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by shibby 4672 days ago
There is only a common spelling difference in the written sense though. An American would not fully understand someone from Yorkshire speaking Yorkshire dialect, nor would they understand someone from Merseyside, Glasgow, etc. if they were speaking in their dialect.

I'm from Yorkshire originally, my dialect is totally different from those in Merseyside or the North East (for example.) How we speak and how we write is different. 'British English' only exists in the written form and I don't believe that is what this service is aiming to 'improve'.

UK regional accents/dialects are something which are favourable. The North East dialect, for example, is seen as favourable in call centres because the majority find it a 'nice' or 'friendly' dialect.

I don't understand the idea of 'if you're a start-up don't have an accent/dialect'.

2 comments

I don't know. Should we table this discussion?

(Noting that some words, like "to table" have the opposite meanings in British and American English. When Americans say "table" the British say "shelve" and when the British say "table" the Americans say "put forward" or "propose.")

Oh, I'm not really disagreeing. The expression "a : b :: c : d" means a is to b what c is to d. There are just as many American accents as British accents, but Brits commonly refer to the conglomeration as American English, or to someone having "an American accent", and can have a similarly hard time differentiating between them.

So "British English" just refers to speaking English with one of many British accents, I'm guessing in this case approximately London English that is not Cockney.