Some say 500,000, some say 8 million. The figure regarded most accurate by linguists etc. is 2 million.
And I agree, it hasn't lived up to its expectations.
Ben.
And I agree, it hasn't lived up to its expectations.
Ben.
British Language? we don't have one!
<<wanna join me and try to make a British language? We only have ENGLISH, SCOTS GAELIC AND WELSH! what about mixing them all into one language?
so we can make BRITISH! instead of English! And English has been taken over by Americans. Do you know any good links? I need some dictionaries! English/Welsh, English/Scottish Gaelic, English/Cornish, English/Old English, English/Scots....... I want to make British the official language in Britain so it will be a fair language for all people. So all British can say it's their language and it belongs to them.>>
Nobody will want to learn such a language.
The English want to speak English
The Welsh want to be able to speak English and Welsh
The Scottish want to speak English, and some want to speek Gaelic.
Ben.
so we can make BRITISH! instead of English! And English has been taken over by Americans. Do you know any good links? I need some dictionaries! English/Welsh, English/Scottish Gaelic, English/Cornish, English/Old English, English/Scots....... I want to make British the official language in Britain so it will be a fair language for all people. So all British can say it's their language and it belongs to them.>>
Nobody will want to learn such a language.
The English want to speak English
The Welsh want to be able to speak English and Welsh
The Scottish want to speak English, and some want to speek Gaelic.
Ben.
"The English want to speak English
The Welsh want to be able to speak English and Welsh
The Scottish want to speak English, and some want to speek Gaelic."
And the British want to speak British!
The Welsh want to be able to speak English and Welsh
The Scottish want to speak English, and some want to speek Gaelic."
And the British want to speak British!
But surely the whole point of being british and embracing your britishness is embrassing the fact that Britain is made up of many distinct and different cultures which speak at least 4 different languages. Why would you want to get rid of that and try and mix them all together? It's crazy, man!
Anglesey is quite a hotspot for the Welsh Language......I was told that about 70% of the people there are able to speak it to varying degrees of fluency. It's also a place with a lot of "immigration" from England, such as people who go to live there after they've retired or are connected with the big RAF base at Valley, and if these RAF people have young kids then they will automatically be taught Welsh in school. I wish that there were similar efforts to preserve and promote the Gaelic Language in Scotland as there are for Welsh in Wales. You actually feel more of a sort of "foreigness" when you cross into Wales from England when you see all the bi-lingual signs and all placenames become Welsh. Town names which are known mostly by the English version, such as "Welcome to Mold", have the Welsh name underneath it ("Croeso i'r Wyddgrug") on the roadsign.
JIM: I'm sure it was Easingwold among others...at uni we used to go around the Vale of York at weekends to a lot of the country pubs in the area.....it was great.
JIM: I'm sure it was Easingwold among others...at uni we used to go around the Vale of York at weekends to a lot of the country pubs in the area.....it was great.
<<We Americans have already made a new language. And we (well, most of us) ARE staring quizically at the screen whenever we try to watch "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels." >>
Well, you have to admit, Tom K., that in Snatch most of the characters were staring quizzically at the other characters when they talked, too! It wasn't just the audience....
Well, you have to admit, Tom K., that in Snatch most of the characters were staring quizzically at the other characters when they talked, too! It wasn't just the audience....
I like also that Vinnie Jones in "gone in sixty seconds" didn't speak at all apart from one thing at the end, in order to avoid confusing American viewers. Thats my theory anyway ;)
No, the joke was that he was so silent no one had EVER heard him talk, and so had never been able to place him -- that's why they called him the Sphinx.
>>We Americans have already made a new language. And we (well, most of us) ARE staring quizically at the screen whenever we try to watch "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels."<<
LOL That, and practically liquefying the "back search" buttons on our DVD remote controls, muttering "wha'd he say?" I also found myself using that button a lot with "Bend It Like Beckham." The only people in that movie that were consistently intelligible to me were the girl's parents! There are a lot of Indians where I am, and I guess I'm just used to the accent.
LOL That, and practically liquefying the "back search" buttons on our DVD remote controls, muttering "wha'd he say?" I also found myself using that button a lot with "Bend It Like Beckham." The only people in that movie that were consistently intelligible to me were the girl's parents! There are a lot of Indians where I am, and I guess I'm just used to the accent.
***confusing American viewers***
Always a "problem" when British films/TV progs are transported across the Pond, especially when the accents are UK regional and not basic classical RP English English....the one which to a majority of Americans is THE only British accent in existence. I think that such lingo confusion is most often a one way thing, although Brokeback apparently caused a wee bit of incomprehension in a lot of UK cinema complexes....maybe because of the very slow, very low, laid back, outback, drawl and tendency to speak with very little in the way of lip movement from Ennis and Jack. Maybe they should have used subtitles, as we did in parts in Trainspotting, a film we like to "forget" hereabouts.....
