Why can’t the English.

[iamlost]

Why don’t they understand me?! [theregister.com]

According to comparison website Uswitch the Alexa/Google “smart speakers“ finds folks in Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Belfast to be largely unintelligible...

Which may or may not be a surprise to a Yorkie...

An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set a good example
to people whose English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely disappears.
Why, in America, they haven't used it for years!
—-My Fair Lady

Note: that last line probably explains the crux of the problem...

[lucy24]

Show me a Glaswegian asking with a straight face “Why don’t they understand me?” and I’ll show you a Glaswegian who needs to get out more.

[NickMNS]

This is not unique to the English language or the the English. It applies to most if not all languages.

Small anecdote:
I lived and worked in Norway for a year. I lived in small town and worked on a large project that had workers from all over Norway and Europe. The Norwegian language is best described as a mix of both German and English, but with it's own pronunciation. I speak both English and German, so I was able to understand Norwegian, written was fairly easy, spoken far more difficult. The biggest challenge in understanding spoke Norwegian was that the language varied so much from person to person depending on what region of the country they were from. In fact there were significant variation between people that lived in neighboring fjords. They couldn't even agree on how to count, some count like in English "twenty two", tens first units last. But others counted like in German "two and twenty". Needless to say I struggled.

[blend27]

"two and twenty" is 220.

...and and is what &amps; then?

[lucy24]

You want confusion? Consider that in sensible languages like German and Norwegian, “half eight” means half an hour before eight. And then the English come along and want it to mean half an hour after eight.

[NickMNS]

@Lucy24 Yes absolutely right, I have a good friend that is English (UK expat), he always says I'll meet you at half 6, to which I always respond is that 5:30 or 6:30?

[tangor]

Chuckles. Even in the US "half six" will always be 6:30 ... no five is involved. I wonder where the confusion comes from, their side or the other?

I suppose that's why there's two kinds of English, UK and US?

I suspect that any language has idiosyncrasies, which can explain why g can't let folks "google" what they mean, not what g thinks they mean.

[ronin]

I suppose that's why there's two kinds of English, UK and US?

Two kinds?!

Singlish? Manglish? Taglish? Jamaican Patois? Bajan Creole?

There are many dozens of kinds of English.

Currently, there are approximately 75 territories where English is spoken either as a first language (L1) or as an unofficial or institutionalized second language (L2) in fields such as government, law and education. It is difficult to establish the total number of Englishes in the world, as new varieties of English are constantly being developed and discovered.

Source: [en.wikipedia.org...]

[coothead]

Half six should be considered extremely sloppy English.
Those of us in England, who have no great desire to omit
essential words in speech, would always use half past six.

birdbrain

[lucy24]

I've actually never heard the “half six” locution except on British TV series with working-class characters. Never heard it at all in the US. (In fact I can’t remember when I last heard “half past”. It’s consistently “six-thirty”--or, if you prefer, “five-thirty”, even while we are perfectly happy to say “quarter* to”.)

two kinds of English

Compare Canadian, which comes in two forms: one that’s fairly similar to U.S. English, and another that vaguely resembles French.


* I am currently working on a 1683-vintage book whose author has apparently never heard of eighths. When required by precise measurements, he’ll say things like “a quarter and half quarter of an inch” or “half an Inch and half a quarter of an Inch”.

[coothead]

I can’t remember when I last heard “half past”.

In the county of Surrey, England one
might hear it spoken quiet frequently. :)

birdbrain

[NickMNS]

@lucy24
As a Canadian that spans both forms, let me state that we never say "half six" yet it is common to "half past six" also "quarter to" but less so "quarter past". As to the French one says "six heures et demi" which literally translate to "six hours and a half". also "moins quart" (less a quarter) and "et quart" (and a quarter). Contrary to the English it is the norm to use those terms, saying six fifteen, would be understood but sound odd in French. So it is entirely plausible that our English is influenced by the French. Maybe @iamlost wants to chime in from the Western Canadian perspective.

[lucy24]

In the county of Surrey, England

Yes, that’s what I meant: people in the US don’t seem to say it any more. Six, quarter past six, six-thirty, quarter to seven. Go figure.

[tangor]

Chuckles remain.

How many versions of English are in your embedded spelchkrs?

[lucy24]

How many versions of English are in your embedded spelchkrs?

SubEthaEdit offers five: U.S. English, English (Aspell), Australian English, British English, Canadian English. They’re supposed to have Latin, but I’ve never found it, which annoys me.

No, I don’t know what dialect they speak in Aspell. I do know that I once had occasion to spellcheck an American academic book from 1921 or so (at the time, at the very edge of Public Domain). I tried Canadian English and it worked a treat.

Unfortunately there is no setting for “British English Before The Mid-19th Century”, before -ise and -our spellings became canonicalized, so I spend a lot of time clicking the “It’s not a mistake so shut up about it” button.