English Language: American or British?
from friends and relatives living in the States. The recent policy, enacted by the US, of the visa program to “recruit” 50,000 new immigrants to the States each year has added to the attempt to migrant to the US. The long-term reaction of the large migration to the States on the Americanization of English in native countries of the immigrants is obvious; the immigrants continue to communicate with their friends and relatives back in their homeland, and many eventually come back and settle.
Told above is the story of the baby version of a English language that has grown and is threatening to shake the domination of the mother language. This phenomenon could hardly been seen elsewhere. Neither the case with Canadian, Belgian or Swiss French in relation to the French of France, nor with Latin American Spanish or Portuguese in relation to the Spanish or Portuguese of Spain or Portugal, respectively. The speaker, and especially the learner, of English is now faced with the task of managing the co-existence of the two competing languages. They are, however, not problem-free.
The problems
It is over simplified to say, like M. Mathews in the introduction above, that American English and British English are “so overwhelmingly alike” or, like Quirk equally cited above, that “even in matters of pronunciation, it is difficult to find many British and American absolute distinctions”. It really depends here on what quantity Quirk considers to be many. Already, the list of pronunciation differences that he and Marckwardt themselves give affects hundreds of words, which can be considered to be major, by any standard.&nb 《English Language: American or British?》
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Told above is the story of the baby version of a English language that has grown and is threatening to shake the domination of the mother language. This phenomenon could hardly been seen elsewhere. Neither the case with Canadian, Belgian or Swiss French in relation to the French of France, nor with Latin American Spanish or Portuguese in relation to the Spanish or Portuguese of Spain or Portugal, respectively. The speaker, and especially the learner, of English is now faced with the task of managing the co-existence of the two competing languages. They are, however, not problem-free.
The problems
It is over simplified to say, like M. Mathews in the introduction above, that American English and British English are “so overwhelmingly alike” or, like Quirk equally cited above, that “even in matters of pronunciation, it is difficult to find many British and American absolute distinctions”. It really depends here on what quantity Quirk considers to be many. Already, the list of pronunciation differences that he and Marckwardt themselves give affects hundreds of words, which can be considered to be major, by any standard.&nb 《English Language: American or British?》