When teaching English in another country, I’m told by many students that they want to learn ‘merican English not British or another version. I think that this is sad, but there is a belief that the American version of English is the language of business. I’d really hate to see the loss of the magical twists and turns a language takes when it deviates along the path of migration. And even as an American, I really hate our accent. It sounds horrible, but you can’t hear in it in a blog post. Thankfully. ;-)

As an Australian, I’m very aware that an American audience is not likely to understand Aussie slang. I try to write in what I think of as ‘standard international English’ – its a bit bland, but more widely intelligible

And by the way, Lorelle, I think the Lone Ranger rode to the William Tell overture, not the 1812.

HiYo Silver!

cheers,

Leigh

In fact, I have blogger-friends who explain the terms they use in parentheses or footnotes.

When I first started blogging on my personal blog, many of my visitors were just friends and family. As such, it was easy to dialogue in the comments in a manner some others wouldn’t understand. When writing something that is colloquial (and with my Ulster-Scots background, there are thousands), I now explain it in brackets, but generally I try to stay away from doing it.

When I read this post, I was reminded of a story I heard concerning an Australian who went to America, and one day he went to a mechanic and told him that his battery was “flat”. The mechanic thought he must have drove over it, because Americans would say there batteries are “dead”.

Best regards

Still references to actual events, celebrities etc may throw me off as I just don’t get what they are hinting at, but you generally get the main points anyway. One thing that gets lost in that process is however, as you point out, the spontaneity and a joke explained is mostly simply not funny just as an insight missed is an insight lost.

Parallel to the “Cultural Colloquiums” you refer to is using technical terms and other specialized terms that only those into the subject really gets. I must admit that I had to look up “Colloquiums”, although I knew what you meant from the context, as I never heard the word before. Looking it up didn’t really help though is its definition really didn’t seem to have much to do with this topic, but maybe it is what happens when you take it out of the context.

So keep in mind that when you are blogging are you communicating with the world and not everyone is a native English speaker, thus expanding the problem from culture alone to include language as well.

Keep up the good work – I always look forward to your posts in particular!