

The language is basically the same -with very few grammatical differences. And although there are different names for some items, that's also true just in the US (try asking people for soda, pop, cola etc - lots of regional differences). (In the example the clerk in the hotel knew he should say elevator, since it's his job to assist the guests - he was just being difficult.)

Also within the US lots of regional differences in the pronunciation of some words. People not from the north east say:

Greenwich as Green-witch instead of Grennich

Houston as Huze - ton instead of House - ton

Worcester as War cest er - instead of Wooster

As long as we can understand each other why fuss about small details?

Oh, for laboratory.....rhymes with lavatory :)

According to the British linguist David Crystal (mentioned earlier in this thread), English is not widely spoken because the populations of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc. total such a great number of people. English has two or three speakers as a second language for every one native speaker.

According to Crystal (English as a Global Language) the popularity of English is due to the global influence of the US.

Unlike Canada or Australia, where English was imported, or India or Malayasia, where English was forced down throats, people around the world now learn English because they want to do business with the US, attend a US university, publish in American scientific journals, etc.

"people around the world now learn English because they want to do business with the US, attend a US university, publish in American scientific journals, etc."

I think many non-native speakers also learn English to communicate with each other, as it's become something of a lingua franca. Plenty of people where I work use English to communicate simply because they don't speak each other's native languages.

I would say it was far more global than the US.

Apparently during WW2 the Japanese and the Germans communicated in English. Clearly nothing to do with wanting to work in the US there.....

English has become the new Latin, the Lingua Franca of the world.

A Ghanhaian would use English to communicate with Nigerian, Indian or Chinese or indeed English business partner, again clearly nothing to do with wanting to work in the US there.

Even in Switzerland i've often seen that Swiss, German and Italian (and even Romanisch i suppose) speaking Swiss often speak to each other in English as it seems at least with the German and French Swiss many don't speak the other's language and English is the medium of communication.

I guess even at places like Air Bus operations like at Toulouse even French speak English to be understood.

It's also the language of international aviation.....all international flights, I do believe, communicate in English with ATC so a Lufthansa flight to Beijing would be required to communicate with the Chinese ATC in English...also signs in 99% of international airports to the best of my limited knowledge are in naitive languages and almost always also in English.

Webster again....Troublemaker!

Again I've heard French Canadians and French Caribbeans communicating in English....Hilarious!

I would seriously argue that the US influence on the global use of English has far less of an impact than 300-400 years of global colonisation.

I suspect the real reason English took off in the past several decades has to do with the fact that

yes many English colonies spoke English

but really the explosion of cross-border communications - before mass media, internets, etc. it was telegraph or written and a local translator was all that was needed

But with the surge in multi-nationalism, computers, ease of verbal communications changed all that

and that is why English IMO took over - U.S. and U.K. and English speaking economic powers like Down Under and Canada - collectively were the economic powers and thus English took over.

Who knows in a century Mandarin could be the international language?

My best example is from Sapa, Vietnam, a mountain town on the Chinese border. The locals are mostly Hmong tribespeople and speak their own language. They have always resisted efforts by the Vietnamese government to Vietnamize their schools. People from all over the world visit Sapa, including a lot of Vietnamese tourists, mostly from Hanoi. I saw that the tourists from Hanoi found themselves obliged to communicate with the people of Sapa in English.

There is one country in the world whose official language is English but where French is slowly stamping it out. Can anybody here name the country?

French Antilles - the French equivalent of Curaco?

Mauritius?

Found this about aluminum: The metal originally obtained its name from the Latin word for alum, alumen. The name alumina was proposed by L. B. G. de Moreveau, in 1761 for the base in alum, which was positively shown in 1787 to be the oxide of a yet to be discovered metal. Finally, in 1807, Sir Humphrey Davy proposed that this still unknown metal be referred to as aluminum. This was then altered further to that of aluminium so to agree with the "ium" spelling that ended most of the elements. This is the spelling that is generally used throughout the world. That is, until the American Chemical Society in 1925 officially reverted the spelling back to aluminum, which is how it is normally spelled in the United States.

St Barthelemy, Collectivité D'Outre Mer. Closer to France than Curaçao is to the Netherlands (they don't even have the Euro) and I believe the closest European territory to the US.

an ka palé kréol

Actually thinking about it, the locals also speak a 17th century patois, the "H" in "haut" etc is pronounced as is the "M" in "nom" etc and the suppressed "s" usually indicated by an a "ê": Forêt=forest.

AND, since we are talking linguistics, they place the accent on the penultimate syllable of a phrase, like Italian, not on the last, like in modern French.

Then you get a Quebecois who comes up with something like:

"Il me faut un char avec une valise afin que je puisse magasiner"

No chance!

Sorry, missed a post.

French not disappearing at all in the French Caribbean, although everyone on French St Martin speaks English at home.

There is one country in the world whose official language is English but where Spanish is slowly stamping it out. Can anybody here name the country?

USA

I just wonder why all Spectic tanks speeks funny doos yous, me dears?

Americans have a Cornish accent.

If you go to Cornwall it will take you a sentence or two to work out if you are speaking to a local or an American.

Back the original left or loo tenant. As I child I came across this word in a book, and only having heard lootenant, in old cowboys and indians type films on the telly, I read it as lootenant. I still say lootenant some 40 years later, much to the annoyance of my countrymen.

But we understand each other, you say trunk, we say boot, you say sidewalk, we say pavement, you say aluminum, we say aluminium....tomato tomayto.

