American English Professor hates British English

[Christopher Wolfe]

I'm going to have to side with the professor here. If your class is either:
1) In America
or
2) Based on American English/About American English

then you should be using American English, and if I were the professor, I would have marked you down as well.

However, if I an misunderstanding this, and this class takes place outside of America, and/or has nothing to do with American English, then I completely agree with you. He obviously has a stick up his ass for no good reason.

Accuse him of racism and discrimination

Yeah, that's not going to work. At all. I realize you're joking, but still.

I *cannot* *STAND* the terms 'British English' and 'American English'. The Chinese language has about a million different dialects, and they all have different names. I think 'British English' should be called English (because it's the proper, ORIGINAL one), and that rubbish the Americans distorted it into should be called something else. As for your professor, as long as it is considered correct in 'British English', he shouldn't have marked you down, but morons will be morons

Technically, it is English and British English (English by itself being American English).

 

[The Stonker]

Last time I checked then the British came up with the language.
Huh...
I'm bamboozled.

 

[manaman]

I've done that all the time; the problem may be that you're American, and it's much more obvious when you do it because the American lexicon has purposefully taken steps to remove itself from the original UK english.

Eh, yeah, say what again? Approximately two-thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States. Yet the spoken language is actually more homogeneous then what you would find in the UK (less variance in accents and speech patterns). Most of the difference in the language since the split in the 17th century has come from the British side, not (like you seem to be thinking) a purposeful change on the part of people in the US. There is also the large decline in rhotic accents in the UK, while rhotic speech is pretty much still the norm in the US. In other words the language has changed less since the 17th century in the US then it has in the UK, and there are more native English speakers in the US then anywhere else.

Then again who likes facts, they get in the way of all the snobbery.

I think you got the wrong address mate, all I was saying was that there's a bigger difference between UK English and US English than UK English and Canadian English. I mixed up which country made the changes over the last century, though.

Maybe you were looking for this gentleman:

I *cannot* *STAND* the terms 'British English' and 'American English'. The Chinese language has about a million different dialects, and they all have different names. I think 'British English' should be called English (because it's the proper, ORIGINAL one), and that rubbish the Americans distorted it into should be called something else. As for your professor, as long as it is considered correct in 'British English', he shouldn't have marked you down, but morons will be morons

You are right, that poster deserves that comment far more. It was saying the change was purposeful that I took issue with more than anything else.

snip

Other poster take note:

Language evolves and changes, even your precious English language. You would struggle a bit to understand someone from your own country even 300 years ago.

 

[Thatguykalem]

Wow. That's... yeah. Well, tell him we're sorry for misspelling the English language that Americans must've come up with.

Also, my Captcha has a word with an umlaut. This bugs me, 'cause I don't have a German/other language with umlaut privileges keyboard.

Captcha Secrets:

- Only one of the words in the Captcha is the word being checked.
- The other word is simply a red herring. It exists because if only one word existed in a Captcha, somebody would be able to write a computer program to break it, therefore negating the usefulness of Captcha.
- Because no computer program can properly distinguish between the red herring and the word being checked, the two words are required.
- Humans can distinguish between the words with a little bit of practice.
- Anything with non-standard characters (something that can't be found on your standard QWERTY keyboard) is the red herring.
- Anything that looks grainy (looks like it's been scanned out of a book), or has little dots around it, is a red herring.

The full guide to Captcha is available somewhere on the internet. If you lurk enough on /b/, I'm sure it'll pop up again at some point.

OT: That just gives me the shits. It's called English because it's fucking English. Americans (some, not all) need to get their head out of their asses.

 

[tomtom94]

I love Americans who hate Britain for no reason.
I dislike people who can't be bothered to use English and I dislike even more teachers who claim that whatever they don't do is wrong and mark people down as a result.

I mean yes, language evolves and all but that's more to do with changing vocabulary, not dumbing down into a compressed form of speech solely for the sake of convenience. I swear there should be a special circle of Hell reserved for people who write their GCSE exams in text language (yes, there are some who do that) solely because it sets such a dangerous precedent.

On a semi-related tangent, apparently on the school's America trip one of the teachers flipped out on a group of Americans annoyed that they had to queue behind "some damn Europeans"

[small]They did not know who they were fucking with.[/small]

 

[AVATAR_RAGE]

Its called "English" for a reason. You're prof is one hell of a tosser.

sums up my thoughts right there

 

[SeanTheSheep]

Wow. That's... yeah. Well, tell him we're sorry for misspelling the English language that Americans must've come up with.

Also, my Captcha has a word with an umlaut. This bugs me, 'cause I don't have a German/other language with umlaut privileges keyboard.

Refresh the captcha.

OT: If you're American, and in America, then that's justified, kinda, but if you or your location are in England, then he is so far out of line.

 

[Zipa]

he sounds like a wanker.

 

[illistas]

Write your next paper in Ebonics (which is one of the most wrong things I have heard of in a while).

 

[Count Igor]

What a narrow minded ****. That's all I have to say on the matter really. While we're on the subject as well: it's 'aluminium'. Pronounce the second U.

neither are wrong, its the same difference between color and colour, gray and grey, etc.. (haha kind of funny, its trying to spell check me on all the british spelled words) the different dialects are ever so slight. although aluminum and aluminium when pronounced in their dialects are quite different.

