American English

I could never understand if Americans intentionally developed rules, styles, etiquettes and conventions which are reversed. When MKS system was already in practice in Europe and many other parts of the world, what was the necessity to adopt FPS system ? English was not a native language of America, they took liberty to twist and modify according to their wish. I was listening to a lecture by the head of Career Center, Dr. Stevens in UC, Riverside and he made it a point, "Since you are in US, watch TV, cartoons and sitcoms and listen to American music. We don't talk normal literical english that you have learned from books."

I readily get impressed by those people who don't use "pet" words, who do not repeat sentences, who have strong vocabulary, and who are artistic while speaking but those who are not natural are rather turn offs. I should say I like it when I listen to Howard Stern, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore. As a digression, it is my conjecture that researchers/scholars from top schools such as MIT, Harvard, CMU, UC Berkeley have very good oratorial skills.

I will describe some day-to-day normal conversation which I could never pick up because I never found those friendly to ears even though people use those often.I have heard them say, "I am so cold or I am so hot". Why can't they say, "I feel so cold or hot" ? Despite this, my favorite lines from Matrix I are, "Smith: You are empty. Neo: So are you".

People have this knack of using pet words such as "pretty", "super", "basically", "cool". Sometime it gets irritating. Does it make sense to say, "She is pretty ugly ?". I think one has to exaggerate while speaking in America. If you compliment someone saying, "you look good", its not enough. You have to at least say, "you look awesome". It not enough to say that you are very busy, you have to say, you are super busy. I personally prefer to hear, "sounds good, looks good" instead of "cool" for everything.

African-American english adds another dimension. I am not sure if it is funny or it is "cool" to use their version of english. It is funny when I hear, "What's up dawg ? How ya' doin,bro ? Hey nigger, how is it hangin. " Is it correct to say, "he don't know nothing. He no good" ?

Some sentences are over-used such as "Friday lunch is not free" when someone wants to convey nothing is free in the world. If lousy speakers use such phrases/sentences, it irritates me as it does not sound natural in them. Sometimes I wonder, was it really necessary to make different pronounciation for words like -- vitamins, multi-tasking, semi-finals etc ?

Everything is not so "bizarre". There are some sentences which I picked up in the recent past and I really like to use those -- "Pepsi with Easy on ice (I mean 2-3 ice-cubes)" or "Tall Cafe au Lait with Easy Whipped Cream". I like the American pronounciation of "schedule".

So, probably I have been conditioned too much with textbook English, or may be I am reluctant to adopt slangs. I am changing...