Posted by Owen Roberts on August 12, 2008 at 12:04:06 user OwenRoberts.
In Reply to: Re: English (was Bad Spelling) posted by John on August 12, 2008 at 06:50:23:
We have had a very learned piece from Ed, which gives a good view of development of the English language. In particular it correctly points out the language is always developing and evolving and in particular people do learn from the TV.
Others have pointed out that there are differences wherever English has been used in the world often incorporating local words.
In England, there was up to 30 years ago a common language taught in schools, but it was spoken with regional accents which did occasionally incorporate words that had a local usage. The difficulty was not in understanding the local words but the accent they were spoken in.
I had to listen very carefully to the accent of Tyneside (or Geordie) to understand it and I often missed out on some words.
However English is now going to undergo another evolution. More people now speak English in China than they do in the USA (Ed has already pointed out the influx of Spanish speakers and also the difference in accents of Brooklyn and Alabama). Many Chinese food related words are now common in the UK and others are also entering. The new wave of Chinglish is about to embrace us all.