Re: [Lingo] British English

[Lyle H Saxon <llletters@example.com>]

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 3:20 AM, Nguyen Vu Hung <vuhung16plus@example.com> wrote:
> Some Japanese told me that they'd want to go to English and learn English there
> because they consider that English is real.
>
> So, you think that the difference is small and ignorable.

Well - there's business English, which isn't so different (is it?),
and then conversation English, and general written English... and
on-line English, etc.  As for how people speak, it's seemed to me that
UK-English speakers (from generic-London, for example), use more
difficult vocabulary, but speak slowly and clearly, thoughtfully -
actually pre-thinking what they're saying, while Americans
(cough-cough) tend to use a simpler vocabulary, but just let it come
pouring out (cough-cough) without pre-thinking what they're saying as
much (cough-cough) or putting much effort into carefully pronouncing
their words (Cough!-Cough!).  (Vast simplification of course, and
things are all over the scale on both side - [how's that for a blanket
disclaimer? ;)] )

There's also the issue of which generation of English you're referring
to.  From casual observations of typos and very bad writing making its
way into US newspapers, one might be tempted to say that US English as
used by the current crop of young people is of a lower level than some
other generations of Americans?  Maybe not.  Probably just newspapers
are expecting more output from fewer people and not bothering to spend
money on proof-readers to catch that sort of thing?

Lyle