> > I always thought that the difference concerning the use of "a" or "an" in front of an "h" was mostly between American and British English.
>
> Wait a cotton-pickin' minute...
>
> That should be American English and English English. In fact, I don't think you should class American English as English at all. Here is my view point.
>
> American English is actually a creolé of English. A creolé, if I recall correctly, is a variant of the main class of the language. English (or Queen's) English is the main language, so American English is the creolé.
>
> So, what we have is English and American (you can drop the creolé and the second English). So, please stop refering to the blasphemy of Samuel Webster as English - it is, in fact, American.
>
> So there.
>
> Chr"RULE BRITTANIA!!!"ico

Um. I've been doing a lot of research into language and linguistics lately, and I can assure you that American English (the proper name for it) is most certainly not a creole (which I have never seen spelt with an accent mark) of "The Queen's English." A creole is what you get when children pick up a pidgin as their native language, and a pidgin is basically an even blending of two languages. Your definition of a creole is actually the basic definition of a dialect. Since American English speakers and British English speakers can understand each other with very little difficulty, the two versions of English are dialects.

They are not two separate languages anymore than Mexican Spanish is a separate language from Cuban Spanish.

So there.

-eric "OH SAY CAN YOU SEE" sleator
Mon 25 Sep A.D. 2000