Dang y'all

By Kayak - This FML is from back in 2013 but it's good stuff - United Kingdom

Today, I was verbally abused by a tourist because neither I nor anyone else in my country can speak "proper English". We're in England - clue's in the name, dipshit. FML
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Top comments

challan 19

I'm dying to ask what country the tourist was from, but I'm petrified that you'll say the states.

294 3

Comments

jordzy 8

Well it's really the opposite. Since Britain is our mother country we kind of ****** up the whole English language by changing it.

5 1
metalcrazed 21

Except the english didn't invent the language. English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects, brought to Britain by Germanic invaders and settlers from the places which are now called North West Germany and the Netherlands.

12 3
gracehi 31

Didn't the germanic invaders speak, uh, German? I always thought that Old English developed from German after the Angles and the Saxons settled on the island of Britain. Then Old English evolved into Middle English and then Modern English after William the Conquerer established the French nobility as the ruling class in England.

3 3
lilacgold 16

English is a hybrid language, cobbled together over the course of multiple invasions spanning many centuries. There's the original Celtic languages, Latin from the Romans, Scandinavian languages from the Vikings, Germanic roots from the Anglo Saxons and French from the Normans (which was itself primarily derived from Latin). There's also a lot of words we straight up stole from other languages because they had a word for something and we didn't. A fair bit of dialect variation is down to how heavily settled an area was by the various invaders. And even without such major influences for the past millennium or so, the language has continued to change, and it has done so in different ways in the different countries that speak it.

9 0
deloria_fml 22

You wish you had, you mean. You're making this worse. :P Anyway, it's not surprising, native speakers generally have terrible grammar because they pick up the language solely from being exposed to other natives, rather than by actually figuring out the dynamics of how the language is built and what that means. Very few people go to the effort of learning the underlying structures of the medium that they think and speak in, which is a shame because it can give you fascinating insight into your own culture.

34 11
kMb1998 2

cant we just call our language here American. hell weve been independent for 200 + years.

2 15
gracehi 31

The language we speak is called "American." ... "American English" that is. Really, the varying languages of the native Americans are the true American languages. However, even that's a misnomer, because they were speaking those languages long before Europeans named the continent "America."

2 1
skittle_QUEEN_YO 15

Mmm yes, you can call it American when you've learned how to use it properly.

0 1
fluffywaspluka 7

You'd be surprised.

0 1
luffynoandroid_fml 5

maybe it's because they cannot understand your accent

1 1
idiotsinlove 5

http://m.livescience.com/33652-americans-brits-accents.html

1 0
patsyd 4

I've traveled a fair bit, mostly to non-English speaking countries and never really had a problem communicating. I went to the US and it was so hard, my accent was just too thick. I chalked it up to exposure to the accent, when you hear Aussie or English accents on TV they're so fake. To the OP, that sucks, I'm not excusing their behavior, but they may have been really frustrated.

2 1
GwennaRose 22

Well maybe I'm just being an asshole but you did use a double negative in your post

0 0