Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!wang!news
From: bruck@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck)
Subject: Re: Dutch and English accents
Organization: ACTCOM - Internet Services in Israel
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 06:13:10 GMT
Message-ID: <DA3LA0.pp@actcom.co.il>
References: <D8rGGz.5FM@midway.uchicago.edu> <24MAY199512174401@cc.weber.edu> <3qt757$3dg@gordon.enea.se> <D9rt2x.6nJ@actcom.co.il> <3r54io$b3p@nic.wi.leidenuniv.nl>
Sender: news@wang.com
Lines: 33

R.Wagenaar (se9402@artemis.wi.leidenuniv.nl) wrote:
: In article <D9rt2x.6nJ@actcom.co.il>, Uri Bruck <bruck@actcom.co.il> wrote:

: >By the term British English, do you mean BBC English or the one
: >people speak on the street?         :-)
: >Uri

: Americans on the other hand are really _easy_ to understand, and there
: language doesn't seem to differ that much, depending on where a person
: comes from (in comparison to the British situation, and I have never
: spoken to someone from the south of the US)

There are also big regional differences in American English dialects.
A Boston dialect is differrent from a NewYork dialect, they are both
different from a California accent, and The Texan 'drawl' is different
than all of the above, as is a range of southern accents.
(this also does not necessarily have anything to do with race, as 
Robert suggested in another post, in this case, nurture in stronger
than nature)

: I think this is the best reason to learn American English instead of 
: British English: It is a real language, not an artificially constructed
: one.

British English is by no means an artificially constructed one, it is a 
natural language.  BBC English (or Received Pronunciation, which means
more or less the same thing, English as is heard on the radio) simply
represents a small portion of the population.

: Robert Wagenaar
: Leiden, the Netherlands

Uri Bruck
