In such a case, it's a foreign word to millions of "Commonwealth-English" speakers (though not necessarily all), and unintelligible - it has to be translated.
I come from Arizona. We have a plant there. It's called a Saguaro (Pronounced sa-wah-ro). Yes, unusual terms will always have to be translated for people outside of their realm, be it a faucet, plant, or wind (such as Mariah).
What!~? I come from Arizona, and HERE we pronounce it "cigar". In fact, we also write it "cigar". But it's not a plant. It's something you smoke. However, we do have a plant which we call "sahuaro". Or "saguaro". It's confusing.
And one can't forget Mexican food -- apparently a lot of people from back East don't know how to say "tortilla", "fajita", "tamale", "quesadilla"... and then of course we have other weird plants like the cholla. If you tell an out-of-stater to go to "cholla road", they'll probably be looking for "choya". Even a lot of locals stumble over "creosote" (I mean, really, nobody talks about creosote as much as they talk about cholla or saguaro). Or javelina... or... well, we must have other stuff people don't get. Like the fact that after living here for 5 years, you should get an Arizona licence plate for your car... or that right turn on red is legal... or that speed limit signs are meant to be followed, rather than blown off. Or that 90 degrees is _not_ hot.
Maybe a young man might ask you "what's going down", and you might be illiterate, He might ask you "where be the shizznat?" and you might be illiterate.
You would *still* be the one illiterate in modern english, not he. You have not kept up on your studies, if you cannot translate the above.
Ahh, see, in good old Englalound when they say "Wot's up!!?!!??" they mean "What's wrong??", not "How are you?", and I'm guessing when they say "How you hangin'?" they're generally asking it of somebody who's just been hanged.
Americans might want to call their language "English", but the term is inappropriate, because it already exists for a language that is autochthonous to England, whence the name comes.
When the englanders and amis can speak english, the world will be much better. (riiight)
I personally think the Amis should continue to speak Amis. I think it's tragic that they're currently undergoing gradual language shift to Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese while losing their native language. Why should they speak English?
I, for one, think Amis is a beautiful language. And really the only time I've heard it is in that song "Rumadiw kita mapulong"... but it looks funky when it's written, and that's cool too.
I propose the fairest and most pragmatic solution is that the English Wikipedia be duplicated into two and that these two are renamed: English (Commonwealth) English (American)
I propose you fork off. The code is there. Go for it.
I also propose he fork off, or maybe that he go fork himself, where "fork" is pronounced in an RP way but surrounded by words pronounced in a Scottish accent.
Mark