Hi, On 6-10-2011 19:47, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Chris Tinsley once said to me "you Americans use such quaint words such as gasoline." I told him that British English sounds quaint to us. In point of fact, most American English is older than British forms. We are the quaint ones. When people immigrate to areas with low population and few interactions, older forms are preserved. From the 17th to 19th centuries English speakers in North America were isolated and cut off from other speakers, compared to those back in England. So the pace of change in American English was slower than in England. Immigrant groups of people speaking Japanese and Chinese have preserved 19th-century versions of these languages more than the larger groups of speakers in those countries.
Indeed a similar thing occurs when I hear South-Africans speak their language, as it is the quaint version of the Dutch language so it's quite easy for me to understand them and likewise they are generally able to understand me when I speak Dutch.
Kind regards, MoB
