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Wendy, brilliant idea for a thread.

There are many books & a few documentaries on English "as she is spoke" in various parts of the world. I'll do a search.

@aristo: One was on the amazing regional differences in the US.

@paul: Good one! Bush W (dubya) didn't fare any better.

In Canada surprisingly, considering the size of the country, we don't have any noticeable differences, except for Newfoundland. They speak another language entirely:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6et6u8
but they have some lively music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FODj93HT5tQ&feature=related

We also have the world's longest border, yet you step across the 49th parallel & your neighbours have a different accent. Even after 200 years. Go figure!

Me and friend went to Cape Town for a holiday and got friendly with 2 Isreali girl students. They were very intelligent and could hold a perfect conversation in English. One of them confessed to me later, that when me and my mate spoke together she struggled to understand a word we were saying (we are both from the Salford area and had reverted to all the slang terms). Nothing to do with crosswords, but it made me smile to realise how bad some of the English are at speaking their own language.

Do you remember Loyd Grosman, a New Englander who hosted Masterchef? Quite confusing when he said `Put the onions in the port` and `Wear your chef`s heart`! I`ve never heard anyone draw out vowels the way he did.
In America i talked to people who could not pronounce `squirrel` in two syllables. Try as they might, they could only say `squirl`.

I for one say squirrel with two distinct syllables, and often with a distinctive modifier. :)

Great thread Wendy...wonder if it will take on..."The Misuse of Apostrophes" proportions?

Hope so...that was good fun!

Back later,

p@

Magworth: My wife once came home from a youth soccer league meeting here in Massachusetts and told me she'd been rather surprised when the coach told the parents to bring the children to the first practice a bit early to get their shots. She was of course picturing the team lining up for inoculations, but then realized that the coach, who obviously hailed from some town just a bit closer to Boston, meant shorts.

A SCOTTISH TALE

This is a story I heard about 20 years ago and it's mentioned on the web site below in the "Did you know" section about Sir Matt Busby declaring that his profession was a "Footballer"
http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/archive/Sir-Matt-Busby-article815.html

Wendy, re American cryptics. Very rare on this continent.
Thanks to aristophenes for posting the link to The Atlantic magazine. They dropped the puzzle from the hard-copy & it was only available for on-line subscribers. Perhaps it's totally gone now.
The latest I found was this:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/coma/images/issues/200803u/maypuzzle.pdf

However, Harper's still publishes theirs.
I'll try to post it with "Dropbox" or "Google Docs".

Spent ages staring at the Washington Post online puzzle yesterday...4-letter word for 'aroma', second letter D. Then the penny dropped: ODOR. I still think it looks funny though!

I have a good friend in Florida - we met when I helped her with a travel problem on Cambridge station, over 30 years ago. We e-mail each other every day. I`ve visited her, she`s visited me and we visited Holland together. I enjoyed a Scrabble game with some of her friends - we used a special bi-spelling dictionary! M.