who speaks the best english besides the british?

brizzzle · Apr 5, 2009

granted i speak better english than most of you but i mean in general?

Hippie McRaver · Apr 5, 2009

Are you hooked on phonics?

veroness · Apr 5, 2009

WASPS do

brizzzle · Apr 5, 2009

neither of you get a say sorry!

WanderingturnupII · Apr 5, 2009

Da Yoopers!

OneExodus · Apr 5, 2009

Americans!

brizzzle · Apr 5, 2009

WanderingturnupII said:

Da Yoopers!
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where exactly is yoop?

White_Horse_Mescalito · Apr 5, 2009

Silly Pillick

WanderingturnupII · Apr 5, 2009

brizzzle said:

where exactly is yoop?
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The U.P.---Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Translated to British, that would be like saying Shetland Islanders, perhaps.

It's a joke.

brizzzle · Apr 5, 2009

i'm willing to put up my english against anybody!

Joshua Tree · Apr 5, 2009

brizzzle said:

i'm willing to put up my english against anybody!
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Try Will Self...

Will Self said:

Authors are consigned to the Ministry of Fiction in Will Self's dystopian tale of life after the Great Recession.

Speaking personally – and I fear I must, if only for old times sake – I’m glad all that individualism is over. It was incredibly wearing, having to have all my own ideas, then deciding what I was going to write – let alone who I was going to write it for. I didn’t realise until now, but even the working conditions I was subject to – isolated, compelled to organise my time as best I could – were also terribly stressful. All that freedom! No wonder we scribes were so preoccupied with the minutiae of our consciousness, the whirring of synaptic wheels and cogs.

That’s all changed now, in the post-free market era there’s no longer any need for such crushing autonomy. Who’d have thought it? I, who fancied myself as man of the people, was really just another dealer, tapping on a keyboard, calculating the semantic percentages, and in thrall to an idea of freedom that bore no relation to my cloistered existence. I’d bought the myth of unfettered capitalism quite as thoroughly as any City suit – after all the publishers that reproduced my words for me were traded entities, and so, by extension, was I. No wonder whenever writers met up in the old days there was a fearful babbling about advances and critical reputations.

How much calmer it is now! We sit in orderly rows at our workstations, each day we receive critical feedback on the previous day’s work, together with directives on how plot, characterisation and even descriptive prose should be advanced. There’s no room for deviation or error: our subject matter has been chosen for us, our genre has been determined, it remains only for us to type. Indeed, that’s what the Ministry of Fiction most clearly resembles – an old fashioned typing pool.

Still, we’re no giggling girls, us chroniclers of the new collectivism, with grey hairs like Rushdie (Row G, Desk 57), and McEwan (Row W, Desk 72) lending their fingers to the state. There’s a solemnity here in the Department of Novels that reflects the seriousness with which we view our task; and that is nothing less than to provide the British people with a new mythos, a new way of perceiving the Good, not as something that can be bought, nor as someone who can be loved, but as the very essence of society as a whole.

Ah, yes, the ‘s’ word – what a shame Thatcher isn’t able to appreciate quite how completely this idea has been resurrected; and not just society conceived of as the social existence of the nation state, oh no, but a truly global society. For, in this brave new world, globalisation is not a synonym for unfettered competitive trade, but a genuine convergence of understanding between all the world’s 6.5 billion inhabitants. That’s why Winterson (Row B, Desk 32) has stopped writing self-indulgent fantasies of so-called ‘personal fulfilment’, and is instead dedicating herself to a bildungsroman that charts the coming of age of a Singaporean financial services regulator. And that explains how it is that Welsh (Row N, Desk 14), has been persuaded to abandon his trademark, phonetically transcribed Scots demotic, in favour of a picaresque, that tells – in standard English – of the adventures of a group of happy-go-lucky insurance loss-adjustors. You might’ve thought that such unreconstructed individualists as writers would have found the transition to collective word-farming difficult to take – that some would rebel, or engage in seditious samizdat publication.

Not a bit of it! To begin with, I think that most established writers felt quite as relieved as I did, but as for the tyros, was it merely serendipity, or could there have been some deeper – and more collective – agency at work? Suffice to say, all those burgeoning creative writing courses in the run up to the Great Recession, had produced a startling uniformity of both style and approach among younger writers: these were creative labourers deeply conditioned to accept the kind of intrusive and critical editing that forms the corporate culture at the Ministry of Fiction.

And as for those of us who had a reputation for subversion in the bad old days, well, as I’ve said, there was the relief of no longer having to think entirely for ourselves, there was the joy to be gained from commitment to a common cause, but most of all there was the willingness the authorities showed to permit us to carry on with what we do best. That’s why I myself am employed in the Satirical Subsection of the Ministry of Fiction, and that’s why you are reading the bitter fruits of my ironising. Or are you?
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Fingermouse · Apr 6, 2009

"besides the Brits"...What a joke!

Bonkai · Apr 6, 2009

I think the Canadians speak better English than the British, not to say the Brits speak bad English just the Can00ks speak it better.

silverhippy · Apr 6, 2009

We don't speak English in the States, we make it up as we go along..

Peace

WanderingturnupII · Apr 6, 2009

Maybe that's true in Pittsburgh...

silverhippy · Apr 6, 2009

Must be just Pittsburgh, cause I have trouble understanding what most of the rest of the country is saying !!

Peace

Martin_59 · Apr 6, 2009

french people

opel diamond · Apr 6, 2009

OneExodus said:

Americans!
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funniest answer ever.

Fingermouse · Apr 6, 2009

Martin_59 said:

french people
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Yeah people in France tend to speak good English, I only met a few people who didnt speak so well and that was right out in the countryside. Mind you, so many other countries speak English better than most people in the UK! Ive met families raised in Pakistan whose English was better than mine. And I can tell you now they didnt learn it from the people around them here haha

Fingermouse · Apr 6, 2009

opel diamond said:

funniest answer ever.
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^

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who speaks the best english besides the british?

brizzzle Banned

Hippie McRaver Senior Member

veroness There's only one :)

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WanderingturnupII Grouchy Old Fart

OneExodus Member

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White_Horse_Mescalito ""

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Bonkai Later guys

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who speaks the best english besides the british?

brizzzle Banned

Hippie McRaver Senior Member

veroness There's only one :)

brizzzle Banned

WanderingturnupII Grouchy Old Fart

OneExodus Member

brizzzle Banned

White_Horse_Mescalito ""

WanderingturnupII Grouchy Old Fart

brizzzle Banned

Joshua Tree Remain In Light

Fingermouse Helicase

Bonkai Later guys

silverhippy Comfortably Numb

WanderingturnupII Grouchy Old Fart

silverhippy Comfortably Numb

Martin_59 Member

opel diamond burn out

Fingermouse Helicase

Fingermouse Helicase

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