I Speak American, Not English

Oxford has produced a dictionary of North American English, and its second edition has over 250,000 entries.  It’s called the “New Oxford American Dictionary.”  It’s a dictionary that has definitions for American words.

Here’s my point in that: I attended a rugby game here tonight in Pretoria, South Africa.  I was with Rylan, my fellow American teammate, as well as an Afrikaans friend.  As we talked about each of our country’s beloved sports, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in our vocabulary.  It took a sentence or two to describe what we meant; then we were square on our understanding of terms.

The problem was that he was speaking English.  I was speaking American.

If you are from America, you don’t speak English.  Let’s call it what it is.

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