How the Americans Kidnapped the Letters 'A' and 'T' and Sent Them Back as 'E' and 'D' (Or how to alienate 300 million people in 500 words or less).
I'm English, and that, of course, gives me the divine right to tell everyone what to do.
Alright, it doesn't, I accept that...
At school, in England, the place where English comes from, we were all consistently and persistently instructed what 'proper' English was and wasn't.
Later that evening we might be watching, say, Eastenders (a popular soap in the UK) and we would know that the language and dialect they were using on there was, by and large, riddled with the same faults as the dialect we used.
To be more precise, in England there are literally hundreds, if not more, of regional dialects. Many share some similarities, for example the dropping of the letter 'h' at the beginning of a word is common both to the east end of London, and to my home town of Hull ('Ull!) in East Yorkshire 200 miles away, though the dialects themselves are altogether different.
Another common feature of English English (not a typo) dialects is the turning of the letter 't' in the middle of the word into a glottal stop. So the word 'butter' for example becomes "bu'-er".
Vowel pronunciation varies from region to region also. Many pronounce the 'i' in 'five' as 'foive'. In my home town this is more like 'fahv'. Again, we know, though, that this is dialect and the 'proper' pronunciation is something else.
In short we use a lot of our letters incorrectly, we pronounce, when using our local dialects, many words 'incorrectly'. The way English should be spoken and pronounced, without dialect or inflection is unquestionably the received pronunciation of middle- and upper-class England. These people pronounce all their consonants, and all their vowels, correctly. This is English. Everything else, whether you're from Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, England, Australia, Toronto or Christchurch is a variation, a dialect, an accent. We, you, and everyone else, barring those 'perfect' English speakers of middle England, are 'doing it wrong'. They set the standard to which we all must aspire.
So, if most of the world bar a few million English English speakers don't speak English correctly, why am I having a go at American pronunciation?
Well, when the aforementioned Cockney or Hullite is talking about 'aving a bi' o' buh-er' (having a bit of butter) he or she knows that he or she is using a dialect. Most would not dream of presuming that they were speaking the way the English language is written or meant to be spoken. We know when chatting, that there is proper English that we are not using. We are aware that we are dropping t's and h's left right and centre. If we were to visit a Crown Court, or watch Parliament or Royalty on the TV, we would be reminded that this is the way English is spoken, without regional dialect, with the t's and h's in place, and with vowels pronounced as they should be.
Americans on the other hand use their dialect in all walks of life, and I refer specifically to the letters 'a' and 't'. A very good American friend of mine recently visited the theatre out here in Korea where I am currently teaching (American!!) English. 'What did you go to see?', I politely asked her. Her reply? 'Phennom'. Now knowing her American accent I immediately deduced she was talking about 'Phantom of the Opera', but how did phantom come to be pronounced phennom? I don't care. How does any dialect come about? This is not the point of my diatribe. My point is that 'phennom' American English is the standard whether you are listening to the American president or Eminem. It does not have a 'right and proper' standard of pronunciation like English people know they are not speaking when they drop their 't's' and 'h's' etc..
In an auction, a person who is making bids on an item may be known as a bidder. A food that is the very opposite of sweet, could be called 'bitter'. In American English, these two words are pronounced exactly the same - 'bidder'. That's not a problem. Most people in England would drop the middle t's. The difference is that we would know that we were doing it, and if called upon to speak properly, would be able to pronounce these consonants, for the most part anyway, correctly. Across the board in America, the letter 'a' becomes 'e' (phennom, bank/benk, can/ken) and the letter 't' when appearing in the middle of a word becomes 'd' (bitter/bidder, letter/ledder, party/pardy etc.), and this error in pronunciation does not have a higher value, like English English does, that it aspires to. When you speak to an American you are getting d's as t's no matter whom you listen to, from whatever walk of life.
As an English teacher in South Korea, a British (Briddish!) one at that, I often despair that the letter (ledder) 't' has no future in the middle of a word, or that I will never visit a bank (benk!) again. The world wants American English, partly because of its popularity, especially in business and culture (e.g. movies), but why, in Education, when correctness and accuracy is all, are we teaching a dialect, when English has a standard?
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