-
British vs American English
What’s your personal experience with British English and American English?
Personally, I prefer British English rather than American one. On one hand, I get fascinated when someone talks British, on the other hand the most of movies, series and music I hear are American, so I often tend to mix American and British words when I write or speak in English.
Have you always studied one or the other? Have you spoken to both Brits and Americans? What’s your experience?
I always attended British courses, but I often spoke with Canadian people, as some relatives of mine have been living in Canada for a longtime. However, my best experience was in Brussels (5 years), where I worked for EU Institutions. Speaking in English and French with colleagues coming from all over Europe was exciting. Each of my colleagues had an accent, when speaking English, completely different from the others, due to different nationalities and experiences. France, Spain, Romania, Germany, Portugal, Belgium… a Belgian colleague had a good British accent, a Romanian colleague, who had worked for an American law firm, spoke American, a German colleague had the unmistakable guttural accent and so on. Obviously, my accent was typically Italian… What was interesting was the new English idioma, Eurish, a formal English used in official papers and documents in EU Institutions: a bureaucratic, administrative English mixed with French words. A British colleague told me that Eurish had nothing to do with British, a weird language not understood by native English speakers.
-
2 Replies
-
Fascinating @onorati66 I had never heard of Eurish! What an amazing experience to have had. I had a similar experience when I worked at DEFRA in London (which is like the Ministry for agriculture and environment) People were from all over the place and of course had wonderful accents and new ways of saying things. It was a magic time.
Only this to point out:
on the other hand (DELETE: the) most of movies, series and music …
-
👍
Log in to reply.
