Tweet Round-up: 28th June 2021
A rather focused round-up for the new week, about a single topic: Differences between US and UK English…
It often seems to be one of Twitter’s most persistent conversations — the differences between US and UK English (with other English types jumping in)…
Some US accounts are baffled by the UK way to pronounce “ts”:
The UK, of course, takes issue with some US pronunciation:
But aside from pronunciation debates, there are lots of words in British English that don’t appear in the US, and vice versa, with some words being used differently.
Grammarly decided to enter the fray on Sunday afternoon, with a reworking of a 2016 article on Briticisms and North Americanisms.
I am not sure I agree, as a Brit, with some of the remarks made in this article. For example, I am not convinced that anyone in the UK uses the word “geezer” to mean a gangster nowadays, but as a mildly derogatory word for an old man. Also “how do you do” is so out of fashion that it is practically dead.
But still. UK and US English differences can be useful to focus on.
The internet has changed a lot of the way we interact with language and speech. Working as an EFL teacher, you have to be familiar with different forms of English.
We might want to stick to our own words, or our own way of saying things, but really, in my opinion, we need to abandon that attitude.
In ye olden days, at least in regards to accent, we had the Trans-Atlantic :
Here’s the video mentioned in the Tweet:
This way of speaking was rather elitist and may have been indebted to the technological and social norms of the time. Thus…it died. Aside from in Frasier repeats, we don’t hear many examples today.
Could we perhaps conceive, in these hyper-connected times, of a new Trans-Atlantic accent or way of speaking? Or perhaps stretch pronunciation norms to include speakers from the Pacific, Africa and the Indian Ocean?
What do you think?