Always a "problem" when British films/TV progs are transported across the Pond, especially when the accents are UK regional and not basic classical RP English English....the one which to a majority of Americans is THE only British accent in existence. I think that such lingo confusion is most often a one way thing, although Brokeback apparently caused a wee bit of incomprehension in a lot of UK cinema complexes....maybe because of the very slow, very low, laid back, outback, drawl and tendency to speak with very little in the way of lip movement from Ennis and Jack. Maybe they should have used subtitles, as we did in parts in Trainspotting, a film we like to "forget" hereabouts.....
<<I think that such lingo confusion is most often a one way thing, although Brokeback apparently caused a wee bit of incomprehension in a lot of UK cinema complexes....maybe because of the very slow, very low, laid back, outback, drawl and tendency to speak with very little in the way of lip movement from Ennis and Jack.>>
Apparently oine of the tricks of learning an American accent when you're an actor is to not move your mouth much.
<<Maybe they should have used subtitles, as we did in parts in Trainspotting, a film we like to "forget" hereabouts.....>>
There were no subtitles in the version I saw --- and I could have used 'em!
Apparently oine of the tricks of learning an American accent when you're an actor is to not move your mouth much.
<<Maybe they should have used subtitles, as we did in parts in Trainspotting, a film we like to "forget" hereabouts.....>>
There were no subtitles in the version I saw --- and I could have used 'em!
You're crazy. English is a pirated language. A good deal of the English language derives from other languages and modern day slanguage creations born from code-switching and inability to properly pronounce a word continue to evolve the language. In the same way that many countries around the world do not have a language that they can call their own because it is unique to them alone, English will forever be a language that belongs to everyone who makes it their language. There is no such thing as American or British or whatever the hell you want to call it. The bottem line is, we all speak the same language base.
>inability to properly pronounce a word continue to evolve the language
>The bottem line
Inability to spell contributes to the evolution too.
>The bottem line
Inability to spell contributes to the evolution too.
***English is a pirated language. A good deal of the English language derives from other languages and modern day language creations***
I thought it would be a wee bit impolite and pedantic to correct the grammar in this statement but what matters is the message it contains.....I agree with it wholeheartedly. The sheer beauty and richness of the English Language is the fact that it has developed and grown by absorbing words and phrases, over the centuries, from a whole range of other Languages and cultures, over and above it's basic embryonic roots. English never has, and never will be, a strictly pure Language. It is one mega huge hybrid, and is all the better for it.
Remember guys....English now contains about one million words! With a wee bit of perserverance and a whole lot of reading maybe we can achieve total inclusion in our day to day vocabularly...... ;-)
I wonder if that million includes all it's profanities? English is pretty well endowed in very expressive obscenities....if you want proof of that just go to Glasgow city centre tonight....Saturday..... Sauchiehall Street....George Square.... ;-)
URIEL: The Trainspotting DVD does contain subtitles, probably as a result of public demand from outside Scotland. Personally the only dialogue difficulty I had in that film was in one of the scenes from London! hee hee. The rest was easy peasy. Anyway, measures to clean up the Edinburgh lowlife inner city drug scene have largely worked apparently.
I thought it would be a wee bit impolite and pedantic to correct the grammar in this statement but what matters is the message it contains.....I agree with it wholeheartedly. The sheer beauty and richness of the English Language is the fact that it has developed and grown by absorbing words and phrases, over the centuries, from a whole range of other Languages and cultures, over and above it's basic embryonic roots. English never has, and never will be, a strictly pure Language. It is one mega huge hybrid, and is all the better for it.
Remember guys....English now contains about one million words! With a wee bit of perserverance and a whole lot of reading maybe we can achieve total inclusion in our day to day vocabularly...... ;-)
I wonder if that million includes all it's profanities? English is pretty well endowed in very expressive obscenities....if you want proof of that just go to Glasgow city centre tonight....Saturday..... Sauchiehall Street....George Square.... ;-)
URIEL: The Trainspotting DVD does contain subtitles, probably as a result of public demand from outside Scotland. Personally the only dialogue difficulty I had in that film was in one of the scenes from London! hee hee. The rest was easy peasy. Anyway, measures to clean up the Edinburgh lowlife inner city drug scene have largely worked apparently.
I saw a whole film on BBC1 about some Scotch scallies (can't remember what you call them) and it was all subtitled! I nearly pissed my self, so funny.