Joey Learning English

[Sylph]

You've got a good point with yankie English, It has been nicely simplified and some of the idiosyncrasies born of history have been ironed out making it easier for non-natives to learn.

However Traditional English is steeped in ancient arts and culture in a way the others simply aren't. From "the WHO" and the "beatles" to "harry potter" and "Dr Who" British English still saturates American and global culture. Plus we will always have good old Billy Shakespeare.

Also Americans still struggle with metaphors.
"Hold down the fort." "Could care less."

:mad:

Actually while I'm at it.
Oi Americans!
It's Maths not Math, the word you're shortening is Mathmatics, it's not a singular noun. Oh and stop pronouncing Herb as Erb. The H isn't silent and we didn't fight the 100 years war just to have our language bastardised with French.

Otherwise top notch job on removing the annoying bits especially all those U's all over the place.

God Save the queen.
*salute*

Darlin, I'd hardly say American English has been simplified. Merely modified.

There is a difference twixt them two words hun.


Aside from pronunciation, the language retains the exact same, if not more, "difficulties", that European English has.


To me, a Native speaker of Neither, both varieties sound and read, very awkwardly and honestly, overly wordy. But that is neither here nor there.
I grew up with our variety of English, which is what you can truely call "simplified", in the sense that words are curbed or altogether changed for easier speech.

However, this doesn't negate the fact that America has more English speakers, and so therefore realistically have monopoly over the English language as a whole. In the Global sense.


Nearly all non-British learners of English, learn American, simply for it's more global use.

Even us here on our various west Indian islands, as we retain the British education system (more or less), as I can read and write both Englishes proficiently, tho I tend to prefer to use more American colloquial terms but British spelling.

Actually as a side anecdote;

Centre - is usually how we'd describe the literal Center of something like a Building (Business Centre)

Whereas every other scenario we use "Center".

So we even assign different significances to the different spellings.


But overall, European languages simply have the unfortunate luck of suffering from outnumbered speakers, of those in the countries in which were colonized by them.


Like I said. English, Spanish, Portuguese and French notably.