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Show Does this mean the English are stiff and unimaginative with words? Near, near, a thousand times near. THEY LIKE to chop and change things-stark naked comes out "starkers." And pregnant is "preggers." Hong Kong is "Honkers." Other English-Speaking countries have chosen sides and stuck with them. Thus Canadian speech is virtually indistinguishable indistin-guishable from the American next door, but Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans speak fairly pure British English. Eng-lish. Canadians and Americans say "stoves," but from Sydney, Australia, to Johannesburg, South Africa, to London, it's "cookers." "Crackers" in Melbourne, Mel-bourne, Australia, or Liverpool, Liver-pool, England, means "crazy" in New York or Toronto, Canada Can-ada And so it goes. Think we'll ever go world-wide in just one language? Probably not, but could do. Mac. YOU WHO HAVE always lived here don't notice the English, that is, British, influence on the English language in Utah. We've become used to it, and the only difference we still notice is: "Can you fix this?" Answer: "I might do." Everywhere else the "do" would be superfluous and the answer would be: "I might." There are other little Olde Englishe characteristics but not used so often. Our charming and talented correspondent from The Highlands High-lands and Mountain Green, Pauline Morris, is an English native and her accent is a joy forever, as is that of Mrs. Sid (Nell) Creager, a native of Australia. However, Mrs.Mor-. ris original copy sometimes requires re-quires a little study because, while still grammatically perfect, per-fect, it's just "different" from Americanese. We're indebted to Wayne Leak for an article from "Grit," describing des-cribing the differences in the two English languages. For instance, in-stance, can you translate this good sentence from England? "A lorry pranged the banger in the boot, and I hadn't the readies to git it out of the ricky; so do you fancy taking the tube to the cinema?" Simple: "A truck smashed into the trunk of my car, and I didn't have the money to fix it; so do you mind taking the subway sub-way to the movies?" A UJ3. garbage can is an English "dustbin." Candies are "sweets." A drugstore is a chemist's shop," and a dry-goods dry-goods store is a "draper's shop." Gasoline is "petrol." An American buys things on instalments, in-stalments, but an Englishman gets them on hire-purchase often called the "never-never plan." An Englishwoman calls her lingerie her "smalls". The toilet is the "loo", and egghead is a "boffin", and the English government is referred to in the plural. "The Americans often make words complicated," complained complain-ed one British Council philologist. phil-ologist. "They have automobiles and we have cars. They have exterminating engineers, and we still have rat catchers. We have lifts, and they have elevators el-evators I'm surprised they don't call them vertical personnel person-nel distributors." Even pronunciation can be confusing. For "yes," an American Amer-ican may say "yeah," or "yup," while a classy Englishman might mutter something like 'earce," rhyming with pierce. An English "no" is often pronounced pro-nounced "near." |