First, my apologies, I just have to add my $5.35 to this thread.
As a semi-retired, oversexed, middle-age, ‘Mericuhn male I’ve been teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) for exactly 10 years. The majority of my students have usually studied English for 6 years before they end up in one of my classes. They speak good. I try ta teach 'em to speak gooder.
They complain that English is difficult because of all the homophones (their, they’re, there, your, you’re) and that the pronouns are dumb (he, me she, we, him, her, them whom or I and why does the objective case matter?). I complain to my native French and Spanish speaking students that I find their languages hard to hear because of all the homophones I stumble over in Spanish and French. And I love to counter that the way pronouns are switched around before verbs as subjects, objects, and indirect objects is just as difficult for me – neener, neener, neener. And don’t get me started on them thar reflexive verbs; especially them irregular ones. Of course, I'm much more compassionate than they believe, but don’t tell them that.
One of Manchester United's previous coaches, Archie Knox (Scottish), Brian Kidd (Colyhurst, Manchester), or maybe it was Steve Mclaren (Fulford, York) – well, at least one of them if not all of them – was/were famous for being completely unintelligible, yet they all spoke perfect, native UK English – just different dialects. These dialects were often difficult for Manchester United players to understand; especially those from Brazil. With regard to English, the variety of dialects spoken in London, alone, is enough to confuse the nicest corn-fed boy from Kansas.
I grew up speaking English and French at home (Ma was Quebecois) and although my French is solid, my French friends often plead with me not to speak “their” language. It is, however, somehow perfectly acceptable for them to travel about Quebec and impose their linguistic ethnocentrism upon the tortured Quebecois. Amusingly, these same friends cannot seem to detect the variety of dialects spoken in their country: Mother France. Easy examples: compare the roundness of a Burgundian accent to the clipped mutterings spoken in Provence . . . and somewhere in between is the strongly nasalized enunciation of a Paris native? Oy! Yet, the French seem perfectly willing to put up with Suisse Deutsch, that dialectal amalgam of French that sounds like German or German that sounds like French spoken by the majority of Swiss. Actually, Suisse Deutsch is considered a distinct, separate language. But that’s another issue.
Many years ago I hauled my Intermountain West Ewetaw accent down to The University of Texas, Austin, to attend grad school (obtained an MA in Linguistics and a Piled Higher and Deeper in Anthropology). After six weeks in Austin, I called home and the first thing out of my mother’s mouth was “What has happened to your English?!” Of course, she was completely unaware that she had her own strong regional accent. And to this day I slip up and say I’m fixin’ ta go . . . or If’n ya wahnt. . . as well as the occasional Y’all (always when addressing more than one person, never when addressing an individual). After 5 years of living in Texas I could pretty much detect what part of the Republic a person hailed from. East Texas (panhandle) is strikingly different than Texan spoken around Del Rio. It took me a couple of years to detect the difference between Tyler and Taylor (one is near Round Rock the other’n isn’t) and Midland/Oddessa is completely different (at least to a Texan) than the way folks speak in Beaumont or up around Palestine. Folks from Dallas/Ft. Worth sound like Oklahomans compared to the fine people of San Anton(io). But all Texans, as do most southerners, have one thing in common: they understand the meaning of sweet? or unsweet? when enunciated as an interrogative.
Now I live half of the year in Barçelona, Spain (an accent heavily influenced by Catalán) and the other half in Buenos Aires, Argentina (porteños insist they say they speak Castellano -- AKA Spanish -- but they don’t). Porteños speak Rioplatense jammed full of lunfardo (a slang unique to BsAs) and it’s damn hard to get accustomed to, although it’s easy to mimic. Argentines also use the plural familiar Vosotros (vos) in place of the singular familiar tu (tuteo). It's comparable to folks from The South saying Y'all. In addition, Argentines throw standard Spanish grammar out the door and use their own grammatical invention to inflect vos. About 5 years ago after I first arrived in Buenos Aires I called my LTC/lover/fuck buddy/business partner in BCN and the first thing out of his mouth was “¿Qué pasó con tu castellano?!"
These days when I make my annual one-month pilgrimage to Nevada, imagine my surprise to hear my neighbors in Northern Nevada beginning to adopt an accent and speech patterns similar to those of Texans? I blame it on long-haul truckers and their deep-seated need for biscuits or grits with chicken gravy. I have to blame someone.
My point? Well, regardless of what a dictionary claims, and dictionaries are useful for discreet periods of time, all languages are in constant flux, change, evolution. Language is generative. And there is no such thing as one language being "superior" -- notice the quotes -- to another.
And if anyone wants to privately debate me why it is perfectly good grammar to end a sentence in English with a preposition or to, maybe, split an infinitive (are you with me?) then by all means “Bring it on.”
Just remember when speaking to speak nice. But if you ever write or say "irregardless" I'll whap you up the side of the head and hard, too.
And by the way: Si hay otros que hablan castellano y quisieran escribirme en el idioma, por favor ¡Hazlo! Esto lugar es el único donde grito fuerte en inglés.
