On 03/08/2012 02:13 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Alix Pexton"<alix.dot.pex...@gmail.dot.com> wrote in message
news:jja8k8$j14$1...@digitalmars.com...
I feel compelled to point out that there is no such thing as "British
English". There is English, the written language with all its archaic
spellings and there are many spoken dialects, the most formal of which is
RP (Received Pronunciation) sometimes called The Queen's English (even
though she is German).
Yea, that is a good point. OTOH, it's often convenient (and common) to
assume one particular "de facto standard" dialict unless otherwise stated.
Here in the US, we have regional dialects too (although perhaps not to the
same extent as how much the British dialects differ from each other), but
when people either inside or outside the US refer to "American English",
typically they're referring to the one that's spoken in the US mid-west and
on TV/movies. Similarly, in the western world, "Japanese" is, by default,
considered to be the Tokyo dialect (as opposed to Kansai or whatever other
ones there may be).
It might be different in Europe, but in the US, we think of "British
English", unless otherwise specified, as being the London/"Queen's English"
version. At least, those of us who are aware of the varied British dialects
;)
FWIW.
I recall my theater director telling me that the closest modern dialect
to "Shakespearean English" was somewhere near the south side of the
state of New York...not sure how much truth there is to that, but it's a
cool idea.
Regional dialects are definitely a thing in the US, but I agree that
they're not always noticeable...unless you find just the right words for
someone to say that accent their pronunciation, like the classic "pahk
the cah in hahvahd yahd" that goes with a Bostonian accent.
I tolerate USian spellings
I see I'm not the only one with a pet peeve that "'America' is two
continents, not one country" :)
"American" does have the benefit of being more pronounceable, though...I
just tried to pronounce that "oohz-ee-an", "us-ee-an", etc and they all
sound odd.
as much as non-English speaking programmers do, because I see it as an
accepted "Programmer's English".
Being from the US I couldn't be sure, but that's what I has suspected.
To be honest, I've occasionally wondered why there aren't any (commonly
used) programming languages using other human languages as bases. I
mean, English doesn't exactly have the nicest syntax ever...USian here,
though.
