Who Speaks English?
I wonder if my day could have been any more hectic than it was. I was at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) the whole day till about 6 and then i rushed back home just to find that i had forgotten my house keys and was locked out of the house. (I am most definitely human.) So, i had the wonderful opportunity to ponder on the course of my life for about half an hour, before my parents got back and i was finally able to get ready and rush out for my next engagement.
Anyway, somewhere along the way, i was wondering...the British speak English and the American's speak what? American English? But doesn't that kind of defy the purpose of the word English in the first place? So what? Does that mean we have British English and American English? Why not just have English and American or something like that...kind of like how we have the Malay language (Malay), and the Indonesian language (Indonesian). The two languages are mostly similar, yet different in a few ways. But we don't have Malaysian Indonesian and Indonesian Indonesian or Indonesian Malay and Malaysian Malay, so what's with British English and American English?
Well, i was just pondering...wondering 'why'? But you know, i will probably still refer to the language spoken in America as English and differentiate it with the language spoken in England, by calling it American English...but will i ever know why?
posted by daenielle @ 10:24 AM
4 Comments:
John: Well, even in England, they have many different types of 'English', like Scouse is one. Or go further up north, the Irish or the Welsh.. Omg.
Although it still is English, but it's the way how they've been speaking througout generations, so much so it becomes part of their culture. It's the same with Chinese, where we have Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese. And if you observe closely, some words are nearly similar except spoken slightly differently.
Proper English is, when someone finally tries and put it all together and try and make a formal language out of it. Like Bahasa Melayu. Try and go to Kelantan, you'll barely understand a word of BM there. :P
hehe..quite a funny thought...well with my knowledge of english(which is still quite limited i must say)im able to enlighten your pondering a little
as you know, english originated from england...from the anglo-saxons...in the medieval periods...english was in a state which to us now would seem as a very foreign tongue...for example a very common word as "before" was a different word then called "ere" (middle english, not old english)......to make it more clearer: the word favor/favour
in middle english was "fevere" (from old french) ..has evolved to...in two different countries...in britain its called "favour" and america its called "favor" ...this is the evolution of the tongue
thus we now use terms such as British English(which btw i prefer using) and American English to differenciate....its core however is same...to the learned eyes..its difference can be seen...its not differenciated because of its way of speech, but for its evolving(eg; spellings, usage of words) to the states they(Brit n american eng) are in now....
So the word "english" itself is vital! to mark its birth...although in the evolution of the language much have changed...and besides...its rather silly to name anew a same tongue..just coz its used slightly different..yet such a differance must be acknowleged thus..the term Brit n American English....
so..basicly..the separating of the malay tongue and indonesian is quite silly..not the differenciation of English ....and well...the malay tongue borrows the the English script(letters)...so hehe..i dont think its such a good idea to compare English to malay :)
However..what I have stated here..is just one of the many factors why those two are separated and named differently...
Ah well...I thought about it too But I think its the slang and certain spellings dat differs btw them. In Singapore, we speak Singlish despite havin campaigns by the govt to speak proper English.. Since John says that in England, ppl speak differently, well the nxt thing u should think of is WAT the hell is proper English??? What Cambridge or Oxford English? aniwaes I like ur blog..
in reference to john's point - the main language spoken in england is english. the regional variations such as in liverpool or east london are more properly seen as dialects.
in places such as wales there is a native language that has been overtaken by english. though there is a movement to re-establish the native language and so there is a welsh language tv station, signs are in welsh and in eglish etc.
the main difference (it seems to me) between english english and american english is in the odd differences in spelling (americans seem to hate the letter U and some of the more nit picky rules of grammer.
of course the really interesting variation on english has to be that of txt eng. and some of the blogs i read through blogspot i can almost recognise the english but not quite!
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