RAAF Derrick Trucks

[Lang]

My wife, who can be a bit of a shackle but is still a comely winch, while craning over my computer, said although I slew Richard's argument I should not become hooked on making jibs at Englishmen. Derrick had his name roped in on this lifting deal and Richard has a long line of history to balance his argument.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

I love the English language!

H.

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Hanno Spoelstra

I love the English language!

H.

Hanno, it is a good language but some of the colonies have distorted it over the years

Joking aside, it can lead to the odd misunderstanding.

Lang, I enjoyed your little literacy piece.

regards, Richard

[Grant Bowker]

Originally Posted by Richard Farrant

it is a good language but some of the colonies have distorted it over the years

I admit I'm from one of the former colonies so I might be biased in this but I would have thought there were quite enough versions of "English" spoken within the United Kingdoms to make comprehension a challenge.

People from Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire, Cornwall, Kent, Oxford/Cambridge, Cockney, and other regions, dialects and slangs not to mention imigrants from all over with their own unique flavours of English.
You don't need Texans, New Yorkers, Quebecois, Newfies and Australians to have confusion.

More seriously, I am constantly amazed by the high quality of English spoken by the Europeans I deal with while arranging aircraft handling. For most of them there isn't any need for them to learn English as a third or seventh language except to deal with us foreigners - and then they apologize for not speaking English better than they do when I can't speak one word of their language (except perhaps beer/bière/bier/birrë/biero/beior/bjór/bir/bia/biir which seems to work in many languages).

[lynx42]

Originally Posted by Grant Bowker

(except perhaps beer/bière/bier/birrë/biero/beior/bjór/bir/bia/biir which seems to work in many languages).

In Queensland they can't even spell BEER, the BEER there is spelt thus "XXXX

Rick.

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Grant Bowker

I admit I'm from one of the former colonies so I might be biased in this but I would have thought there were quite enough versions of "English" spoken within the United Kingdoms to make comprehension a challenge.

hi Grant,
I know we are deviating from the thread here, but just to say, what I meant about a common language and odd misunderstanding was not about speech, no problem there it is the written word and where it is used to describe different things in different countries and also the spelling has been changed.

regards, Richard

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Richard Farrant

Hanno, it is a good language but some of the colonies have distorted it over the years Joking aside, it can lead to the odd misunderstanding.

Richard, if you're stuggling to understand Strine you could try banging your head against the wall very hard, although there's no guarantee what language you'll wake up speaking:

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/rea...-1226798644381

[Keith Webb]

Where's the Groan icon to deal with those who are a 'poet but don't know it'?