In spanish "Gallo" is also used to refer to that high pitch that sometimes comes randomly when speaking, more commonly in male teenagers. Which is similar to what's happening here.
There's a huge amount of influence of Greek in Spanish, so I am not surprised idioms are shared as well. (Spanish is kind of amazing in that it has Latin and Greek roots, but also has a lot of Arabic words like Ojalá, Camisa, azúcar, guitarra, blusa, pantalon, fulano, rehen, tarea, etc...
And as an Spanish speaker, I've found that, oddly, Greek people "sound" exactly like Spaniards. In the sense that you would swear they are Spanish and yet you don't understand a word, it's uncanny! Is it the same for you guys, the other way around?
Yep, nobody in Spain ever believes that I can't really speak good Spanish, because I sound like a native. I had a friend pronounce Greek words transliterated to Spanish, and he sounded like a native as well.
There are a few minute differences, like the "s" sound being a bit farther forward in Spanish, or the "rr" in Spanish being rolled twice (in Greek it's only rolled once), or Greek having a "z" sound (which Castillan accents don't have), but largely it's more or less identical.
And extreme syllable-timed language family (opposite of these) are languages Tagalog, Malay, Indonesian. EVERY syllable is pronounced and it becomes a mouthful but there's a strict cadence that comes from it. Foreign words break it a bit but native words are "ma-ka-ba-la-bu-sa-ng-ah-ga-ta-na..."
In the same way, Brazilian Portuguese sounds eerily like a made-up language pronounced in Russian, for a Russian ear. Many Indo-European languages are very similar phonetically, despite being completely different in every other way.
Greek is one of the bases of most western languages. You'd be surprised by the amount of words that derive from Greek in Portuguese. Here's a thousand of them for starters:
Worth pointing out that modern Greek has borrowed a lot of words from other languages, including the Romance languages. For instance, the color grey is 'γκρίζος/grizos', from the Romance language words for gray (the more ancient alternatives would be πολῐός/polios and φαιός/fios, with only the latter surviving to modern times). I assume 'γαλάζιο/galazio' is somehow related to Spanish/French azul/azur as well, but can't find any sources.
As a side-note, "In English" is too broad as the English spoken in the US, Australia and the UK is all different. I always felt it would be better if people specified their location rather than the mother-language when talking about what something is called in English. Same for Spanish as well, as different words mean different things depending on if you're in Spain, Argentina or any other Spanish-speaking country.
As a non-native. Isn't it assumed 'english', means uk english, and anything localised is 'australian english....indian english', etc? I've even heard of 'scottish english'.
English has always been gloriously open source, and anyone can fork it. It is not owned by anyone and words mean exactly what you intend them to mean, and no-one can tell you otherwise. And you can spell or pronounce words just how you like, despite what they told you at school.
That said, your social group may set its own expectations, and you may want to fall in line, say in your job application.
So if what you speak is based on English, it's English (in my opinion - and by the way I am English).
Oh, and Shakespeare would have spoken with an accent more like an American than I do. But don't tell film makers, our actors need the work.
There is also some conjecture that certain regional English in america, namely the Ozark region retained some Shakespearean/Elizabethan words and pronunciations and phrases due to its geographic seclusion.
I read about the reasons somewhere, but basically it is a general phenomenon where colonists lock in the habits and culture of their homeland as they remember it, and are more resistant to natural change.
It really depends on where you are, I think in Europe the English taught at school and considered the regular one is British English, but if you take movies/series/music, the broader one is US English.
I suppose this depends on your school/teacher. Our English teacher went out of her way to always teach proper (British) English and point out any differences with American English sometimes with an history lesson added.
Quite a few. Spelling and pronunciation are quite different, and also a bunch of words and idioms that don't match.
Not enough to prevent mutual understanding, but it can get close. As an American, if I haven't watched any British TV for a while and try, there's a good few minutes where I have to listen to most of it twice to be able to understand what was said.
Considering that the English-language web is almost completely occupied by USians, it would be hilarious if they were required to finally declare that they speak ‘American’ and not ‘English’.
Try searching for any life knowledge on the English web without specifying the country. E.g. home repairs: I'm pretty sure Brits don't live in those funny cardboard houses.
The underlying distribution doesn't matter when there's more activity from one stratum. The same way how it doesn't matter that the ‘average age’ of a Reddit user is in the twenties, when each teen on there posts and comments every ten seconds.
I don't know where Brits, Australians and English-speakers from all other countries are hiding, but they probably just use local communities away from the annoying USians. English web that you find by default is US-centric. English Wikipedia even has a special maintenance plaque for articles that are US-specific and should probably be rewritten someday—could as well just slap a sign like that on the whole English web.
When I see complaints on this very site about Californians assuming by default that everything is in California, I laugh heartily, tingling all over with schadenfreude.
This is self-reported. Consider that 90% of Croatians reported they speak English, but this is mostly the level required to guide a tourist to the closest bar around ;)
EDIT: my bad, you were talking about native speakers.
EDIT2: well, no, my point still stands: the Total includes self-reported and vastly inaccurate additional language speakers. But based on how US is 2/3 of all native speakers, and that there's definitely many fluent-English secondary-language speakers out there, US is definitely not dominating English-language web.
> Considering that the English-language web is almost completely occupied by USians, it would be hilarious if they were required to finally declare that they speak ‘American’ and not ‘English’.
For what it's worth, I have always described the language I speak as 'American', and it confuses people no end. ("Don't you mean 'English'?")
That's a good point. Even as someone who calls my language American and refers myself a USian in conversation, I do think I'd have trouble calling the language I speak USian—but, as you point out, calling it American is painting with a very broad brush indeed. Maybe "USian English" is clearest.
Not at all. It usually means that the person writing that assumes it's a common thing globally.
UK English being "proper" hasn't been a thing for decades now. Compare news reports in former British colonies from the 60s to now and you can literally hear the change in attitude toward's the "Queen's English".
Is there anywhere in the English-speaking world where a voice crack is called differently?
In general, the various flavors of English that you showed are extremely close to each other, especially when looking at the standard/official language from each country (which is implied when you say American English or Australian English). There is much more variation in more localized versions of the language, such as Cockney.
In spanish "Gallo" is also used to refer to that high pitch that sometimes comes randomly when speaking, more commonly in male teenagers. Which is similar to what's happening here.