david_h wrote: ↑Mon Sep 12, 2022 2:38 pm
GreenWood wrote: ↑Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:54 pm
However David, that is the problem, who is supposed to make allowance for who ?
I said 'allowances for each other" .... but I might speak at a more relaxed pace and be more careful with my diction.
That sort of reduces to "speaking plainly" though, and we only have plain English to go by because plain American (or any other) is not to be found.
For the listener though, well you can't really make (or do other than make?) allowance for the other because either you understand what is being said or you don't. This can be quite torturous in conversation, because I think language paints a way of being or of thinking, and if you cannot relate to it it becomes "the other" or foreign or unusual. Some brits have a straightforward way of dealing with this when speaking in foreign countries to people who don't speak English, they just speak louder and then louder again until the person they are speaking to complies or fetches help.
I wouldn't want to change local English (or American) dialects, even those I find difficult or even unpleasant to listen to.
A recent example. Here in Portugal, standing at a roundabout with family, waiting for a taxi. A car drives around the roundabout and a lad is shouting out the window as loud as possible "yer **** " for no apparent reason. The taxi arrives and the driver is a Portuguese who studies in UK . I ask her how it is there for her, and she says ok "..but they are soooo rude". I could only agree with her... but I know the british can also be very polite. So people take their pick I suppose, but finding a lot of that kind of slang ( a manner from the US?) mixed into every sentence "just isn't" (though for some reason Australians just about get away with it sounding ok) , it becomes tedious and meaningless and ruins a sense of hostility that is otherwise well enough understood.
I also still remember being teased in UK over using a hard English accent I had picked up, until I changed it, and that effectively placed a barrier to, or overode, a link to one side of my family. So to "tread lightly" is not a bad idea at all. The french erased various dialects last century by similar means... so they all speak french... and haven't too much to show for having done that... in my opinion. At national level the only real necessity is to make sure that people are able to speak a common language besides their own forms.
In EU the trend is the opposite, a divide and conquer strategy, which is heavily politicised and destabilising for countries, or what were once countries. For example, you might only allow local dialect the room to be, but to try to reintroduce those under outside political dimension is not very constructive.
In Spain Catalan language is a good example of this, and the effort to exclude Castellano from schools. No matter what seperatist ideas anyone has, it is still useful to speak the main language of one's/another's country
https://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2022/09 ... b4597.html
In other words people have to be stupid or dumbed down just to fit into a political category.
You are fortunate there Nano, I couldn't use the word "Yank" without it being taken as pejorative, which is a shame really because it is quite straightforward and its origin seems unknown. Scot, Brit, Yank etc. are easy, "An American" is long.