Questions for our American friends

[spoonfedmonkey]

Originally Posted by TCO95

Of course if you took a person from Scotland, Newfoundland and Texas and left them to chat they would all be speaking English but they might actually need an interpreter.

I know this is meant to be funny, but it brings up an interesting political point:

by linguistic definition, this means that there are different "dialects" in English.

But we talk about English accents rather than dialects.

Why?

The answer is political.

[Mal Hombre]

I was actually trying to be mildly amusing but it got lost on the way.

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

I was actually trying to be mildly amusing but it got lost on the way.

Reality does that a lot.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

To the British ear, American and Canadian accents can be difficult to tell apart

There's said to be a failsafe way of recognising a Canadian - make him say "xxxxxx" - but I can never remember what it is

Can anyone help?

[dohupa]

Originally Posted by brianwp

....Or looks, no doubt a good looking girl with big knockers will get better tips than other less fortunate girls....

No matter the profession, a big bust always opens doors to the big league. I recall in my first job as a Jr Software Developer we had a tall blonde with an incredible rack. No chance for us poor lads obviously - still I've experienced the best peeping in my life ever.

Anywyay, 10 years later we all had changed jobs; bumped to an ex-colleague downtown - we go for a coffee and do small talk about the good old days. Turns out she was getting paid 10% more than the rest of us.

Hell - with such looks and those 2 babies ready to burst out of her top; I'd give her a raise in a second. Along with my phone number that is...

[dbailey]

Originally Posted by dohupa

No matter the profession, a big bust always opens doors to the big league. I recall in my first job as a Jr Software Developer we had a tall blonde with an incredible rack. No chance for us poor lads obviously - still I've experienced the best peeping in my life ever.

Anywyay, 10 years later we all had changed jobs; bumped to an ex-colleague downtown - we go for a coffee and do small talk about the good old days. Turns out she was getting paid 10% more than the rest of us.

Hell - with such looks and those 2 babies ready to burst out of her top; I'd give her a raise in a second. Along with my phone number that is...

Tell me she wore A line pencil skirts, pumps with 2 inch heels and 5 denier hosiery and I am ready to make it 20% ( I am not a breast man)

to keep on track.

FM shoes over here are called Court Shoes, is this the same as the American 'Pumps' or even 'high heeled sneakers'

Basically the sort of high heeled shoe with a 2 inch or greater heel and a flat sole that shows toe cleavage or arch flesh..............shudder.........I need to be on my own for just a short while now chaps...

[dohupa]

FM shoes stands for Fuck Me shoes - right? High-healed sneakers??? LMFAO

[Jeff Vader]

I thought it was FMB's as in F Me Boots ?

Does that mean you can get F Me Socks ??

[Jeff Vader]

Originally Posted by spoonfedmonkey

I know this is meant to be funny, but it brings up an interesting political point:

by linguistic definition, this means that there are different "dialects" in English.

But we talk about English accents rather than dialects.

Why?

The answer is political.

To me a different accent is the same words said with different intonation e.g. the previously mentioned about/aboot with Americans/Canadians

A dialect is using different words for the same thing e.g. G'day/Hello/Hi/Howya all of which mean the same thing but are typical of one English-speaking country over another. Sometimes the meaning is clear, sometimes the meaning is not.

Danish has a high number of dialects partly due to the high number of islands in the country and also the fact that there will be Germanic influences from the south and Norwegian and Swedish influences from the north leading to differences in local dialects.

Combine the two e.g. speak to a Glaswegian and it's confusing. I have Scottish friends and despite knowing them for years sometimes they need subtitles. Does that mean yes, no good, bad, hello or what ???

[spoonfedmonkey]

I was just making an observation regarding what linguistic scholars consider to be the difference between "accent", "dialectic", and "language". In English, people rarely say something like "He spoke in a Canadian dialectic". In fact, I've never heard anyone say such a thing or anything even approaching it. Not even linguists.

On the other hand, we always read that Cantonese and Mandarin are two "dialects" of Chinese. The fact is that Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible--completely different languages, not "accents" or "dialects".

On the third hand, Portuguese and Spanish are different "languages", but the people can generally understand each other. In Italy there are hundreds of local "dialects" that outsiders cannot understand. In Germany, High German is the official "accent" that only people with a hundred or two square kilometers of each other actually speak.

Meanwhile, if a bus driver from Edinburgh sat down with a bus driver from Houston to have a beer...well, yes, it would help to have an interpreter.

It amuses me greatly that a huge percent of U.S. airport workers are African Americans, meaning that it is nearly impossible for someone traveling to the U.S. to avoid trying to understand their "accent"; yet black English is not taught in your average English as a Second Language textbook, so if you have only had school English good luck trying to understand that customs official....

So by "political" I mean that the way we actually use the terms "accent", "dialect" and "language" depend not on any scientific definitions, but how we perceive our commonalities and differences within that larger community that shares the...a..."language". Or accent. Or dialect. Or whatever it is.

I have heard Germans say with a completely straight face that they can speak both English and "Amerikanisch". In fact, on the publisher's information page of a book translated from a book originally published in the U.S., you will find that the book has been translated from the "Amerikanisch", even if the author is British. Figure that one out! Now, are they implying that English and American are different languages? Or different dialects?

I have no idea what they do with books translated from Chinese.

Personally, I'm so confused about all of this that I highly recommend we all take a break to have a beer or two and look at some porn. Then we'll all come back here and elaborate on the relationship between tips and tits....