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| Bashar |
The Global English Survey has results, let's talk about itMost of the people who have done it are from Europe. I think the British vs. American dimension is really interesting. The address is http://www.global-english.co.nrFirst look at Germany, which has 13 subjects. Germany is definitely speaking more British than American English. 85% say the A in "last" differently from the A in "back." 77% drop R's like the British do, rather than pronounce them like the Americans. 61.5% prefer the British spellings "colour" and "organisation" over the American "color" and "organization." The only part where they prefer American pronunciation is in Mary vs. marry. Norway, with 8 subjects, is even more British than Germany, with the British answers always having the majority, even Mary/marry. In Sweden there are 9 subjects, but there we can find more US vs. UK competition. 78% prefer "colour" over "color" but in all the other questions, everything is very close. Finland has 6 subjects--and they mostly prefer American. 83.3% do not distinguish the two A's in "last" and "back," and the same percentage pronounces R's. 66.7% prefer American spellings of words. Moving south to the Netherlands (5 subjects) we seem to be back in British territory again, since the British answers are preferred in all questions. Except--R pronunciation. The Dutch prefer to pronounce all R's but go for British pronunciation and spelling in all other categories. Quite a fascinating study, isn't it? |
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| Liz |
Re: The Global English Survey has results, let's talk about
It's rather interesting. In my experience, most Germans definitely own up to speaking British English but in fact they sound much more American than British. They also claim that Germany is "very British" as far as English speech is concerned. Funnily enough, at my university students (English Major/Minor) are taught phonetics and phonology by American teachers. Of course, these teachers are fully aware of the fact that the norm in Germany is British English, so they try to change their accent a bit and converge to British English, which results in a mixture of British and American accents. I think it would be much better for students if these teachers adhered to the rules of their original pronunciation - a forced accent is everything but natural.
That might be true. However, I hear lots of people pronounce "back" and "last" the same way, which isn't necessarily the marker of American English but is usually perceived as such.
It's interesting again. I haven't heard too many non-rhotic speakers here. Speaking of rhoticity, what I find amazing and somewhat amusing is they way they apply intrusive-R-s. I don't know if they are taught to use it, but they have a peculiar tendency to not pronounce them in the positions they normally appear but to pronounce them in word- , sentence- and utterance-final positions or when the vowel is followed by a consonant. Therefore, they say "idear" instead of "idea" even in phrases like "the idea that".
Well, I don't know much about that, but considering their theoretical preference to British English, it must be the norm.
I doubt that it's clearly a preference to the American form - it might be put down to the fact that they are not aware of the Mary-marry merger, Pre-R breaking and the Carrot-rule. These things are not usually taught at school, being seemingly irrelevant nuances. What about Hungary, anyway? 
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| Bashar |
Hungary has 4 subjects, and they mostly selected the British answers. Although, with R-pronunciation, 50% pronounce it and 50% drop it. You can look at it at the site. | ||||||||||