American English the standard

[obscene]

American English makes my piss boil.

[Eric Mc]

5potTurbo said:

Adenauer said:

I couldn't agree more with the OP, I think it's a bloody disgrace.

Only last night my daughters told me that their English teacher had given them a few bad marks on a test, because they were supposed to answer the questions in American English, WTF???

My kids are English, speak excellent English, and get marked down as being incorrect by a German fking teacher of English in a German fking school, because he is trying to teach the children American fking English, in Adenau, which is a two horse town full of inbred ginger Germans, FFS!!!!!

I work for a German owned company, the company language for business being English. I am repeated hassled by colleagues who bastardise my written documents because I REFUSE to switch Word to American English, so words end "se" instead of "ze", and "our" instead of "or", etc.

I have informed my colleagues time and time again that as a Brit I will not change my written English, especially as I already have to 'translate' documents received from 'Franglais', 'Spanglish', 'Germish'....
I already speak French, German and Luxembourgish with my colleagues so they don't have to speak in English with me if they don't wish to.

My two children are in a local primary school and my youngest's teacher likes to practice her English with us and our daughter. She doesn't mind being corrected by an 8 year old!

I think you will find that the "se" and "ze" styles is not an American English V' English English issue. I have read plenty of UK published articles - some pre WW2 era - which happilly sprinkle the "ze" form throughout the piece.

I do however, get a bit worked up on certain wordfs, such as "program" or "license" (when used as a noun rather than a verb).

[SGirl]

At our son's infant school, one of the teachers was trying to set up a spelling test for the kiddiwinks in Year 1, and to do this she chose "linked" words: in this instance, "say", "tray", "play" and "gray". Obviously, she wanted the children to learn how to spell the "ay" sound and chose "gray" because she couldn't think of anything else. (In her defence, her English was excellent and she knew she was using an American spelling.)

The ensuing furore couldn't have been predicted. When I got there in the morning, the teacher was being told off in no uncertain terms by the Head for daring to teach Americanisms. Turns out half a dozen parents had already mentioned it to her that morning - but one irate parent had bypassed the teacher and gone straight to the Boss. Hence the telling-off.

Anyway. I think it's safe to say that at our son's now former school, British spellings are safe for the time being.

When I'm translating, I often have to check whether clients want UK or US spellings and style. I'm often asked to translate into "International English" as well (i.e. a kind of simplified version of English which uses neutral terms and phrases which are easy for non-native English speakers to understand). But I still have to check whether they want UK or US spelling!

[Cock Womble 7]

Odie said:

I'll see if I can find an example of how they form sentences and questions as they put words in a strange order.

I remember an example I was given at school:

An Englishman would say "I am walking down the street."

A German would say "I am down the street walking."

[jeff m]

I live in the States so I adopt a When in Rome attitude, but I still hate the brain stopping generated words like "dramaticalisation"
I've also found many do not use get, bring, take and fetch correctly, often using one for all occaisions.

On a positive note had the US chosen some other language to basxxxdise English may not be the force it is today, and trying to estabish the price of a XX in a foreign language is beyond most.