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Forums - General Discussion - Is British English or American English Used More Frequently?

As a True Canadian, it's my duty to flip-flop randomly between British and American English, while inserting the occaisional obscure Canadian word like 'toque,' 'bunnyhug,' or 'sorry.'



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chocoloco said:
Kasz216 said:

I wana aeala se gedal. 

Language is an ever changing, ever evolving thing.

Are you an English major that had to study old English or something? Because your point is perfect as language always evolves. They even put fanboy in the US dictionary.

No, I just looked it up real quick on Google.  The conjegations are off... but I don't care that mucch.

I had a hard enough time conjegating Latin when I learned it in college.

That and we learned politically correct Latin and not even the real Latin, ha.  (In latin, when saying something like they (boys and girls) went down to the lake, you would say something like The guys went down to the lake, or the boys went down to the lake.)

Closest i've come is read some "middle english" books in middle english.  For no other reason then wanting to.



Kantor said:
c03n3nj0 said:

I honestly don't see why people care if people spell color/colour a certain way. I mean, English is bound to be different from region to region.

 

Anyhow,, the U.S has a population of about 310 million, plus Canada ( we use the same stuff don't we?) that pretty much outnumbers British English speakers by a lot.  

Unless people start counting India... 

Anything up to 1.8 billion people in the world speak English.

You're outnumbered

Incidentally, India has the second-largest English speaking population in the world, at 120 million.


yeah but they do tent to use both in India since when the customer service call centers are set up in India they do have many that teach them the American pronouciation :P



HappySqurriel said:

Most English speeking countries have a slightly different dialect from other English speaking countries, and within these countries different regions will have slightly different dialects from other regions within the same country. American English is (somewhat) unique because Americans have choosen some bizzare spellings for words; my personal favourite is the American spelling for doughnut ... Being that it is a product that is made from dough and in the shape of a nut they decided upon the spelling 'donut'


Ya know, I had to look that one up, because I know it as doughnut.  Apparently we interchangably use both spellings.  Krispy Creme uses Doughnut on their home page, which is the most popular doughnut shop in my area.  But I do see other doughnut shops use donut, like Winchell's Donuts.



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So has anybody tried using this before? British English to American translator.

http://www.translatebritish.com/

There's also a reverse translation for American to British English. ;-p




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Well American English will take over in a generations time. Most kids setup their Office spell check to be English US. They need to learn there is an English UK and even the slightly lesser English AUS  option lol. 

The US dictionary for spell checker  brings out all those Z's in words that we would write S in. I have seen a lot of people blindly use the spell checker and their essays full of Z's in words.



 

 

Can't speak for the rest of the countries where English is the second language taught in school but here in Norway, we learn British-English in school but most adopt more American-English as adults since its the prevalent form in media and culture here.



chocoloco said:
Kasz216 said:

I wana aeala se gedal. 

Language is an ever changing, ever evolving thing.

Are you an English major that had to study old English or something? Because your point is perfect as language always evolves. They even put fanboy in the US dictionary.

He is totally correct.

Did you know that "American English" is actually an Old dialect of modern "English" which the pilgrims took over to America on the Mayflower.

Some words the English used to use, such as "The Fall" for "Autumn", lived on in America but fell from common useage in England.

I believe the Old Dialect used as a base for American English was called Rhotic or something.



chocoloco said:

You Europeans all watch our shows, movies and music way more than you probably listen to the same entertainment that comes from Britian, so I am sure many people pick up the American version more.

Just basing it off my Slovakian girlfriend who says she learned English by watching American television and listening to our music and she also said that American movies and shows were often more popular than native culture. But I don't really know, I speak Afro American which is king of all the English languages.


What a wonderfully insular and parochial view of the world.

1. Yes, we are influenced by your media.

2. It works both ways sunshine.

3. I cannot talk for Slovakia but English TV shows far outnumber US shows on the Free to air channels in the UK.

4. Afro American is an ethnic group not a language.



BenVTrigger said:

One thing is FOR SURE, internet English is 90% american english, phrases like LOL, ROFL, and most other slang was invented by Americans and honestly at this point I'm pretty sure American English is on the rise far more than British English, mostly due to influence.  England is no where near the global power or influence that America is, thats just a fact.

But we all know which is the more fun version to use and thats good old American! We try not to take the whole thing too dang seriously and just have fun with it.


99% of the words you used in this post were invented by the English so this post is written mainly in British English. 

Americans speak "British English" with the occasional word changed.