Are native speakers of English proud?

Here's some more burblings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkpm7bH7j4

BTW, I'm a native English speaker(US). I just wanted to say that I took French for 4 years in high school. However, I never had a chance to talk to anybody in French, and there wasn't a World Wide Web back then, so I eventually lost the ability to carry on a conversation.

English speakers are relatively less proud compared to some other groups. They for example, when asked why someone should study English, more often answer with objective reasons of utility rather than subjective reasons of 'beauty' or literature. It could be because of their monolingual habits, ie they don't know anything else to compare it with, or it could be due to modesty. or something else.

Thanks for that link, Carol. Poor old Mr Bush - do you think he has a mischievous streak in his make up and all those rib tickling bublings of his were all part of some kind of act? Somehow I think not, but give the guy his due - he always had that trace of a smile on his lips (which was more than just a wee bit irritating at times but there you go...) which either indicated he had no idea that he had perpetrated yet another verbal gaffe or that he realised he had a second or two later but didn't give a toss really.

Anyway, best of luck to the globally unlamented departing Dubya from now on as he rides into the sunset across the Texan plains in his stetson yelling out "yeeha, y'all!"

I think we shall see quite a burblings free speech from Mr Obama tomorrow - but it's his future actions rather than his syntax which will concern us all in the coming few years. Best of luck to him as well.

It seems that being President of the United States can have an adverse effect on his vocabulary at times. I read somewhere that Ronald Reagan, when he was in office, once directly and formally addressed Diana, Princess of Wales, as Princess David. Unlike Queen Victoria, Diana was amused. So was everyone else.

Much the same as 'Got' in place of the solely American 'Gotten'

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That's not really true. "Gotten" is not soley American. It has always been used in the north of England. In fact, I think it was only the people of southern England that stopped using it.

Even in southern England they use the same pattern when they say "forgotten", do they not? ;) Not so alien after all.....

It'd be interesting to see how the other nations in the UK use 'got/gotten'.
Certainly in Cornwall it's mostly 'got'.

“It'd be interesting to see how the other nations in the UK use 'got/gotten'.”

Nations? You mean dialects?

<“It'd be interesting to see how the other nations in the UK use 'got/gotten'.”

Nations? You mean dialects? >

No, the correction to my assumption that British people didn't use "gotten" only referred to the fact that some regions in England do infact use it.
I was wondering about whether regions within other nations use "gotten" over "got".

Pretty sure Canadians use it. Someone already said that it gets used in Australia and parts of England. Who else did you have in mind?

Wales, Scotland, N.Ireland, Cornwall and Republic of Ireland

So far today I have not heard one single person in my immediate vicinity (and there have been a fair number of bods buzzing round me today, as most days) use the word "gotten" and I have tried a variety of ways to try and goad them into a turn of conversation in which the word could well be introduced. It's always been a case of plain old "got". Forgotten is well used, but without the "for" bit - no chance. And this is Scotland. Come to think of it I've never heard the word used in England either, not even by American tourists, who may well have used it quite often but not within my hearing.

"Gotten" used to be part of everyday speech in these islands in days of yore, apparently, but certainly not much, if at all, in the days of now. That's just my experience anyway.

It's now a welcome tea break and I've just gotten myself a nice mug of steaming hot tea and a couple of shortbreads. I bet I get crumbs in my keyboard......

<<If you are from Texas, tell me, are there still big cultural differences between Southern States and the Northern ones?>>

Texas, as I've learned from living in Louisiana, is not considered "the South" by most Southerners. Texas, along with Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida is usually referred to as the "peripheral South" in American politics.

So there are cultural differences between Texas and Louisiana, naturally there are significant differences between Texas and New York or Texas and Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, etc. The food's different, the dialects are different, the mindset is different.

Daniel Elazar wrote about the political cultures of the US, but it could very well fall into social culture as well... Although his map of the US is in need of being updated, it still holds a high degree of explanatory power. Here's a pretty good overview of it: http://academic.regis.edu/jriley/421elazar.htm

Texans are Texans, and not Southerners (or even proper Westerners!) -- they're a breed apart. Not for nothing were they their own country for a number of years! Florida is not Southern at all and never was (it was still owned by Spain when the original 13 colonies were revolting against England, and has a very different culture and demographic pattern than the real South -- although you'll hear some Southern accents in the northern part of Florida that borders on the South). Virginia's just barely Southern, and more by history than by actual culture, since it's a transitional area between the North and the South. Louisiana is another place that's a breed apart because they were owned by France, and have a lot of cultural stuff that's just not like the neighbors. And even the true South can be divided into the Old South along the Atlantic coast and the Deep South or Delta down along the Gulf coast. But yes, the North and the South have some major changes in subculture -- as do the other major regions of the US (the Midwest, Southwest, New England, the mountain West, the West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska -- in the US, "North" and "South" always refer exclusively to the eastern part of the country).

Sometimes I find it quite irritating that English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Although English happens to be my native language I also happen to speaking *fluent* German for over 20 years and find it highly irritating as well as insulting to have Germans speak English to me on the basis of my name as if they were doing me some kind of favour. Many of them will ring me at home (in Germany) and start speaking English under some kind of assumption that we native English speakers are somehow incapable of learning proper German, yet they give out to their Turkish population for not-speaking "proper" German.

I also happen to have been speaking *fluent* German for over 20 years...

Sorry for not proofreading