Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Sheesh! You're being awfully hard on your countrymen! Kudos to all non-native-Anglophones who get along in English.
If Americans in general (including me) could speak another language half as well as the Dutch speak English, we'd get along far better in the world.
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My spoken [American] English is far from outstanding. I have been known to mangle pronuciations. Growing up with my family moving around so much I came to have a mix of dialects. I'll never forget when after completing college in the SF area moving to a small town in South Carolina. Some of the commercial and news casts. Advertisements for furniture suites pronounced suits. Or on one occasion when San Jose was in the news for some reason pronounced San Jo-zee.
Anyway I've always been impressed on my visits to Holland with the seamless way locals could switch languages from English to German to French and of course Dutch. Though I never got over how what to me sounded like one clearings ones throat was a part of Dutch.