]]> http://english.blogoverflow.com/2013/06/one-language-many-voices/#comment-232347 Mon, 02 Mar 2015 19:40:00 +0000 http://english.blogoverflow.com/?p=702#comment-232347 Barrie England, an excellent overview of English. Here’s something that has puzzled me for years: I grew up in the 50s and 60s in north-east England, and I’ve always been fascinating by language and phonology. I know this because one of my earliest memories is of my granddad walking me upstairs and counting the steps, and I can remember noticing his Hull accent [not that I knew that at the age of 3]: he pronounced ‘four’ as ‘faw-eh’. Later, a junior-school teacher was explaining the difference between ‘between’ and ‘among’ [“between TWO things, among more than two”] and my little smart-arse hand went up and suggested that it might be connected to ‘twain’ [I’d recently read about Robin Hood splitting a willow-wand in twain]. So, why are so few English-speakers interested? Pretty well all my friends and colleagues have degrees, or more, and they all USE English. But beyond cribbing about split infinitives and such nonsense, they have very little notion of most of the ideas in your summary. I’m so glad to have discovered Stack Exchange. All the best, Dave Garner

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