Haha. I live in SF. I come from Atlanta, though, so people looked at me funny when I would talk. I somehow am able to understand deep southern accents. I luuuvv Uhmurrka. My favorite NY accent joke was a friend from Manhattan who would pronounce it MahaAan. No T’s.
I don’t understand much of that AOL-ese headline, although I use AIM plenty. How weird. Maybe I just happen to speak to the small part of the population that still decided to spell their words. THings that peeve me are things like “kewl” and other deliberate misspellings. It just seems pointless. I seem to get strange looks when talking to non-californians for saying “hella” or “Back up of my cheetoes!” So i guess I can’t talk. I wait for the day when ebonics become mainstream. “Are” will be replaced by “be.” Mean will be replaced by “shady” and other such words. Some verbs will just completely disappear…
Euro-english has a distinct flavor it’s going to evolve in a language of its own (just like pidgin!)
as for the accent the late yasser Arafat would have made a fortune selling CDs teaching english to french people: they are all saying they understand only Yasser’s English!
I would rather hear “hey Misterrrr come into my haus good prrrrice forrr you!” than a big bully howling: “waintchawatchawatchadoin’”
And had the largest amount of bicycles, and the largest amount of traffic signs per square km. This movie has a good view on both. This is a real (temp) situation right now in Amsterdam. No kidding.
Concerning the Euro-English:
There is no difference between the pronounce of but and butt!
That links to an article about the history of English. To properly resurrect this thread and bring some balance to it (how appropriate for unicyclists) go here for a study/forecast of the future of English.
Klaas Bil (living in the past, present and future)