The "I Love the UK" topic

tcliffy · Post by **tcliffy** » 16 years ago

have to admit, your conversation on English and Americanese is fascinating. Being raised in a setting that requires me to use both, I can no longer grasp which is the American way and which is the English way except for certain words like colour. I think though, that contrary to my brothers who have more or less embraced American society, I've been the rebel and refuse to. I like my South Africanism and Celtic roots.

Oh, and Kelsie, it's pronounced "zebra" not "zeebra"

kthomp · Post by **kthomp** » 16 years ago

definatly zebra lol

TullyBascombe · Post by **TullyBascombe** » 16 years ago

Hey, I know, why don't we put the future of "English" to a vote, with a choice between American usage and English usage?

The voters would include 300 million Americans, 60 million British, 30 million Canadians, 20 million Australians and 4 million New Zealanders.

kjackson83 · Post by **kjackson83** » 16 years ago

TullyBascombe wrote:Hey, I know, why don't we put the future of "English" to a vote, with a choice between American usage and English usage?

The voters would include 300 million Americans, 60 million British, 30 million Canadians, 20 million Australians and 4 million New Zealanders.

lovely, Tully: Uncle Sam and the GOP are proud of you. Although, I might point out that proportionally, MORE of those "other people" speak English than of your 300 million Americans, a commanding minority of whom don't speak English at all, or only in txt msg 4mat.

kthomp · Post by **kthomp** » 16 years ago

ENGLISH usage
might not make alot of sense at times such as cough and bough sound differrent but it is the orginal

TullyBascombe · Post by **TullyBascombe** » 16 years ago

kjackson83 wrote:* ...the Anglican Church: This is my church. I am a bad Anglican (in the United States: Episcopalian), but an Anglican nonetheless. I've had a complicated existence, religiously and spiritually-speaking, but have found a home in the Church of England. Like the British as a whole, the Anglican Church's greatest strength is its tolerance and openness to differing opinions. We don't name many of our churches for the patron saint of questioners and doubters (St Thomas) for nothing...

Stay tuned to see if it manages to survive attempts to root out the very traits you see as its strengths. Our church just managed to avoid being "taken over" at the end of last year.

kjackson83 · Post by **kjackson83** » 16 years ago

TullyBascombe wrote:
kjackson83 wrote:* ...the Anglican Church: This is my church. I am a bad Anglican (in the United States: Episcopalian), but an Anglican nonetheless. I've had a complicated existence, religiously and spiritually-speaking, but have found a home in the Church of England. Like the British as a whole, the Anglican Church's greatest strength is its tolerance and openness to differing opinions. We don't name many of our churches for the patron saint of questioners and doubters (St Thomas) for nothing...

Stay tuned to see if it manages to survive attempts to root out the very traits you see as its strengths. Our church just managed to avoid being "taken over" at the end of last year.

The Communion will survive: Gafcon and ECUSA have stuff to hash out, but the Communion will survive, and although the Church of England proper has seen better times, it will weather this latest storm as well. Have faith.

Jude Andrew · Post by **Jude Andrew** » 16 years ago

kjackson83 wrote:GOP

huh?

kjackson83 · Post by **kjackson83** » 16 years ago

Jude Andrew wrote:
kjackson83 wrote:GOP
huh?

It stands for "Grand Old Party," a nickname for the Republican Party of the United States...without delving deeply into American politics (a many-tentacled, omnipresent monster, that), the relevancy here is that the Republican Party is (of the two parties in the US) big on American patriotism, which includes a degree of hostility towards almost anything that smacks of "anti-Americanism." Yours truly has been quite literally screamed at by friends and even family about being "anti-American" for, among other things, flying the Union flag, using British English (spelling-wise) and proposing that the British do a list of things better than the US....

I'm not accusing anyone of a party affiliation here (and I've always thought of LD as being utterly neutral and unconcerned, politically), but a typical GOP argument vis-a-vis any other nation in the world centres on how much better the "USA! USA! USA!" is than anyone else on earth.

As I tell people over and over: I do not "hate America," I just "love Britain." They're not one and the same...at least I don't think so, anyway.

SO: something to move the conversation forward--
If you lived in Britain, where would it be, and why?

kjackson83 · Post by **kjackson83** » 16 years ago

tcliffy wrote:Oh, and Kelsie, it's pronounced "zebra" not "zeebra"

cool...and I just realised that, in Men in Black Rip Torn's character is "Z", which is pronounced in the movie as "Zed": the English English way

Jude Andrew · Post by **Jude Andrew** » 16 years ago

kjackson83 wrote:
Jude Andrew wrote:
kjackson83 wrote:GOP
huh?
It stands for "Grand Old Party," .....

Thanks for the explanation, I hadn't heard that phrase before.

Jude Andrew · Post by **Jude Andrew** » 16 years ago

If you lived in Britain, where would it be, and why?

I already know the answer to this one

..... Esher.

About 13/14 months ago I had my own house on the market with a view to uping sticks and moving to the UK for business reasons. My wfie, myself and our eldest son (14) spent 4 days looking at towns/areas that we would look to move to. We had quite specific criteria that ruled out most everywhere farther than an hour from London, heathrow, Gatwick and there surrounding areas. Esher was the nicest place we saw, had the nicest houses (and prices

), schools, amenities etc. Unfortunately, we had issues getting school places because we weren't yet resident (I have 3 school going kids and 1 in montessori), the property market started to slump and things in general started becoming uncertain. So, we stayed put and decided to bide our time.

Other towns/areas that we had short listed were: Banstead, Farnham, Cheam, Sutton and Epsom.

TullyBascombe · Post by **TullyBascombe** » 16 years ago

kjackson83 wrote:
TullyBascombe wrote:Hey, I know, why don't we put the future of "English" to a vote, with a choice between American usage and English usage?

The voters would include 300 million Americans, 60 million British, 30 million Canadians, 20 million Australians and 4 million New Zealanders.
lovely, Tully: Uncle Sam and the GOP are proud of you. Although, I might point out that proportionally, MORE of those "other people" speak English than of your 300 million Americans, a commanding minority of whom don't speak English at all, or only in txt msg 4mat.

Only 18% of Americans claim Spanish or another language as their primary language, so that leaves 250 million to vote for "American" English. Furthermore I'd point out that only 59% of Canadians, 78% of Australians and 85% of New Zealanders count English as their first language. For that matter 1/4 of Wales counts their ancestral tongue, not English, as their primary language.
All I'm saying is that by virtue of sheer democratic numbers "American" English is the more common usage than the King's English.

kthomp · Post by **kthomp** » 16 years ago

do you mean queens english

thats what i know it by

kthomp · Post by **kthomp** » 16 years ago

still think its should have a differnt name, its not 'english' if it differs from the orginal

and i love the welsh language it is spelt completely different from how it is said