[Wikipedia-l] Re: technical measures for English variations...

Wed Oct 6 17:31:42 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>
>I suppose the biggest area where we differ is in our estimation of the
>magnitude of the problem.  I view the differences as relatively minor,
>and as far as I have been able to determine, the number of edit wars
>and acrimonious arguments about this has been quite small overall.
>Are people really getting upset about this?
>
Since it's been at least 24 hours since anybody has said anything
inflammatory :-), here's my total-stereotype observation guaranteed
to annoy the maximum number of people:

Empirically, the people most likely to complain about dialect are
lesser-educated Americans and over-educated Brits. Americans with
more education will have consumed vast quantities of British dialect
in the process of getting educated, and it will usually feel pretty
natural to them, with the occasional curveball (I knew "milliard"
before this discussion, but not "courgette"). Conversely, our Brits
(and to some extent Commonwealthers in general) with PhDs will
sooner or later get fed up with reading American English, and start
making remarks about "illiterate Americanisms", while regular Brits
seem generally indifferent to the issue.

Now let the flames begin!

:-)

Stan