Hemi Dave

I made a trivial conclusion today..

The English kindly gave their great language to North America, which over many many days they destroyed.

Have you noticed when talking to a lot of Canadians, they ask you to repeat things because they don't get your "accent"?

BUT, we can pretty much understand everything they say all the time? Even when they mispronounce things like "duty" or "Edinburgh".

I reckon this is because us Brits watched a massively higher percentage of American crap than they watched British quality television. So we are all trained to understand the drivel they speak.

Soon North Americans will not understand a word of actual English

scilly

American English is actually based on English English of the 17th and 18th century


If you look at spellings of words, and probably pronunciation, at that time in England, and compare with a lot of American spellings ............ they're almost identical!!


The Quakers came over to Pennsylvania in the mid-1600s .......... they brought their spellings etc with them


English English and American English then developed separately


so is it English English that is wrong, or American English that is wrong?



It is the same with Quebec French and Parisian French .................... Quebec French is based on the French language as it was in the 16th century, and then developed on from that



But you are correct in that English people understand the American language and Americanisms much better than Americans understand English-isms ............. and it is all down to the fact that English people see, and have always seen, many more American films than the other way round.



I well remember going to see a British comedy in Texas back in 1968 .............. 4 English people were the ONLY ones in the theatre to be laughing. The jokes and humour went right over the heads of the Americans there. That was in the great heyday of British comedies!



I'm surprised that you find Canadians don't understand you ............. I've never found that

Hemi Dave

wow, every day's a school day! lol

I was delivering something to a lady called Mary today, The receptionist asked "Merry what?"

Maybe it's the Glasgow accent rather than my English, lol

orly

I think Brits just hear a far wider range of accents from the time they're old enough to sit up and watch TV.

I've found people, if I've never met them before, quickly hear my accent but they're not able to place it at all. This causes them to not concentrate on what I'm actually saying. I've taken steps to modify my pronunciation and speech slightly to make it easier to follow though. If I spoke like I do with my mates back home they'd be genuinely clueless I think.

scilly

North Americans, including native-born Canadians cannot distinguish between certain words.


This was once a bit of a party game


Can you say the following sequences of words so they sound differently ..........


fairy, ferry, furry

Mary, merry, marry

Dorothy

Or maybe she was making a bit of a joke.

Hemi Dave

Nah. She really wasn't that smart.

moneypenny20

Or are they just different?

Sally Redux

It can be confusing. Can and can't sound the same. As do hairy and Harry, and author/Arthur.

Dorothy

Possibly you just weren't smart enough to get the joke.

caretaker

Hairy and Harry sound the same, the other two examples don't.

Shard

I find ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife, ironic.

Beaverstate

Who needs a knife?

Pizzawheel

So if they haven't managed one step forward in 300 years we're probably expecting a bit much of them now, eh?

I thought Canadians liked to distinguish themselves from the States by spelling properly, so I'm quite disappointed with the amount of American English up here.

JamesM

I'm so used to listening to Canadians now that I struggle to understand English people.

I enjoyed the background on languages that you shared here. Thank you.