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American and Mexican Vexation
Aug. 21st, 2004 12:10 amThis is such a happy subject for my first post since camp to be about, isn't it? But it's ticking me off. American is not a language, okay? I already posted the following on SPS, but for some reason I am feeling very strongly about it so figured I'd post it here, too. Tell me what you think.
The correct terms are American English and Mexican Spanish. American English is used "especially with the implication that it is clearly distinguishable from British English yet not so divergent as to be a separate language," while Mexican Spanish is "the Spanish used in Mexico," according to m-w.com. There is no such language as American, and there is no such language as Mexican.
We may use the word 'vest' differently on our different sides of the pond, just as one side has car parks while the other has parking lots, but we have the same conjugation of the verb 'to be.' Nearly every word we say can be understood by the other group. The variations come from things invented or made popular after the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock and Europeans started settling in North America. These differences are insanely smaller than the differences between Spanish and Italian, Italian and Latin, Russian and Ukrainian, or any other combination of languages you could come up with. I don't know nearly as much as most of the other people here about the differences between Mexican Spanish and Spanish, but from what I understand the one that you all think about is that one uses a certain verb conjugation while the other doesn't. I'm sure the differences are similar to the differences between A English and English because of the similar ages of colonization, and there are not nearly enough for there to be four languages instead of two.
The correct terms are American English and Mexican Spanish. American English is used "especially with the implication that it is clearly distinguishable from British English yet not so divergent as to be a separate language," while Mexican Spanish is "the Spanish used in Mexico," according to m-w.com. There is no such language as American, and there is no such language as Mexican.
We may use the word 'vest' differently on our different sides of the pond, just as one side has car parks while the other has parking lots, but we have the same conjugation of the verb 'to be.' Nearly every word we say can be understood by the other group. The variations come from things invented or made popular after the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock and Europeans started settling in North America. These differences are insanely smaller than the differences between Spanish and Italian, Italian and Latin, Russian and Ukrainian, or any other combination of languages you could come up with. I don't know nearly as much as most of the other people here about the differences between Mexican Spanish and Spanish, but from what I understand the one that you all think about is that one uses a certain verb conjugation while the other doesn't. I'm sure the differences are similar to the differences between A English and English because of the similar ages of colonization, and there are not nearly enough for there to be four languages instead of two.
