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.
One reply on “I Speak American, Not English”
James…you are such an American! I love it!
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