american (mis)use of english - the queen responds!

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... nguage-usa

Hate to say this but the only queens that are important enough for Americans to listen to are the ones in the fashion industry. I hope that did not come off as rude.

Hrm...I always thought of, "I could care less," as meaning, "I could care less, but I don't." As in, it is possible that I could care less about something, but I can't be bothered to. Doesn't matter, as I'm more inclined to say, "I couldn't care less," myself.

I say this only as a holier-than-thou English scholar: If the British don't like American idioms, then should not use them. There are many Englishes in the world and American English is quite innocuous. Australian English is bizarre and the English in Singapore is incomprehensible (in my underappreciated opinion).

Gee whiz. "I like my language, and everyone else's language sucks." Nothing provincial or biased about you, eh?

I didn't mean to offend, but sometimes I can't understand a thing you Aussie are saying.

That guy sounds like Austin Powers, Baby!

The Brits can criticize us Yanks when they have their own house in order.

In the little Republic that I live in, papers and magazines sell far more copies when there is a (British) Royal story on the front cover. The Queen Mother's Memorial edition of the Sun was a best-seller.

I thought that the unschooled peoples of the far-flung provinces were similarly besotted by royalty.

Meh. You can't "misuse" a language like that. Different dialects exist. It's only who has the power, that makes one dialect "proper" and the others "improper". It's just snobbery to claim otherwise.

The United States has its own royalty, in its own way. Some say that the Kennedys are the closest thing that America has had to a royal family. Others might say that the fascination and adoration that those across the pond direct towards royalty is focused more on Hollywood stars in the US.

Unless there's some huge scandal taking place around the British royalty, I think it's safe to say that the majority of the United States population pays little attention to them.

Actually, my apartment is a little in the messy side.

There are more native English speakers in the US, Canada, Austrailia, and New Zealand. The majority should decide what is correct and what is not. Therefore we are all speaking correct versions of English the British should be speaking what the majority is speaking. The United States-Canada has the numbers so you guys are speaking North American. If Austrailia-New Zealand had the larger population what would you call their form of English Pan Asian?

Yep and the important thing is that it's understood by enough people to be useful, otherwise it doesn't facilitate communication of ideas, but people are creative and are constantly making up new ways of saying things. If they catch on they become part of a language/dialect. Prescriptivist grammar is just snobbery, but it can be useful to learn a certain common dialect if one wants resources accessible through people who speak it.

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

oh wow

That is hilarious.

I HATE 'erbs' for herbs. Ggsghsjdtkrl

me gonna talk pretty some day.