IT Professional

[phil_ballard]

All sad and all true.

I guess (sorry, I mean 'I suppose') we have to accept that most of the English-speaking world now speaks American, or US-English, or whatever-the-**** it's called.

Strangely, the Spanish language has the same issue. (I'm learning it as a hobby). The vast majority of Spanish-speakers in the world are not Spanish, but from Latin America and beyond. In just the same way, they've 'modernised' (butchered) the language, and can't understand why the 'minority' (in the original country) get upset about it, just because they feel they 'invented' the language (not true, of course, in either case!)

Funny ol' world .............

 

[2scoops0406]

Steady on guys we'll be onto codepages next. WRT the MicroVax 2000 this was the latest Vax our Chemistry department got at Uni, way too expensive for a mere student to possess, I mean 2 meg of RAM ....... 2 Mb

 

[AdamW]

Blimey, 2 megs?!

I work for a multinational company, and got rather pi**ed off with a particular French colleague of mine using "US English" in his work. So, I took it upon myself to learn Canadian French, just to spite him!

The interesting thing is, in many ways US English is more similar to Medieval English than Standard English. This is mirrored in Canadian French.

Whereas despite L'Academie in paris, deciding that English words are the enemy and French equivalants must be found (an e-mail is actually called "courriel", officially), Canadian French is more militant! They will sooner make up new words, in a medieval French style, rather than adopt English words.

Now, if you then look harder into this, Parisien was adopted as the official French dialect some time after the French Revolution (I told you they were obsessed with measurement and standardisation!)

In the UK, our language was standardised in the 17th century with the introduction of the English bible which brough about received pronunciation (RP)

Anyway, French colleague didn't understand Canadian French. Point was made, he started writing in English.

 

[kendor]

Hexactly!