English and american language !

North of England, ask someone it they'd like a cup of tea the answer (if no) would be
"no ta lad"......ta being the abbreviation for thank you.

South of England the answer would invariably be..."I'm alright thanks"......as if one was asking about their state of health !

"Queens English" is assumed to be spoken by royalty, those at military colleges, smart kids at university and so on.

Cornish, some Norfolk and many southern Irish accents are wonderful to listen to but often totally indecipherable....!
 
"Queens English" is assumed to be spoken by royalty, those at military colleges, smart kids at university and so on.

Cornish, some Norfolk and many southern Irish accents are wonderful to listen to but often totally indecipherable....!
In George Bernard Shaws play Pygmalion, Henry Higgins says to Col. Pickering "As soon as one Englishman opens his mouth he causes another Englishman to despise him".

GBS being Irish, was keenly tuned to the British class system.
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"Two nations divided by a common language".

A wonderful phrase;

But the english language also unites nations albeit with national or regional variations.

English is an amazing language in that it is very flexible, and that flexibility allows for differences to be absorbed into the language, and the meaning understood (sometimes with a little effort.)

What is harder to understand is national or regional accents, and speed of speech.
When I began to watch two excellent American TV shows, The Wire and the West Wing I was flumoxed. The characters in the West Wing spoke so quickly I thought I'll never keep up, but eventually my ear tuned in. The Wire was an education in itself about the flexibility of language across culture. The Patois of the drug dealing/criminal world is still Greek to me, as is some of the lingo the Police used.

Which brings us to the written word...'Common language' indeed.
 
There is a joke that demonstrates the difference in language in the US:

A guy from Boston goes south to visit some distant relatives and when he returns his friends ask him how it was. He answers, "it was fine, but they talk funny". They say "y'all" instead of "youse guys".

Both of which are not correct grammar and there in lies the humor.
 
John, I would have guessed the northern example of the term to be closer to Brooklyn than to Boston! ...But I'm from the west coast, so what do I know?
 
It's the similarity in some words or phrases US and UK that fascinates me. I hear them now and again, can only think of two right now. In the West country (of UK, where I be) we use the words yon and yonder, for distance. Over yonder hill. Yonder is farther than yon. It's not used (I think) commonly elsewhere in UK. I see in the US some southerners use yonder. Also saying "brung" ie to fix your car, I brung my tools. Again I hear southerns in the US using "brung".
As for the speed of some talking, some of the US made telly programs have speech much faster than I can hear. West country folk talk slow drive fast and drink lots of cider. I'm talking proper cider, the ingredients of which is Apple's And time. Squash the apples, skin and all, let him sit and ferment away for a piece of time. When he gets to about 7-8% alcohol, drink him. This is murky stuff with sediment and stuff all left in. You buy it by the gallon, for about £7, it will make you fall over, laugh alot, and make new friends. It's a very sociable drink. When we're out and about in different parts, everybody swaps glugs or cups or what have you. Comparing tastes.
I believe the cider in the US is just apple juice, but not fermented?
Martin.
 
Any of you that saw the old UK comedy "Auf Weidersehen Pet" on the TV would get an idea of how different the the language is in the Uk , depending where you are from. For the unitiated it was a series about a bunch of working class tradesmen thrown together by fate on a building site in Germany to escape the high unemployment of the "Thatcher" years in the UK.
Bomber from the West country, Wayne the cockney, Moxy the "jailbird" from Liverpool, Barry from somewhere near Wolverhamption / West Bromich and Dennis, Neville and Oz from Newcastle upon Tyne. I found the dialects facinating and Oz's one liners cracked me up. You get a "Geordie" talking 10 to the dozen and that's hard to understand. Great characters, great show and a great education as to the language of the working class Englishman. It goes to show we all speak the same but we don't, whether we are from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ etc.

GB
 
I am real surprised this one hasn't been brought up; In US a flathead is well, we all know don't we?, whereas in GB it is a side valve!
 
Funny thing in the language and mannerisms of different countries...being a Canuk...I enjoy the differences in both the words used and the accents. Stay long enough in one country, or even a different state, you begin to adapt in not only speaking, but in the manner that is locally done. My buddies in California call the salt flats 'Bonnieville', and to me it's still two syllables, not three..'Bonneville'.....but I adapted !!! Love the 'Down-Under' accents. Are we having fun yet?
 
California city boy here, with 4 years in the Navy, I enjoyed the farm boy accents of my fellow Swabbies. I guess guys from the landlocked states just migrated to the ocean going Service? Now, my favorite American accent is Tennessee. I love to call up Coker Tire and speak with Corkey's phone girls!

Beyond accents, I enjoy trying to guess ethnicities in a restaurant. You overhear snippets of conversation, observe manners, dress,and facial features, and make a guess. Of course, it's poor manners to ask, so you never really know unless a friendly conversation develops and they tell you.
 
Talking about ethnicities a number of years when my kids were quite small the family went on holiday to the South Island of NZ. We took a cruise on Doubtful Sound on the Fullers boat which was packed with tourists from overseas. My ex wife was of Dutch extractions (Dutch Kiwi) so the kids had picked up a bit of that language from her and their grandparents. There was a group of "Dutchies" talking in their own lingo at quite a level. My youngest who was about 7 at the time want to check them out and couldn't resist throwing a Dutch word into her English conversation with her sister. Well you should have seen her silence the group and their jaws drop after she uttered that word, just loud enough to be heard by them...the word translated back to English meant "fart".


GB
 
I'm surprised that no one mentioned: rumble seat = dickie.

Tuderp, I had a similar experience to yours. I took 2-1/2 years of German in high school and was stationed in the Plalz (Pirmasens) for 16 months. I had an office job (IBM machine room) and worked on the night shift with Germans who spoke little or no English at the time (1958-59). I had similar experiences to yours with the language. I'm nearing 80 years old and still enjoying speaking to Germans in their language whenever I get the chance.
 
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I was over there in the early 80's and most the Germans my age (under 30 at that time) spoke fluent English. But what I thought was the weirdest (until a German waitress explained it to me), every time the wife and I were in a Gausthaus to eat, I would speak German, and order in German. The waitresses always spoke back to me in clear English. I know it was obvious I was a US Service man, but I thought that was weird and after a couple years of that, asked a waitress why that was. She explained to me that most service jobbed Germans that interacted with Americans get frustrated with tourists, or Americans that never at least tried to speak the local language (kinda like we are here in the states), so when an American spoke to them in their language, many times they would speak back to you in your language out of respect. Kinda a gesture of respect and thanks for taking the time to learn their language. I thought that was pretty cool.


Robert/Texas said:
I'm surprised that no one mentioned: rumble seat = dickie.

Tuderp, I had a similar experience to yours. I took 2-1/2 years of German in high school and was stationed in the Plalz (Permasens) for 16 months. I had an office job (IBM machine room) and worked on the night shift with Germans who spoke little or no English at the time (1958-59). I had similar experiences to yours with the language. I'm nearing 80 years old and still enjoying speaking to Germans in their language whenever I get the chance.
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