Re: World's worst software. What's decent?

From: Chuck Harris (cf-NO-SPAM-harris_at_erols.com)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:24:01 -0400

Clarence wrote:
> "Paul Burke" <paul@scazon.com> wrote in message
> news:2trr9hF23gie6U1@uni-berlin.de...
>
>>Chuck Harris wrote:
>>
>>
>>>the language spoken in the US
>>>today
>>>more closely resembles the English spoken in England 200 years ago, than
>>>does the
>>>language spoken in England today.
>>>
>>>The reason is the vast size of the US compared to England. The language
>>>used in
>>>a small community can evolve through creative new words, meanings and
>>>phrases,
>>>without causing confusion, much more quickly than the language used in a
>>>large
>>>geographically expansive country.
>>
>>That's why Northern English dialects (the most intensively
>>industrialised parts of the UK, with large immigrant populations-
>>Flemish, Huguenot, Irish, Cornish- over hundreds of years) retain
>>Anglo-Saxon and Norse features not found in Standard English, and why in
>>the US the Deep South dialects so much resemble those of New England, I
>>suppose.
>>
>>Paul Burke
>
>
> I thought that Television had something to do with providing some sense of
> "standardizing" the manner of speech in the US. Perhaps the source of that
> (TV) was bragging?

Television is having a dramatic affect on the English language.
It is standardizing the US on the Midwestern dialect of US
English.... and it has done so within my lifetime. When I was
a kid, we used to travel throughout the US and Canada quite a lot,
and I used to marvel at the way people in different parts of the
country talked, but now, they all sound mostly the same.

-Chuck

Quantcast