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Tlaloc wrote:I have no cultural agenda. My concern about English dialects is that some of them have diverged enough so that they're incomprehensible to the speakers of others.
Tlaloc wrote:Almost no American would know the meaning of the word "fullsome".
LukeM wrote:Are there really that many people that have trouble with British writing? It hardly seems a high expectation to have of a readership.
NZcaver wrote:LukeM wrote:Are there really that many people that have trouble with British writing? It hardly seems a high expectation to have of a readership.
In my experience living in different states around the US for over a decade - yes. Recently I've been watching an on-demand British series with American friends, and regularly have to translate/explain terms. A few of the more colo(u)rful idioms I even have to look up myself, as obviously UK has some different colloquialisms to NZ. I sometimes dabble in technical writing and proofing, and while mostly US-centric I do consciously try to adjust terms to be more easily understandable by the broader English language population.
Phil Winkler wrote:My mother sent me this book when I serving in Vietnam with the Aussies.
http://www.textfiles.com/humor/strine.txt
It is a hoot. And it helps to say them out loud to understand the definition.
NZcaver wrote: I sometimes dabble in technical writing and proofing, and while mostly US-centric I do consciously try to adjust terms to be more easily understandable by the broader English language population.
Phil Winkler wrote:My mother sent me this book when I serving in Vietnam with the Aussies.
http://www.textfiles.com/humor/strine.txt
GroundquestMSA wrote:Any examples of terms that cause confusion in such settings?
C. K. Stead wrote of NZ English, calling it a "carefully modulated murmer" or something like that. He says that New Zealanders are insecure about their accent and its similarity to Australian speech. "If you don't move your lips or your jaw much, some of the sound tends to go up into the nasal cavities, and what happens to it there is seldome pleasant. If, as I do, you speak New Zealand English, certain kinds of orotund utterance are not possible without faking, so it's best to just aim for clarity and confidence."
NZcaver wrote:Just don't get me started on the varied accents and verbal peculiarities of these United States, slack-jawed slow-drawling yokels and all. Y'all.
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