: Yeah, I didn't know about the manual thing (not that I
: put faith into those manuals much anyway:-). As near
: as I can tell, it seems that it's part of the British
: vernacular to use words, well…I don't want to offend
: any of my good British collegues…it's just…I'm sorry,
: but Britain is infamous for the fact that it has the
: worst English Program of all three (major)
: English-speaking countries. This at least explains why
: they tend to have…bad, bad grammar. I'm not trying to
: offend them or any one else at all! It's the English
: government's fault, not the people's, to, perhaps, not
: put as much pressure on that part of school because it
: might not be thought quite necessary…I don't know.
: Besides that, Britain most-definitely EXCELS in all
: other subjects taught in school, be it Science,
: History (except when they, ehem, forget to put that
: whole Revolutionary War thing into the curriculum:-),
: Math, and all the others! (This isn't an attack on the
: British, just a way of explaining why
: "Leveller" seeped in.)
IIRC American English tended to be more archaic, and to change slower, than British English. Colonies often preserve the original form of their mother country's language more accurately than the mother country itself. "Ain't," for example, was perfectly acceptable a few centuries ago. Britain moved away from it while America (or some regions of it) did not.
--SiliconDream
