Talk:North American English

Weird article

The article seams to be written by some kind of English - American nationalist. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 05:55, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what this comment means. An English American would be nationalistic towards which country - UK, England or USA? Or do you mean an English-speaking American? I don't see any nationalism of any sort in the article. Rmhermen (talk) 18:42, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I think Aleksandr meant to say this article seemed to be written by a North American chauvinist who views American and Canadian English as one and the same. I DON'T think this is true of the first paragraph which is well written, well sourced and recognizes differences between the two countries. However it DOES seems to be true of the original version of the second paragraph which is completely unsourced, somewhat Anglophobic and/or American chauvinistic in tone, and partially contradicts ideas about linguistic diversity discussed in first paragraph. The second paragraph claims that Canadian preference for certain American words is a result of consciously-driven and universally agreed-to personal preference (gasoline over petrol etc). This flies against the face of general linguistic convention that dialect is a matter of social conditioning by which a speaker from outside a country or region picks up local or national words by a process of mental osmosis or even as a result of direct pressure from locals.

My SOURCE for this claim that contradicts much of the original para. 2, is an internet article called "FAQ's on Linguistics and Bad Linquistics". It can be easily googled by anyone who wants to verify my position on this. If I have to formally cite this article to defend my challenge to the original UNSOURCED paragraph 2, I will attempt to do so, but my technical skills for doing inline citations of the type found in the well written paragraph 1 are very rustly, so it may take a few days. Meanwhile I can say that when a British speaker arrives in Canada, he/she can be subject to extreme peer pressure to adopt the aforementioned "Americanisms" to gain social acceptance among Canadians who are very bullish about American dialect. Certain British words have disappeared from Canadian English due to this conformity that's often imposed on Canadians by the mass media and by North American chauvunists. Canadians who immigrate from non-Commonwealth or non-English speaking nations are particularly prone to picking up American words and slang because they have no strong British traditions to fall back on. But again, I would argue that these are processes of coersion and social conditioning imposed by the mass media and its sycophants. Since the original paragraph 2 is completely unsourced, it is open to challenge under current Wikipedia policy, and will be challenged from time to time until it is properly sourced. ChrisCarss Former24.108.99.31 (talk) 11:08, 08 January 2012 (UTC)