English Usage

If you're really really a ginormous fan of the English language, you're probably already a member of the alt.usage.english newsgroup. Come again? Say what? Don't even know what a "newsgroup" is? Well, way back in a galaxy far, far away--oh, wait, I'm mixing metaphors here. Over a quarter of a century ago, long before the WWW existed, the Internet hummed along without pictures. We connected with one another directly through our telephone wires and some nodes aggregated messages and distributed them to folks with special software called "news readers". You may have this facility built right in to your email program, or you can now access newsgroups online through Google Groups. You won't be disappointed if it's all words, will you? Many of the newsgroups have websites these days, and alt.usage.english there tell all about the history of the group, explain how to find information contained in it, is one of them. Pages direct you to its archives and allow you to search.

A feature I find fascinating is the Audio Archives, which let you "Listen to the sounds of English from across the USA and around the world". Shall I share my story about Australian English? I went down under and carefully listened to a news broadcast on my first day. I recognized all the words spoken, but had absolutely no idea what they'd said. Same with reading newspaper articles. It took about three days for my brain to translate what I consider "British English"!