Posted on 01/31/2008 6:22:13 AM PST by marthemaria
Don't tell me Mexicans are sneaking into Norway, too!
They should make it easy for everyone: change your dialect to English so we can all understand you!
I lived in Norway for a year some years ago and spent 4 months getting fluent in the language most commonly spoken in Oslo. After mastering that, the dialects were just a matter of listening harder. It was more difficult to stay consistent with one dialect when speaking, however.
Oh yeah. Change your entire culture because some useless puffed-up looter from some University, who has never held a real job, says you should. LOL! The overweening arrogance... the insouciance of college looters never fails to amaze.
Wouldn't it just be simpler if everyone would just learn Arabic?
In all fairness, English has an amazing number of accents and idioms too.
Each region had its own dialect, but it didn’t take a whole lot to figure the common roots of the words. The literary language was just a compromise between the dialects. You say potehto, I say potahto. Plus, the muhammedans moving to Norway should understand the “root word” concept of a language. It’s central to Arabic.
I thought everyone in the US spoke English like those in the movie Fargo.
> change your dialect to English so we can all understand you <
Although your remark seems to have been made in good humor, you’d probably be interested to learn that a number of countries have long done pretty much what you recommend.
This phenomenon is most notable in Africa, where countries with dozens of local languages and dialects simply use English (or French) for all government business, for almost all newspapers, for most classroom instruction, etc. But it’s also found to one degree or another in a number of Asian countries — not to mention the worldwide use of English in aviation and other “technology-intensive” pursuits.
And Midlands American English too. Not those strange dialects spoken in England, New York or Australia.
I once heard that India has the largest English speaking population.
Yeah, but that isn’t real English - Midwestern accentless English.
That’s that “Queen’s English”...
“dialects” - “Norbonics”?
> I once heard that India has the largest English speaking population. <
Probably true.
But judged by the accents you hear from the Indian call centers whenever you dial up your computer vendor for technical support, it’s sometimes a stretch to believe their spoken language is actually English!
(Thank goodness that about half of the time, I reach a call center in Philippines rather than India!)
I was depressed one night and thinking of killing myself so I called in to a suicide prevention center. My call was routed to a call center in Pakistan and after the suicide prevention expert on the other end couldn't talk me out of it he asked me if I could drive a large truck.
How do you say, “A møøse bit my sister?”
Actually I was thinking English as (more or less) spoken by the English. We Americans seem to have far fewer accents and what we do have is less diverse.
Though what we do have can cause funny situations.
Years ago I took one of those tour group trips to Washington DC that kids take. At one point I was sitting in a cafeteria full of kids from all over and opposite this guy from Brooklyn (or someplace like that) who had an outrageous (for an American) accent.
This guy stops the conversation to tell me that I don’t have as bad an accent as the other Texans do.
Since I wasn’t yanking anyone’s chain about how many oil wells my family owned or if I rode a horse to school (sadly ‘none’ and ‘no’ ... not that some of my fellow Texans weren’t flinging the meadow muffins with vim and vigor), I guess he was serious.
Zing!
And nabbed! ^.^
Ya, you betcha!
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