Another blog from the living museum

While surfing around the WWW, I came across another blog which makes a few observations about life here in sunny Italy. If you fancy a different perspective from mine, why not pop along to this url – STET.

Otherwise, it’s been quiet day apart from the fact that I had to give some students a little pep talk as to why English really is becoming one of the number one languages for business these days. I think they heard what I said and I hope it will have a positive effect. I sometimes find that I need to do this sort of thing as I wakes my often rather young and inexperienced charges up to cruel reality. Other times I find myself surrounded by students who are highly aware of the fact that they may well be lost career wise if they don’t do something to polish their grasp of the language of perfidious Albion and other more or less perfidious nations, such as the economic powerhouse that is the US of A.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many Italians believe that American is a language apart for English, and I’ve even found myself starting to believe this on occasions. Maybe I’m wrong, it would not be the first time, but I’ve always been under the impression that those on the other side of the pond do actually speak a form of what is basically English. I don’t generally have any problems understanding them, but then I was brought up on a diet of Starsky and Hutch in their undubbed, so far as I am aware, forms. I fact, I do get a little confused over the spelling of some words, such as ‘practise’ and ‘practice’ or ‘organise’ and ‘organize’ and this confusion I put down to the WWW which has many articles written in the English which uses American style spelling. Oh, and I am aware of certain differences between spoken American and spoken English such as the use of the present perfect tense and the past simple and the spelling of words such as ‘color’ and ‘favor’ and ‘theater’ or the way in which Americans refer to taps as ‘faucets’ and ‘nappies’ as ‘diapers’. I could go on, but the differences are really rather slight in my opinion and resemble no more than the kind of vocabulary differences you get between different parts of the UK. Anyone know what ‘baps’ and ‘becks’ are, by any chance?