Re: Very Beginner's Guide

[Christopher A. LaFond]

Anthony W. Youngman wrote:

Arghhh.... There is NO SUCH THING as "British English". It's actually two COMPLETELY SEPARATE languages that the Americans lump together!

The Saxons in England speak English. The Angles in Scotland speak Scots (a very *similar* language). The Scots (in Ireland :-) speak Gaelic.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Scots is a dialect of English, not a "similar" language. The language in Ireland, by the way, is Irish, and not generally referred to as "Gaelic" by anyone who knows better, and the Celtic language of Scotland is called by its native speakers "Gaelic" (first syllable pronounced "gal" -as in the feminine of "guy"). So though they don't identify "British English", they do identify "English English" and "Scots English", which most assume are more similar to one another than they are to "American English", or at the very least, having a more mutually intelligible vocabulary.

>From the OED:

Under "English"
 c. English English, English as spoken in England as differentiated from that spoken, e.g., in the United States of America.

Under "Scots"
  2. Of language:   a. The distinguishing epithet of the dialect of English spoken by the inhabitants of the Lowlands of Scotland. Also absol. as n., the Scottish dialect.

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Christopher A. LaFond  address@hidden  http://www.celticharper.net

After things go from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.