Talkback
Any comments I receive about articles will be mentioned here.
Friday 8. April, I received this email regarding my 'Disdain for American English' from a man who I can only assume is called Rob Owens seeing as he did not see fit to sign his email.
"Ever heard of the rather talentled satirist P O'Rourke? No? Go listen to some Radio 4 and tell me he's a lazy and/or stupid American (Honestly, it's 15 minutes long and you might learn something: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml look for 'O'Rourke Talks')
... And What about the French, German and Italian words us *wonderful* Brits have 'bastardised' by 'miss-spelling' or 'miss-pronouncing' - is that going to be your next aimless rant?"
To which my answer is:
While it is true that I have not heard of this P O'Rourke that you mention, I would however rather that you actually took the time to find out his full name instead of just his first initial, I have, and it is Patrick Jake O'Rourke. He seems to be a very outspoken chap, quite amusing too.
Furthermore, I did *not* purport that Americans were stupid, and why should I, a lot of great inventions and famous scientists were American in their origin, Thomas Alva Edison for instance inventor of the first commercially viable lightbulb, without which we'd be living in a much darker world, and Benjamin Franklin - for the lightning rod.
I was simply expressing a disdain for the current ubiquity of the American form of English which people seem to think should be the standard, as opposed to British English.
"What about the French, German and Italian words us *wonderful* Brits have bastardised by mispelling or mispronouncing" - what about them? That's a few words not an entire language and grammar structure! We do not purport that these words we steal from other languages are the correct way that they should be pronounced, they are simply an anglicised form which our tongues can more easily pronounce.
It wasn't an aimless rant, it had a very specific aim, and I think it accomplished that aim quite nicely.