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Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

From:Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 26, 2003, 11:47
From: "Joe" <joe@...>
Subject: Re: Probability of Article Replacement?


> It's odd...colloquial British speech is so far removed from standard
english
> that it's barely similar. In TV programmes(even soaps) it's hugely watered > down. And my dialect(which is what I'm taking these examples from), is > pretty RP-ish. The standard greeting in British youth culture is
'alright?'.
> It generally sounds like [O@i?], with a rising tone. I sometimes wonder
how
> (or if) Americans can understand us Brits having a conversation with each > other in allegro colloquial speech.
I'll have to say that for me, BBC-English is usually quite understandable, through the sort of exposure to it one gets over here. But when I was in England, I had a very hard time understanding much of the ordinary conversational stuff. And not just youth/street sort of things, but sometimes talking to people in various shops, or at the inn. The second best part about Cymru was that I could understand the English spoken there much better, though I did run across two old gentlemen speaking Cymraeg... You might be interested to know this: I often thought that BBC English was quite similar to American English and that that's why we could understand it. But in talking with some friends who are here from Mexico (and whose American English comprehension is _very_ good), they mentioned that they had a _very_ hard time understanding what Brits were saying. We were watching some movies, and one of them asked me what we called the particular language they were speaking. They were under the impression that it was some closely related language like Catalan is to Castillian (Spanish). And by the way, the best part about Cymru was the food, though after a week in England, it's not hard to find better food. Though finally seeing signs saying "Croeso y Cymru" with little tiny English below was pretty cool. And the castles... And the monastery we visited... All right, so it was all really great.

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Tristan <kesuari@...>