You're right. Neither are wrong in their own environment. If you're in America, you should take away the U, and in Britain, add it in. American English (As much as I don't like it, but that's me being patriotic. After all. I'm wearing a Top Hat) is another language, and so people should respect it. HOWEVER. I don't think that marking you down for using English (I won't say British English. Sorry) is the right thing to do, however. You should try to use American English, but switching to the original is perfectly acceptable.
Though it is NOT acceptable when you say "I could care less".
The only thing you're saying in the statement is that you could not care NOTHING, which is just the point you are trying, and failing, to get across.

 

[not_the_dm]

Give him something in a wierd northern dialect of british english (or as we call it, English) and watch his head explode. I'd recommend scouse.

Or Glaswegian. They have so many dialect words and the accent changes everything else, eg. Glasgow is pronounced Glasgae.

 

[Rachel317]

"We don't use British grammar here."

I wasn't aware there was much of a difference except for a few extra words and a few different spellings?

There's some punctuation differences, too.

Such as?

He gave me a bit of a lecture on how quotations are used and how they relate to other punctuation. Apparently, Americans think it's right to always stick punctuation inside the quote, without exception. According to him, that's not always the case for British English.

Personally, I'd like both sides to be consistent. It's the same fucking language, for Christ's sake.

So you put ". instead of ." ?
The first is wrong in both Britain and America, it's a form of slang mostly used by computer programmers, as it's more logical and in programming the two mean very different things.

Ok, then why was the comment about British English rather than "It's a general punctuation error?"

Sorry if this has been answered, but this is slightly wrong. You CAN put punctuation marks within quotation marks but if, say, you wrote the following sentence: the man said, "There's a dog". Then the full stop on the end is just the logical end of the sentence. This is speaking from the point of view of an English Literature student in the UK. it seems unusual that your Professor is teaching English, yet does not recognise this very standard form of punctuation. Sounds like he's being a bit pedantic and particular...except he's not, because this is a valid grammatical element!!

I would suggest you perhaps email an English lecturer in the UK for any information you might need, then show your Professor? I'm not saying he doesn't knw his job, but it sounds like he's being picky for the sake of it.

 

[Knusper]

Other than a few minor spelling differences, I wasn't aware that the two 'kinds' of English were identical. That does sound weird, though.

 

[SuccessAndBiscuts]

I've done that all the time; the problem may be that you're American, and it's much more obvious when you do it because the American lexicon has purposefully taken steps to remove itself from the original UK english. That doesn't mean your poor prof is right... he needs to accept that just because you live in the U.S. doesn't mean that you're somehow 'wrong' and should be marked down because you chose to use a different lexicon. That's just stupid.

Reading that I am reminded of the attempts by the government In Britain to actively exterminate Gaelic I don't understand the whole Ammerican English thing myself but as far as I'm aware it was created as part of the cutting of ties etc with the UK.

Actually I think this is kinda unusual because the Ammericanisation of language over here has been bothering me for a while now.

Give him something in a wierd northern dialect of british english (or as we call it, English) and watch his head explode. I'd recommend scouse.

Or Glaswegian. They have so many dialect words and the accent changes everything else, eg. Glasgow is pronounced Glasgae.

Wheesht Glaswegin is pure awesome by the way man, just cause you canny hack it.

That is the most difficult sentence I have ever had to type.

 

[Insomniac55]

English English. Use it.

 

[Palademon]

Ah, I think I've seen American English grammar. Is that the one where you're not allowed to use commas?

Seriously, apart from spelling what is different?
Is that the definition of grammar?

 

[LostTimeLady]

This is an interesting one. I've had my (English) English teachers tell us not to use Americanisms unless quoting a text (we were studying 'Cold Mountain' at the time) things like the 'color' spelling of 'colour' or saying 'gotton' instead of 'got' but I've never heard of it happening the other way around.

How odd. I can understand being ticked off, English has so few gramatical hard and fast rules that most of the time anything goes anyway as long as you're not sticking apostrophies all over the place and capitals in the middle of sentances.

What is British English grammar anyway? How is it different from the grammar used by Americans? Hmmmm... To the internet! *opens new webpage*

(Edit: here's a page that explains things nicely I think: http://esl.about.com/od/toeflieltscambridge/a/dif_ambrit.htm)

 

[Continuity]

I wish I were joking. I'm apparently beginning to blend some bits of American grammar with British grammar... and he hates it. I got a paper that I wrote back today with marks all over the damned thing with one large comment down at the bottom:

"We don't use British grammar here."

It's strange. You'd think that the English... know a thing or two about the English language.

Any other Escapists have experiences like this?

Well, I'm British but he has a point. If I were an English teacher I would be a total nazi about American spellings and grammar, so, it would be a bit hypocritical if I were to criticise him for this.

 

[C95J]

This may be too late in the thread but question:

"Why and how did Americans (who were first British) change their own language to a slightly different version just because they were in a different land mass? How did this change come to happen?"

I honestly have no idea...