Quote:
Originally Posted by Kronnie  The English language in any form has been around for about 1000 years or so.
Old english, middle english and so forth ( notice the one factor that remains, English ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
I think wiki says it best and far more precisly |
Old English is unrecognisable to English-speakers, post-1066 and the beginnings of something we can understand is starting to appear.
American English not only sounds and spells differently, it is spoken more informally than the rest of the English-speaking world, and not BBC-standard English either. When writing novels, dialogue for Australians or other English-speaking nationalities is quite different to the dialogue for Americans. I have only written one scene featuring Americans and one Australian, and I played up the dialogue and cultural differences quite a bit, turning it into something quite amusing. Compared to Australians, Americans are very much master-servant, and this cultural trait often gets them into trouble when travelling internationally. For example: you would never go into a shop in Australia and ask for assistance without 'excuse me, can you please...' or in France with 'Pardon monsieur, Je voudrais (whatever) si'l vous plais.'
Stephen King noted this in a book he wrote called 'on writing', where he thought a throw-away television advertisement in Britain had more formality than an evening television news bulletin in the United States.
hehehe
