[Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglicised English British English

[Tim Starling]

Jack & Naree wrote:
> Well I don't want to live in an Americanised world; I'd rather take arms 
> against a sea of illiterate yanks, than suffer the slings and arrows of 
> their nauseating makey-uppy drawl. (and yes I do have American friends!)
>  I know it's not going to feed the starving children in Africa, but I simply 
> can't feckin' stand seeing the word "center" and "color" and hearing people 
> raising the intonation at the end of their sentences.
>  American-English is like a giant linguistic fingernail down the English 
> blackboard. 

The English upper class has been in charge of spelling standardisation
for the best part of 400 years, and they've made an absolute hash of it.
They inserted silent letters all over the place (e.g. island), and kept
historical spellings so far past their use-by date as to be bizarre
(e.g. knight). The English spelling system is a linguistic laughing
stock. Maybe it's about time we let someone else take control.

It's a pity the debate has to be so politically charged, wouldn't it be
nice if we could judge Webster's reforms by their merits?

Note that whatever it is, rising intonation is definitely not a form of
Americanisation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal

-- Tim Starling (Australian)