Speak English?

There was a small piece on Radio 2 about slang words and their uses yesterday which I found pretty interesting. Apparently the only word for 'cool', e.g. sick, ace, beast, mad etc. that has stuck around since the 1960's is...wait for it... 'cool'!

Everything else has had their 'fashionable' period for use and dropped by the wayside thereafter.
 
A close friend of mine recently got married to an American lady - speaking with her father, he said he could instantly tell who was American and who wasn't as a result of those calling him Jon vs Jonny.
 
I had thought I would be better at American words than with the British ones. Vice versa as it turns out. 90% on the BE test (I didn't know "throw a strop") and only 40% on the AE one. Learning BE in school is very likely to thank, and in spite of the influence from US media. Curious to see that what I thought to be American words are in reality British ones. "Boot" and "full stop" to mention two. God Save the Queen :)
 
I am always amused by the term "British English". The English language comes from England (duh), hence the term "British English" is redundant; it's just "English". All other forms of "English" (Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, American English, etc.) are derivatives of "English". You don't hear of "Spanish Spanish", "Potuguese Portuguese" or "French French", so why do we English-speakers refer to the mother tongue as "British English"? Just one of my pet peeves. As a side note, why the prefix "British" and not "English" anyway? In common parlance "British" seems synonymous with "English" although "Britsh" refers to "Great Britain" (England, Scotland and Wales) [or often the "British Isles" ("Great Britain" plus the Isle of Man, Channel Islands, etc.)]; both Scotland and Wales have their own mother tongues. Fortunately my Dad is Scottish and my Mum is English (or Sassenach to the Scots) so I don't take too much offence.
 
I am always amused by the term "British English". The English language comes from England (duh), hence the term "British English" is redundant; it's just "English". All other forms of "English" (Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, American English, etc.) are derivatives of "English". You don't hear of "Spanish Spanish", "Potuguese Portuguese" or "French French", so why do we English-speakers refer to the mother tongue as "British English"?...

I respectfully disagree as having spent time in South America and now live on the Mexican border and there are vast differences between dialects as regards how they speak as opposed to bonafide Spaniards.

https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/02/differentiating-between-spanish-accents/

Also:



Try not to let the smokin' hawt (American Internet slang) babes in the latter video distract you. ;)
 
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