Andy Capp by Reg Smythe for April 26, 2010

Andy has a sharp tongue!

Well, for once, I can see Andy’s point. I’ve also been lucky enough to have done a bit of traveling (mostly in the US, although I’ve been to Canada once and to Rome twice), and I’m also fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian (as well as five other languages, and I’m working on acquiring fluency in another eight), but I don’t go around bragging about all of that to complete strangers (especially when said strangers’ body language indicates that they clearly want to be left alone in the first place!)

But you just did.

I’m multi-talented: I can speak and be annoying at the same time

Do you feel challenged by this Andy?

Unfortunately, I would tend to agree with you, Yukoner. :^)

Speak english, your in America. I mean you’re…

They’re in England!

An American language? Kevin Costner’s TV mini-series says there have been 500 nations in America, pick a language.

\\//_

“all sanity is lost.”

“Speak english, your in America” Your? Don’t you mean “you are”? As in, you’re……… God I love it when you geniuses get going

“Do you ever talk to yourself? Yes… Then you know it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be don’t you!

To those who say speak english you’re in America America has it’s own language… It’s called “American” The dialeck of which comes in many forms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect It may take a bit a brain power but you’ll understand what I’m saying just think about it.

I say speak the language of the country your in…

To paraphrase Bruce Willis, I think from Die Hard series: I only speak two languages, English and bad English.

Andy is right!

There always seems to be someone who wants to tell you how good they are at so many different things, that no one is even interested in! And they always have the answer, although no one ever asked a question. Undoubtedly, most of us have run across megalomaniacal characters like this, that we wish would go away or just be quiet and leave us alone.

Be careful Andy! From past experience we have all found such fellows to become quite bellicose when confronted.

Sorry; I should have made it clear that I was being tongue-in-cheek. I don’t actually tell people my accomplishments unless they ask me (unlike this chap, who, to paraphrase jtpozenel, is the answer to the question that nobody asked!) ;)

The modern English, and especially those of Andy Capp’s background, tend to find it suspicious that somebody lucky enough to be born to speak English should voluntarily learn somebody else’s language… Andy, were he to afford or want a cheap package holiday in Spain, would not bother with Spanish, just shouting at the locals, very loudly indeed, in English as it’s evidently their fault not to have learnt his language. About the only foreign language routinely taught in British school is French, and this tends to be done so badly as to leave people with a lifelong aversion to learning languages. It’s not even the easiest European language for British people to learn - Dutch would be easiest as it is so closely related, then German, then perhaps Spanish, which is a dâmn sight more logical than French.

Besides, Andy is a Geordie - his regional English dialect is so heavily accented as to sound like a foreign language to many other English people!

I disagree that Dutch and German are necessarily easiest for English speakers to learn. English has lost both noun gender and article inflection, and its dative and accusative have merged into a single objective case. It could also be argued that Frisian is closer to English than Dutch, but that’s going back to Old English. The greatest influence on the original Old English was that momentary relaxation of the British Isles immigration quotas (it happened in 1066 or so) that brought in the Old French influence, which led directly to the loss of case and gender forms.

Sorry to go on, but I was a linguistics major. I can’t help it.

Andy is a multi-bored bummer and drinker!

By the way, the same thing with deaf people in the world have different sign languages. The hearing people in the world have many different languages. Interesting, huh! :-)

runar, too many big words and verbosity. LOL

wow, there are a lot of multi-annoying people commenting in here today–of course, i’m not one of them!

Sometimes I wonder in the US if where being forced into learning a different language because of the foreigners that come in won’t learn are language. I have neighbors since moving here that don’t know English. Job market is requiring more bilingual then ever. If only I knew but then Spanish would not help me now and high schools don’t teach that much. High school wasy decades ago. I tell my daughter she needs to learn more but she doesn’t. And our jobs are still going over there.

If you want American languages, there’s Digueno, Luiseno, Navaho and Nahuatl.

I tawk gud amerikan

Good one, Yukoner.