American Vs. British English again ...

Bernard Shaw had it all summed up 100+ years ago- when he wrote: " Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? " ...

The question of which is the more "correct" spoken English, I'm sorry to report that the American spoken word is generally more accurate and less ambiguous than common street Brit.
Uncultivated Brit English (from the hoi polloi and such ) , is a down right irritation to anyone's ear: Manchester/Liverpool, Scottish, Eastender's etc - a bad ambassador when heard abroad - You see Shaw was also oh so right when he wrote: " the moment he talks he makes another Englishman despise him" ...

Cultivated English is another thing altogether which can be both educational and a pleasure to listen too. I wish it was all like that. And it could if the educational system got it act together and the BBC stopped broadcasting linguistic CRAP. I do not understand why the BBC condones its use on screen. IT IS BAD !

Being fully bilingual (English/ Spanish) having attended both Brit and American schools in L. America I can well understand why American grammar and pronunciation of certain words is as it is and this includes the structure and order of sentence construction. But at least it is usually more grammatically correct.

However, a similar comparison can be made between Iberian Spanish and Latin American Spanish (LAS). Good LAS is what I would call 'BBC Spanish' allowing for inevitable slang elements which get introduced as part of linguistic evolution. I listen to Spanish radio and I am entirely convinced of this but again cultivated Spanish is a different story; a pleasure to listen to.

Come on Professor Higgins you must try harder!

yes, ok

this is related to an older thead : Differences between American & British English

OK

it can go in as a reply to the other thread if i can find it

Well, I guess 90 % of Americans are using newscasters' English, or a bit changed / shifted accent (be it NCVS or CVS)...Only some areas in the South and on the East coast sound ''dialectal''.

in GB, the situation is opposite, 90 % of people are using something very different than the RP, so many foreigners (including some Americans) have trouble understanding them (Cockney and Estuary English both sound redneckish to my ear, Scouse sound ugly and it's not easy to understand, Geordie sounds nice, a bit like Norwegian, but it's impossible to understand)...

Sometimes it's easier to understand a speaker of Indian English than a nonRP British speaker. I think, RP should be more enforced, just like Parisian English is, in France, or as-pronounced-in-Hannover Hochdeutsch in Germany.

RP and Geordie sound nice, Cockney, Estuary, Brummie and Scouse do not.

Before the vanish button is pressed on this particular thread I'd just like to say that this topic has been discussed to the point of boredom in this Forum....Limeyspeak v Yankeespeak.

I'd just like to say that there are some US American accents that are easier on the ear and more pleasing to listen to than some British accents, and vice versa. Likewise, within both countries, regional accents differ widely, and this situation is actually much more significant within the UK, far more than you would expect in a physically very small country such as this one.

Shaw obviously recognised this when he wrote "Pygmalion", and I'm not too sure whether snobbery and class distinction prompted the oft quoted saying "An Englishman only has to open his mouth to make another Englishman despise him".

Standard English English RP is pretty much well accepted so long as it doesn't verge on pretentiousness and over "posh" or, at the other end of the spectrum, Estuary.

I rather object to the inclusion of "Scottish" in the list of irritations! What an obscene generalisation that is! :-) I'm the first to admit that SOME Scottish accents/dialects are a wee bit dreich, and I've stated so many times in here, but others are very attractive (and I dare to say Edinburgh is one of them!) and the fact that so many people across the globe say they "adore" the Scottish accent is testimony to that fact. So there - listen up!

Now that I've said that, Big Brother can pull the curtains down on this thread if s/he so wishes.

>>Well, I guess 90 % of Americans are using newscasters' English, or a bit changed / shifted accent (be it NCVS or CVS)...Only some areas in the South and on the East coast sound ''dialectal''.<<

Hmm... I think you are being a bit too broad here - I myself am from the Upper Midwest, and the reactions I have gotten from other English-speakers to my sound samples that I have posted has ranged from that I have a "strong accent", to that I don't sound like a native English-speaker, to that I am largely unintelligible. Hell, even people as close-by as Chicago say that we here in Milwaukee sound weird...

The majority of Americans don't speak Standard American English unless they are speaking to someone outside of their dialect (for example, a Southerner going to New York may speak more SAE and vic versa). The reason the English English dialects are so different is because they've had a longer time to change (something around 1500 years), while in America immigrants came in a roughly short period of time (100 years or so) and spread across what's now the USA, so the dialects have only had the chance to diverge for that (relatively) brief period of time.

Damian
Yes you are absolutely right - as you know it applies to some Scott accents and absolutely yes some Scott accents are quite pleasant.

George:

Thanks for that. btw it's Scot and not Scott. Scott is a personal name - either the first name for a male or a family name......as in Scott Maslen or Sir Walter Scott...poet and novelist and one of our most famous Scots.

Maybe you have Scott Maslen on your mind! :-) Sadly he has now quit The Bill as the mega cool CID police officer Phil Hunter...... but has miraculously surfaced again .....in East Enders. Even Scott isn't enough to make me want to watch East Enders though.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=Scott+Maslen&hl=en&cr=countryUK%7CcountryGB&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title