When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "Britishaccent"...

[Duncan Smith]

Rocco Moretti wrote:
> Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>>> On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 00:33:43 -0000, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com>
>>> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>> For example: In British English one uses a plural verb when the
>>>> subject consists of more than one person.  Sports teams,
>>>> government departments, states, corporations etc. are grammatically
>>>> plural.  In American, the verb agrees with the
>>>> word that is the subject, not how many people are denoted by
>>>> that word.
>>
>>
>> There aren't any universal rules, except possibly "British people
>> speak English while Americans don't". 
> 
> 
> I believe you overgeneralize. :)
> 
> A Welshman would likely be offended if you implied he spoke English, and
> the Scots are notorious for only speaking English when they have too. (I
> remember a news story some years back about a Scottish "lad" who was
> fined/imprisoned for replying to an official court representative with
> "Aye" rather than "Yes".) For that matter there are plenty of people in
> Cornwall and even in London (Cockney) who speak something that is only
> called "English" for lack of a better term.
> 

So English is spoken only in the South East of England, except London?
I think you should also disbar the queen (unless she's already
classified as a Londoner), due to her apparent confusion between the 1st
person singular and 1st person plural :-).

Duncan