Re: American English
| From: | Joel <jjh@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, July 9, 2002, 0:31 |
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> Weirdly is that many dialects of American (Canada included)
> have kept many features older than many modern British
> English dialects.
Well, for nearly 100 years, the United States was not much more than a
colony, with not a lot of cultural development. It is in the centres of
culture where the most rapid change in languages occurs, and,
Elizibethian England certainly was one of those places. Also, not until
the Uniteds States independence were the two places really seperated
lingustically, as many immigrates were travelling to the United States
towards the end of 18th century.
> After all it has been almost 400 years since English came to
> the Americas. As well as many related lingos. So old forms
> likely can come back into American English.
Yes, I often wonder why more things between the two languages don't
differ. It HAS been 400 years, and on the lingustic scale, that is
quite a long time. Consider what happened to English between 1000 and
1400.. It went from Old English to a kind of Middle English. Yet, I
have no doubt it would be that difficult to understand someone from
1600, although I imagine the pronounciation would be somewhat different.
Joel Heikkila
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jjh@rogers.com
MSN: joelman70@hotmail.com
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