Why It’s Strange That Everybody in the United States Speaks English

Imagine you’re a tourist planning on visiting India. Determined not to be seen as culturally ignorant, you’ve decided to learn Hindi, the official language. As the plane lands in Bangalore, you are confident that you can speak in the native language.


Eventually, after several painstaking months, you learn Kannada as spoken in Bangalore. Now you’re really confident that you’ve got this thing down; you know both Hindi and a very local dialect. You fly to Mumbai.


Might as well have stayed with English.









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3 Responses to Why It’s Strange That Everybody in the United States Speaks English

  1. Carl McMahan says:

    In partial answer to this post, language and dialect variation arises from 2 factors, isolation and time. With the notable exception of the South, especially the interior South, America hasn’t really had much of either.

    In the Chinese case for example, the Wu, Xiang, and Yue (Shanghainese, Hunanese, and Cantonese) languages began branching off from Mandarin over 2000 years ago and those respective areas of China were, until the 20th Century, quite isolated from one another.

    You will actually find more variation among English speakers in the UK than you ever will in the US or Canada precisely because of the time and isolation factors.

    • inoljt says:

      Yep, countries with long histories tend to have many languages or dialects. India, China, Great Britain, and Nigeria have thousands of years of history, and differences in language reflect that. Whereas the English-speaking residents in the United States only have a few hundred years (same with Brazil too, except with Portuguese).

  2. Brett Heffner says:

    You said about American English, “With the exception of the South and a few inner-city ghettos, there is even no difference in accent.” Obviously you forgot about New England’s easjun coast, although this type of Yankee dialect is endangered today. Ive only been once to New England for a period of four days in the Portland area and Acadia NP. I heard surprisingly little accent and the only time that I heard in on the radio was in local business commericals.

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