Do Americans speak English?

fiveub

fiveub

fiveub

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This is a minor thing that sometimes annoys me...

Americans sometimes say they speak English... But, they don't? They speak American? - We speak differently to them surely because our language differs?

Also, this happens a lot on-line when you select languages, it has the American flag with the word 'English' under it.

Does anyone else notice this? Or get a bit annoyed by it? Because in theory it is wrong! - Or maybe I am just very easy to be annoyed, or I am the one that is wrong!? :)
 
American English doesn't differ enough from British English for it to warrant being called a new language. Look at South America - they speak Spanish and Portugese, which vary more than American English does, yet they're still called Spanish and Portugese.

But yes, it does irritate me. I'm not American and I don't like being treated as such.
 
They speak English, write in a different language ;) Well same language but different spelling.
 
When I was in Korea, someone asked me where I was from. "England", I replied. "Oh, you speak very good English". I killed them. Damned Americanisation.
 
Oh come on. It's pretty much identical except for some different spellings and a few different words. I've got no problem spelling in either the American or British form.

TBH some accents in the UK are nearly incomprehensible to me, I would have thought you'd question whether they spoke English; as you can easily understand nearly all American dialects yet the same really can't be said for England.
 
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5UB said:
Americans sometimes say they speak English... But, they don't? They speak American?
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They do, they speak a dialect of English. If they weren't speaking English then you wouldn't understand a word they say.
 
That's not entirely true, Portuguese speakers can understand some of what Spanish speakers say (though interestingly, not the other way round), but yes generally if its another language the majority of it won't be intelligible.
 
Even some dialects of English are pretty incomprehensible, one of the most common dialects is called Panglish and it is pretty...different. lol
It's just a loose version of English but it does exist in Eastern Asian Countries.

If you go back a few hundred years to the people who spoke orignial English they would have no idea what we were saying, and we would probably find it difficult too, even with literature from that time.

It's just the natural evolution of boh language and society...just go with the flow, just be glad that it's changing because it's the dominant language and not the invading forces one...
 
Mr-White said:
there are some dialects in england that are harder to grasp than american lol

MW
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Exactly...ones like scouser, scottish, and cornish..those 3 are the worst and as much as i hate having to say it...i have to keep asking those people to repeat what they just said.

Americans do speak english, just not Queens english or whatever its called.
 
Of course they speak English; just different dialects of it (American English encompasses many individual dialects).

And if you're going to be picky about the flags that are used to represent languages, then it should really be St George's Cross for English, not the Union Flag!

gurusan said:
Oh come on. It's pretty much identical except for some different spellings and a few different words. I've got no problem spelling in either the American or British form.

TBH some accents in the UK are nearly incomprehensible to me, I would have thought you'd question whether they spoke English; as you can easily understand nearly all American dialects yet the same really can't be said for England.
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Mr-White said:
there are some dialects in england that are harder to grasp than american lol

MW
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Exactly!
 
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