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Comment by C19is20 | Hacker News Reader

As a non-native. Isn't it assumed 'english', means uk english, and anything localised is 'australian english....indian english', etc? I've even heard of 'scottish english'.

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English has always been gloriously open source, and anyone can fork it. It is not owned by anyone and words mean exactly what you intend them to mean, and no-one can tell you otherwise. And you can spell or pronounce words just how you like, despite what they told you at school.

That said, your social group may set its own expectations, and you may want to fall in line, say in your job application.

So if what you speak is based on English, it's English (in my opinion - and by the way I am English).

Oh, and Shakespeare would have spoken with an accent more like an American than I do. But don't tell film makers, our actors need the work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronun...

> Oh, and Shakespeare would have spoken with an accent more like an American than I do.

Would you explain what you mean by this, I'm very curious.

AE conserves features of early modern English, like rhoticity.

There is also some conjecture that certain regional English in america, namely the Ozark region retained some Shakespearean/Elizabethan words and pronunciations and phrases due to its geographic seclusion.

I read about the reasons somewhere, but basically it is a general phenomenon where colonists lock in the habits and culture of their homeland as they remember it, and are more resistant to natural change.

It really depends on where you are, I think in Europe the English taught at school and considered the regular one is British English, but if you take movies/series/music, the broader one is US English.

In Romania at least, the English taught in school is American English, not British English.

I think it's the same in Scandinavia.

I suppose this depends on your school/teacher. Our English teacher went out of her way to always teach proper (British) English and point out any differences with American English sometimes with an history lesson added.

How many differences are there really?

Quite a few. Spelling and pronunciation are quite different, and also a bunch of words and idioms that don't match.

Not enough to prevent mutual understanding, but it can get close. As an American, if I haven't watched any British TV for a while and try, there's a good few minutes where I have to listen to most of it twice to be able to understand what was said.

Considering that the English-language web is almost completely occupied by USians, it would be hilarious if they were required to finally declare that they speak ‘American’ and not ‘English’.

> Considering that the English-language web is almost completely occupied by USians

"Almost completely"? Nowhere close. About two thirds of native speakers (maybe a little more of those on the web, but not much), and not even half of all English speakers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

Try searching for any life knowledge on the English web without specifying the country. E.g. home repairs: I'm pretty sure Brits don't live in those funny cardboard houses.

The underlying distribution doesn't matter when there's more activity from one stratum. The same way how it doesn't matter that the ‘average age’ of a Reddit user is in the twenties, when each teen on there posts and comments every ten seconds.

I don't know where Brits, Australians and English-speakers from all other countries are hiding, but they probably just use local communities away from the annoying USians. English web that you find by default is US-centric. English Wikipedia even has a special maintenance plaque for articles that are US-specific and should probably be rewritten someday—could as well just slap a sign like that on the whole English web.

When I see complaints on this very site about Californians assuming by default that everything is in California, I laugh heartily, tingling all over with schadenfreude.

This is self-reported. Consider that 90% of Croatians reported they speak English, but this is mostly the level required to guide a tourist to the closest bar around ;)

EDIT: my bad, you were talking about native speakers.

EDIT2: well, no, my point still stands: the Total includes self-reported and vastly inaccurate additional language speakers. But based on how US is 2/3 of all native speakers, and that there's definitely many fluent-English secondary-language speakers out there, US is definitely not dominating English-language web.

> Considering that the English-language web is almost completely occupied by USians, it would be hilarious if they were required to finally declare that they speak ‘American’ and not ‘English’.

For what it's worth, I have always described the language I speak as 'American', and it confuses people no end. ("Don't you mean 'English'?")

I find a similar response whenI say United Statesians either. The sentence "United Statesians speak American" could trigger a few people I know.

Gotta say, I can see the dissonance there: you use the specific ‘name’ for the country, but the two continents for the language.

That's a good point. Even as someone who calls my language American and refers myself a USian in conversation, I do think I'd have trouble calling the language I speak USian—but, as you point out, calling it American is painting with a very broad brush indeed. Maybe "USian English" is clearest.

Not at all. It usually means that the person writing that assumes it's a common thing globally.

UK English being "proper" hasn't been a thing for decades now. Compare news reports in former British colonies from the 60s to now and you can literally hear the change in attitude toward's the "Queen's English".

No.

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