pro·nun·ci·a·tion (n.)

As you've probably guessed from the title, it's back to that old chestnut of language - and as i'm sure we're all aware, the Americans have a great old time mangling our words. This has been more evident this week as i've been severely dragged over the coals by two of the local guys here in the lab after almost every other sentence (in a good humoured way i should add). Naturally, i take the moral high ground for the Mother Country and repeatedly point out that i'm speaking a language (English) whereas they're speaking a dialect (American-English). This usually is sufficient for them to scuttle away in a corner and fume silently until the next time. Or rather not so silently (they are American after all). The main culprits so far are "alu-min-um" for aluminium (why they insist on removing the second 'i' when a considerable number of elements in the periodic table all end in 'ium' is beyond me), "too-bes" for tubes and "vi-ta-mins" instead of "vit-a-mins". A friend pointed out to me that it should be pronounced that way because the word is derived from "vital amines" (a little factoid for you) to which i promptly replied "why don't you say "vi-ta-meens"? And, of course, there are the different words too. I went into a shop and asked about some trainers the other day - to be met with a blank look (they call them "tennis shoes" here). Crisps are chips, chips are fries (or french fries, even though they originated in Belgium). Biscuits are cookies, and plain scones are biscuits.

They say that English is a hard language to learn - because we have a lot of ways of saying the same thing (there are at least 50 different words for drunk as an example) and we have a number of different pronunciations of letters. Think, for example, of the words plough, though, through and tough. We also have words that sound the same but are different - you're and your, or even worse - there, their and they're. Is it any wonder that foreigner's get confused easily? Through this all, however, there is a light at the end of the tunnel (for me anyway). Of the numerous non-US folk in the lab here, i have been told many times that i am much easier to understand. This is partly because i speak clearly, partly cause i don't speak too loud and partly because i don't let my sentences de-generate into a punctuation-less mess (unless a few bottles of beer are involved). From that evidence alone, i think it's fair to say: English 1 American 0.