Hello Llama Nom,
Not sure if I'm going rather off topic here, but I
would say the differences between American and British English cover not
only spelling and pronunciation but vocabulary, use of prepositions, past tense
forms of some strong verbs, expressions or idioms, and sentence structure.
I did an essay at uni many years ago in which I analysed newspaper articles from
British and American papers and I was stunned by the extent of the linguistic
differences.
Don't know if she was teasing me, but an American
acquaintance once told me that any British films/TV programmes which actually do
make it across the Atlantic tend to be dubbed with American voices because they
might not be understood otherwise!
Cheers,
Sarah.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 6:52
AM
Subject: [norse_course] Re: A dialect
with army and navy...
> but they actually achieved to change
their English
> language into a new standard, endowed not only with a
different
pronunciation,
> but also with a different spelling,
though not very remarkable
(think of -ize
> instead of -ise,
"harbor" instead of "harbour").
I get the impression that the
spelling -ize was the more normal one
in Britain even in the early 20th
century. Not sure when or why -
ise took over, but I think it existed
as an acceptable alternative
before becoming general. Maybe it was a
case of British spelling
authorities wanting to assert their independence
of the global power
after WW2? But I don't really know. The
invention of
wordprocessers has further ossified these niggly
differences.
Llama Nom
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