American English

Well Justin listened to quite the eye (ear?) opening radio show yesterday on good old WNYC about the differences between British English and American English. Listen to the show here. It's about 30 minutes.



Fascinatingly, the -ize ending used to be British English until they got all Frenchified and moved to -ise, same with the move from -er to -re. The Americans hung on to the original spelling. The British pronunication of dropping syllables in words ending with -ory and -ary (eg lav-A-tory to lav-rat-ry)only started happening in England in the 1800s: the Americans stuck with the old pronunciation. Basically British English was changing: Americans didn't change it.

Shockingly, the English used to pronounce all their 'ers' instead of 'ahs' (eg mothER instead of mothAH) and so the radio presenter states that performing Shakespeare with an American accent is closer to the original pronunciation than an English accent now!

So all these people who claim the Americans stuffed up the English language (and I was one of them) can now quietly know that its closer to an older form of English and not a series of bastardisations. They're not so bad after all, hey?