I love the differences between English English and American English. They add an amusing amount of eccentricity to life. True you often need to figure out what was just said but where’s the hardship in that unless you’re a translator at the UN.
My wife and I love programs produced by British TV. Without fail we DVR them for later viewing. During those viewings we ALWAYS turn on the subtitles feature which enables us to pause, rewind and listen again to what was just said. We discuss the possible meanings and see if subsequent uses of those words or expressions fit with our previous understandings. Oh my god! That sounds a lot like learning! Who knew?
I don’t think either one of us consciously throws these learnings into our everyday speech but it could help us understand others in certain situations.
We’ve lived in Hawaii for a number of years and had to learn many pidgin English words and expressions to better understand our wonderful neighbors. We welcome that opportunity also.
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What I find truly funny is that the British pronounce words like dog and coffee almost as if they were from New Jersey! (I say this with love, having been born and reared in the Garden State.) I worked so hard to lose that accent, but the snootiest of the "toffs" say dawg and cawfee. I love it!
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I'm floored by the extent to which these authors seems to be living in some alternate universe of linguistic experience. As one who grew up in the 60's when British English consisted of either incomprehensible cockney (remember that word?) slang or odd oblique upper-class talk (including deliberate mispronunciation of foreign words), I lived through the revolution of the 80's and 90's where ordinary Brits who wanted to experience the prosperity of the world market shed their accents and odd local slang and unabashedly went American. British and colonial actors/actresses showed up in Hollywood speaking with perfect American dialect; who knew that Sam Neill was really a Kiwi? If Americans are now accepting the remnants of British English which wash up on these shores it's only because English-speaking media has become a unified world market which makes that a logical process. I'm also shocked that a linguistics specialist would misunderstand that it's accent and not vocabulary which make Americans attribute great intelligence to Brits; the fact that their school system does a good job of educating their citizenry doesn't hurt either...
Without even reading the article, a comment on the format: It reminds me of high school, even junior high, which effectively kills my interest in reading it. What the heck, NYT?
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Ah, I see the column is called The Learning Network, so it must be intended for teachers and students. A little odd having it look exactly like the rest of the paper, but at least I get it now.
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