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

Thu Oct 7 00:55:29 UTC 2004

Stan Shebs wrote:

> 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.

I'll have you know I'm Australian without a Ph.D and complain just
as much!

- d.