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***@Damian
Are you drunk or just stupid?***
Well, I had knocked off a bottle of Chablis, a bottle of Merlot, six double Vladivars, four Malibus, seven Belhaven 90 shillings - and all accompanied by fourteen Glenfiddich chasers, and only last week my IQ was assessed at -26. So there's your answer!
Talking about minimum drinking age - it's 18 eveywhere in the UK for buying drinks in pubs or off licences (ie shops and stores which sell alcohol for consumption off the premises), but the Scottish Parliament is now going to raise the age, in Scotland only, to 21 for buying alcohol in shops and stores and supermarkets, but it will remain at 18 for buying it in pubs, as far as I understand at the minute.
***Damian can always be counted on to add a huge dose of civility, humor and good information. Maybe as a Scot it's easier to remain above the fray, but I always appreciate his post***.
Cheers! Nice of you to say so. I'm not sure my Scottish nationality has very much to do with the way I post, but maybe much to do with what I say! For all its problems I do love my country, or two countries if Scotland and the UK are being discussed separately. I'm one of the sizeable majority of Scots who never wish to see a Scottish breakaway from the United Kingdom. I needn't worry - it just won't happen.
Regarding the French - I still haven't had time to stand on a platform at Haymarket train station here in Edinburgh to hear the famous French guy doing all the train departures and arrivals announcements - so far I've had to make do with the recordings on BBC Radio Five Live. He seemed to be fine announcing all those Scottish place names! Well done him!
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I have to take issue with one thing you said, Damian -- namely, that English is not "their" language (referring to English being the U.S.'s "adopted" language).
I am not sure if adopted is the best word here. It was not adopted by some sort of decree or statute. Rather, English forms part of our cultural inheritance from England.
I also disagree that English is not "ours." The same goes for Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America. When the former colonial powers decided to take their language elsewhere, their monopoly over it ceased to be.
I see English as being just as much mine as it is someone in London's.
Just my two cents.
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English belongs just as much to Americans (Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, Indians etc., etc.) as it does to Englishmen.
Indeed, most native English speakers are Americans.
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Presumably the reason the US has no "official language" is that, as an English-speaking country from the get-go, it never had any particular need to assert such a concept.
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Oops!
Last item was mine!
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America wasn't an English speaking country from the get-go ... New England was English, New York City and North New Jersey spoke Dutch, South Jersey and Pennsylvania spoke Swedish and German, the whole Louisiana area spoke French, etc. During the immigrant days the language regions changed ... Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, etc. There's a reason why the US isn't exactly a unified country like you get in Europe.
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Official or not, it doesn't matter, the importance is who regulates the language.
As you might know, in most European countries there is an official lingvistic body (Academy) that regulates the language on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar.
French - L'Académie française -
Portuguese - Academia das Ciências de Lisboa
Romanian - Academia Romana de Lingvistica
Italian - Accademia della Crusca
Spanish - Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española
German - Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung
Polish - Rada Języka Polskiego
ETC.
English - None official.
What it worries me, is British English not being regulated by any lingvistic Academy, and being victimised by the hundreds of regional British accents, some uncultivated colloquialisms penetrating the literary language. Same scenario regarding AME Version. The language is a cultural patrimonium and it should be regulated as such.
Why English has no official Academic body?
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Why English has no official Academic body?
Not sure, why not just ask someone from Wales, Scottland or Ireland?
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"America wasn't an English speaking country from the get-go ... New England was English, New York City and North New Jersey spoke Dutch, South Jersey and Pennsylvania spoke Swedish and German, the whole Louisiana area spoke French, etc. During the immigrant days the language regions changed ... Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, etc. There's a reason why the US isn't exactly a unified country like you get in Europe."
Sorry, no. By the time the American Revolution occurred, the Thirteen Colonies were, to all practical purposes, English-speaking. Louisiana was purchased later and its French-speaking population nearly entirely assimilated. One of the ways those immigrants that came in later were "Americanized" was their eventual adoption of - English.
And I don't know quite what dope you've been smoking but most European countries strike me as no more "unified" than the US is. Indeed, many are far less "unified."
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"Why English has no official Academic body?"
Because it doesn't need one.
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>>
***They don't need to make their language official at home***
That's a misleading statement. English is not THEIR Language! It's their adopted Language - many, many Americans have no direct connection with the true home of the English Language - England....Americans whose descendents originated elsewhere on the planet.<<
Yes and no. Yes, a vast portion of the US population today has no connections with England at all. But on the other hand, people who settled here who did not already speak English did not learn and adopt English as a language "on loan" from the English; rather, they learned English as the national language of the US.
>>When in America, either living there or just visiting, many Brits experience mixed emotions when told by the local Americans that "they speak very good English" and asked where they had learned to speak it so well. Check out the British Expats in the USA site if you want confirmation of this extraordinary situation.<<
On one hand, that might be a matter of ignorance on the particular individuals' part, but that it also because Americans today think of English as *their* national language and perceive standardness of English varieties in reference to their own standard General American. The do not think of English English dialects as being "more standard" or "more legitimate" than their own, and likely are actually think of them as being overall less standard than their own.
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>>"Why English has no official Academic body?"
Because it doesn't need one.<<
You are an idiot mate, no surprise English is a spelling mess, chaotic gramar with americanisms and britishisms that conflict. English is crying for an academic body to clean the junk and standardise the spelling mess.
Please help your children learn a decent language, and help yourself to spell it right without a spell checker.
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The matter, though, is just whose dialect is any given standard orthography for all of English going to favor? I doubt many Americans are going to care much for one that merely codifies Received Pronunciation, and I likewise doubt many Britons are going to care much for one that merely codifies General American - and if one is not going to one of those two, then one will have to design a highly crossdialectal orthography, which will in and of itself be very difficult both to design and learn...
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I suggest IPA as the standard spelling. That'd be cool
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Then it'd be even more chaotic than the present spelling.
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