Text 20700, 55 rader
Skriven 2011-07-13 01:11:16 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Erroneous English Assumptions
=====================================
Hello Robert,

On Tuesday July 12 2011 12:01, you wrote to me:

 RW>>> All you've done with your arguement is make things more complicated
 RW>>> than they need to be. The word No‰l and Noel are pronounced the same
 RW>>> whether in French, Spanish or English. The difference is that an
 RW>>> English speaker knows that the 'e' is pronounced the same as an '‰'

 MV>> Native English speaker David Drummond tells another story.

 RB> You call David a "native speaker"?

What else would could I call him?

 RB> Well, they do speak a kind of English in Australia and NZ...

As they do in mamy other parts of the world. As has been noted before, there is
no "unified English".  Ther are many variants.

 RB> but why would you consider that superior to the kind of English they
 RB> speak in the USA?

I don't. But I do not consider it the other way around either. Yankee English
and Down-Undah English are two variants of the Queen's English. They are on
equal footing.

It is a draw.

 RB>  Seems to me you're grasping at straws.

It seems to me that by placing Australian English on a lower level than US
English, it is you who is clutching at straws.

BTW, speaking about tremas and accents, I just reread the first chapter of
Terry Pratchet's "The Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents". There is an Ü
(U umlaut) in the very first 50 lines of the story. (skipping the intros) Did I
mention that Terry Pratchett is a native English writer?

O, yes, I almost forgot. The "funny" characters in German are not limited to
Umlauts and the Esszet. Today the winner of the stage in the Tour de France was
a German athlete by the name of André Greipel. With an accent on the e in the
first name.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Greipel

So the 'é' is part of the German alphabet too.

Also note that in that article there is no transliteration. Umlauts and Esszets
all over the place.

Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
 * Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)