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age that has grown and is threatening to shake the domination of the mother language. This phenomenon could hardly been seen elsewhere. Neither the case with Canadian, Belgian or Swiss French in relation to the French of France, nor with Latin American Spanish or Portuguese in relation to the Spanish or Portuguese of Spain or Portugal, respectively. The speaker, and especially the learner, of English is now faced with the task of managing the co-existence of the two competing languages. They are, however, not problem-free. The problems It is over simplified to say, like M. Mathews in the introduction above, that American English and British English are “so overwhelmingly alike” or, like Quirk equally cited above, that “even in matters of pronunciation, it is difficult to find many British and American absolute distinctions”. It really depends here on what quantity Quirk considers to be many. Already, the list of pronunciation differences that he and Marckwardt themselves give affects hundreds of words, which can be considered to be major, by any standard. Qualitatively, too, the differences are important. Learners all over the world will surely agree with me, for example, that the following differences are quite confusing: British English ant[i], mult[i]; sem[i]; do[sail], fu[tail]; l[e]sure, fer[tail], [lef]tenant, g[o]t, p[o]tter vs American English ant[ai]-, mult[ai], sem[ai]; do[sl], fer[tl]; l[i:]sure, [lu]tenant, g[a:]t, p[a:]tter. And there are many other s 上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] ... 下一页 >> |
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