(河南)河南省2014年秋高中英语 Module 1 British and American English American vs. British English训练 外研版必修5.docVIP

American vs. British English I had a bilingual childhood, in English and Cantonese, and a bi-dialectical one, in American and British English.Frankly, my brother and I didnt really notice. Bridging the chasm between Chinese and English took so much effort that my we hardly realized we said biscuit, lift and zed (or the horrible Chinese e-zed) with our family -- and cookie, elevator and zee with everyone else. Compared to the horrors of learning Cantonese, we found the difference between trash can / bin, roommate / flatmate mere niceties. I didnt think about it until a few years ago when my mother called with an announcement. ?Ive asked your brother to switch to using mum with a u, she declared. Not mom with an o.It turns out she had simply tolerated mom our whole childhood as part of her attempt to fit in, in the same way she learned to cook hamburgers and dress her children in strange costumes for Halloween. It has been 15 years since shes fried a beef patty, or constructed a witchs hat out of papier mache, so there was no need to hold onto her old title either. ****After the U.S., my parents and brother moved to Asia / Australia, and I went to Montreal, which has its own linguistic problems. Here was a city divided not on racial or class lines, but on Anglophone, Francophone and Allophone ones -- a? place that tried to ban apostrophe s on public signs, changing Marios Pizza, for example, to Pizza de Mario. In a move that was more French than France, Quebec insisted on stop signs that did not say stop, but arret, complete with circumflex. In an environment like that, who cared that mad meant angry in one place and crazy in another?****I then started working in Hong Kong. HK Magazine was run by Americans, so I used color and that, though the odd Brit would write in asking us why we spelled things wrong. The South China Morning Post was British-styled, so I switched to colour and which.I was never a big deal until I started at the International Herald Tribun