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What's your English?
Our 'What's your English?' campaign takes a trip around the English-speaking world, a world that is growing all the time. Country by country, a month at a time, we are asking English language users, learners, experts, artists, bloggers, tweeters, people who live there: What's your English?
We are collecting snapshots of English as it is spoken today by millions of people all over the world. We are celebrating English as a language without borders, itself made up of many other languages and still borrowing words and phrases all the time.
So, wherever you are, however you use it, we'd love to hear your answer to the question:
What's your English?
You can do this by joining in on conversations on the blog, on Facebook and on twitter (we're @macdictionary), adding a word to the Open Dictionary or writing a guest blog post. Also, if you would like to answer the What's your English? question with a video, please send us the link on YouTube and we might include it on our YouTube page, link to it off the blog and tweet about it.
This month …
July has been dedicated to American English on the blog. We've received guest posts from all over the USA and discussed pronunciation, regional differences in vocabulary and even the effect of The Simpsons on the English language. For a taster of the latter, read this short excerpt:
On the eve of its twenty-second season, The Simpsons deserves praise, not just for what it has done for television (you're welcome, South Park and Family Guy fans), but it has also had an enormous effect on American popular culture and the English spoken in the United States. Several neologisms have become so ubiquitous that even non-fans of the show use words or phrases made popular by The Simpsons. They may not even realize that they have The Simpsons to thank for some of the things they say! … more
June was the month of South African English. You can read some fantastic guest posts on the subject. Here's a short excerpt from one of them:
The usual range of the South African words we use now, as part of our everyday life, pales under the spotlight of the World Cup. The country, having been working up to it for what seems a long time, is now consumed with the fever – and fervour. The old motto 'Local is Lekker' (good, excellent) is still around, but 'Proudly South African' has bloomed and every flag-adorned packet of supermarket chops bears a label saying so … more
In May, we turned our attention to Russian English. You can find some fascinating guest blogs here. A short taster from one of them:
When I started my education at IADT, I realized that I lacked specific words and terms to do with the fashion industry. So I started to pick up new words all the time. Besides, I noticed that there were many English words which sound like Russian but whose meanings are different. … more
April was Chinese English month. We invited you to stay tuned and find out what happens when the English language meets Chinese. Take a look at the Chinese English posts we published:
Few will be surprised to discover that William Shakespeare never visited China. Nor was his work widely known there until comparatively recently. The first confirmed appearance of the name 'Shashibiya' in a Chinese language publication was a brief mention in a translation of Milner's The History of England in 1857. It was the publication of Lin Shu's Tales from Shakespeare in 1904 that first brought the Bard to a wider Chinese audience. … more
Wort des Tages
noughts and crosses
a game for two players in which they take turns placing an X or an O in one of nine boxes until...
Open Dictionary
dramality
Eine Fernsehsendung oder -serie, die sowohl Elemente eines Dramas als auch einer Reality-Show enthält.
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