A Descriptive View of How and What we Speak
...ht pronunciation from person to person. We all speak differently and even though there may be one common accent/dialect that most people come somewhere close to it isn't possible to stop it altering. French and German have separate words for formal and informal uses of the pro-noun you. 'You' is very impersonal and directive. Not the word to use when speaking to someone in a higher position than you. Old English would use thee and thou, archaic words now not used, but much more formal and dignified. These words have gone out of use and this may be a shame but some people in a past society didn't want to show respect for people in authority. Therefore these words have died out and now we only have 'you'. People are using new words and losing old ones all the time and this process cannot be stopped because each generation wants to have a different language from the previous to somehow separate the parent-teenager gap. Words such as 'mint', 'wicked', 'ace', and 'cool' have all been given new meanings to adopt by the younger generation at one time or another. We have standard English which is used across the England but even this can be modified by region or generation Modified standard English is simply standard English with a slight accent of the speaker. This is now used by most teachers in schools right across the country. It is also broadcast by news programs and is know as BBC English. To get on in today's world it is necessary to understand modified standard English, and to avoid being stereotyped you need to speak it. I believe that the range of sentences that men would speak is almost identical to that which women would speak...