quote:Americans have bastardised half of the English language !
Actually, the English spoken in America is more similar to the English spoken in England in the time of Shakespeare than the modern "Queen's English", in terms of pronunciation, anyway.
This is because the current accent was added in the mid 1700s (or maybe early, I don't remember exactly) because English nobility thought that English didn't sound as nice as the romance languages. The current British accent was their attempt at making it sound higher-class.
Meanwhile, in the colonies, people continued speaking the way they always had, especially following the French and Indian War, when anti-British sentiment began to grow, and the colonists wanted less and less to do with mother England.
However, when it comes to some spellings, we probably did bastardize it
quote: It peeves an american that people change the name of something to fit their language ?? LOL. Americans have bastardised half of the English language !
Italian name: Venezia (vehy-nehy-tz-ee-ah)
English name: Venice
Italian name: Firenze (fee-ren-tzay)
English name: Florence
Italian name: Sicilia (see-chee-lee-ah)
English name: Sicily
Granted, these are mostly minor, but my point is, we do the same thing.
[edited by - CmndrM on March 29, 2003 1:33:08 AM]
Muenchen, Goeteborg, Roma, Warszawa, Koebenhavn, Praha, the list goes on and on 
