Tuesday, February 10, 2015
English: US or UK?
Puerto Rico is US territory since 1898. In the beginning of this era many people tried to establish English as its first language. Some of the strategies taken towards that goal was establishing English as a compulsory course in all public school. If you think of from an independent point of view you would think that it is unjust and a way to assimilate the puertorrican into an others culture. Yet if you see it form a statehood point of view then you're probably in favor of that decision. From an objective point of view, even though it was a measure to absorb a culture, it does indeed benefit the society and the people within it. It is up to the people in the society to have the ability to make the differentiation between both cultures.
In a study made comparing English spoken in Puerto Rico and Malta and whether to which country did they had more similarities with the U.S. or U.K. the results were that Puerto Rico had more similarities with the English spoken in the U.S. while Malta had more similarities with the English spoken in the U.K. Apart from being a logical conclusion based on geographical terms, it was interesting observing that the difference between the English spoken in the U.S. and U.K. is much wider than the difference between the English spoken in Malta and Puerto Rico.
How could this be?
Well, Puerto Rico has more influence from the U.S. culture, because of their relation plus their geographical positions. The same happens with Malta and the U.K. The reason why the difference between the English spoken in Malta and Puerto Rico is less the the English spoken in U.S. and U.K. is due to the background and origin language. Spanish, spoken in Puerto Rico, and Italian spoken in Malta both derive from Latin and are both romance language. Therefore it is understandable, and the research confirms it, that there is more similarity between the English spoken in Malta and Puerto Rico than the similarities between the English spoken in U.S. and U.K.
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The conclusion is quite peculiar, but makes total sense.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense and is very logical that the people will adjust to language to the country they belong if they are colonized.
ReplyDeleteIt may sound strange as it is , but the truth is each and one of the colonized areas tend to create their own lexicon so, its very interesting, because this means distance is not a factor in terms of the similarities on the way we speak english.
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