Recently in a Thai restaurant in Canterbury there was a table full of, what to me were Chinese young people (they could have been Thai or whatever, I couldn't tell), but they were all speaking English to each other. Turns out they were all Chinese, but some were Cantonese, some Malaysian, some even from Africa! English was their common language.

The answer is indeed Mauritius.

And St. Bart does indeed use the euro, as does all of the French Antilles.

If there is one thing that sends me mad is to have an American correct my pronounciation.

I was once reliably informed that Italian was pronounced Eye-talian, and master pronounced "Meeaahsturrr" or some such nonesense.

Fume!!!


Well, if someone wants to say that the English use proper subject-verb agreement, i.e., "England ARE losing," "the family ARE here," "the court HAVE issued"....etc., etc., then, they are just plain, to use a good British expression, "nutters."

I'm sorry, but according to the OED my Old French derivation is correct.

The rare Old French variant spelling luef for Modern French lieu "place", on the other hand, supports the suggestion that the final /w/ of the Old French word was in certain environments apprehended as a /f/ /v/

I might add that loof in Old English is place as well.

Let me see if I got this right. Some Brit is horrified that anyone would question the proper pronunciation of English words as spoken in England.

But he questions the "bizarre" pronunciation of lieutenant as "loo tennant" yet seems totally content with thinking the logical pronunciation of that word would be "left tennant".

Did I sum that up right?

Do I get a prize?

Nope NeoPatrick,

Me the Brit, who hates having his pronounciation corrected, has not commented on the pronounciation of lieutenant.

Girlspy, you have lost me...

The court have issued???
The courts have issued.

In the Royal Navy, lieutenant is not pronounced "lef-TEN-ant" but rather "le-TEN-ant" (with a short "e").

waring, actually I was referring to a different Brit who said:

"We don't have to explain why English is spoken the way it is: the burden of explanation lies with speakers of odd foreign dialects

Why, for example, on the wrong side of the Atlantic do they pronounce lieutenant (= "place holder") as if it were spelt "lootenant"?"

Lef and Loo both work. Lef is simply older.

Anyway it should be "ljØ"

Lootenant in English English would be the holder of the toilet, which would perhaps explain why the pronounciation was never updated.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!!!

Talk about bizarre pronounciations!!

Then please explain how the Americans get 'urb' for herb. That as always ad me ighly curious!

Erb for herb?

Being a French word, I would suggest that it's connected with the un-aspirated H in French, from where all us English speakers get 30% of our vocabulary.

Yooman is common for human (another Froggie word) as well on the Western end of the pond.

about the "Urb" for Herb, it's a factor of immigration.

During the 1600s and early 1700s, when there was the biggest influx of English settlers who would "set the tone" for the American way of speech, the word was most commonly pronounced "urb", so that's what "stuck" in the colonies. Over the centuries, the "h" found its way back in the UK, but Americans stayed with what was originally brought over.

This example of clinging to older modes of pronunciation and vocabulary is not unusual --- linguists have written and recorded extensively regarding the "odd" pronunciations and usages in the Appalachian mountains up through the 1930s and 1940s... demonstrating that the isolated communities had preserved older usages and pronunciations from 17th century UK.

Just one tiny example -- the useful word "fetch", which has been discarded almost everywhere else in the US, is still used in Grand Old Opry country.

(For those who don't know why it's so useful, it embraces the meanings of both get and bring -- it means -- go to another place and "get" (obtain) something, and bring it back here).

Americans don't use fetch outside this region?

What do you say when you throw a stick for a dog if not "fetch".

"Go, get and bring back"

I don't know about fetch but if what I've seen on TV is true (bit of an animal patrol addict) they don't say 'good boy' or 'good girl' or 'good dog' but 'good jaaaaaaaaaaaahb'(good job) in an odd squeaky elongated drawl, at everything including dogs, children, other adults, you name it.

Ah.... the differences between British and American. I'm an American teaching English using the British English Headway books. I keep my pronunciation American but when we come across a Brit only word, I also teach its US equivalent.

pants = trousers
pullover = jumper
eraser = rubber
rubber = condom (always good for a laugh)
etc.

Does it confuse my students? Not really. The Swiss have the same problem in their own language. The Baslers have a different dialect than the Urners. The Wallisers are the most difficult to understand.

In my area, the farmers still use the words, "Nidle, Anke and Gummel". They are only used in our region and are not often understood in other cantons.

Back to the OP: The pronunciation of Lieutenant is one of the ways you can distinguish between those who attended a first rank school and those who attended a minor public school.

It's one of the quasi-masonic ways we have of recognising one another. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

waring, funny thing about "fetch" with a dog. Yes, I have heard it used, but not usually. I walk by a fairly large park nearly every day, and it is a prime spot for people throwing things for their dogs to bring back. I can't remember the last time I heard "fetch".

It's usually a very quick "go, get it", "comeon, boy, go get it".

Maybe all these people say that because their dogs are American born rather than English and the dog wouldn't understand "fetch"? LOL

schuler...to your equivalence list, I would also add:

suspenders = braces
garter = suspenders

As a mid-level U.S. naval officer seconded to the Royal Navy, early in my tour I went to the RN clothing store to ask for some "suspenders" for my mess dress uniform. Since the store was run by WRNS (Women in Royal Navy Service), I received some very interesting looks, and lots of laughter. What I should have asked for was "braces," since the women used "suspenders" for their stockings! Vive La Différence!!

Do Brits and Yanks pronounce the word "pedantic" the same?