Are British English and American English still the same language?

[Anonymous]

With the differences in lexicon, spellings, meanings of words, and words of meanings (same meaning different words), and the adoption/ borrowing of words from other languages into American English ie "lasso" or "desperado" while they have the same root language, are they truly still the same language?

Yes

No

[Guffrus]

Nations have official languages and the spellings and meanings are defined, this is why they are different languages, though within both there are slang terms and such like which alter the spellings or meanings of words and language is a living thing which evolves over time, whether or not a word is a 'real word' or not is determined by its usage.

[Asker]

Precisely, so at what point do colloquialisms and slang enter the lexicon to such an extent that a new language is born. We can't put a date on when Latin turned into Spanish, or French, of Italian, but it did. In a way, what we are contending with is a linguistic Ship of Theseus

[Guffrus]

Well as i have pointed out, it is nations which determine whether a language is separate or not.

[Asker]

On an official level, yes, but on a historical and sociological level it's linguists

[Guffrus]

I think i am going to have to change my position on this and say that yes it is the same language.

The reason being that Austrailia doesn't have its own language but it is clearly distinct from British English and presumably that language is used in official documents?

I suppose I dont like to think of American English as being the same language as British English because it is so sad and awful.

I guess the point is that everyone uses language uniquely and we invent collective terms for things when it is useful to do so.

Perhaps the definitions which nations attempt to impose are actually meaningless as you can't control how people use language, it will always evolve.

[Asker]

True and true, but just because a language is used by government doesn't mean it's the language of the people, not does a language have to be accepted in any governmental capacity to be a language. Creole, for example, is it's own blend of French and... I don't know. But fee speak it outside of southern Louisiana. In Myanmar the official language was English for a long time, but the majority of the country speak Burmese, and the ruling class speaks Chin. These never stopped being languages.

And then there is Latin, the official language of the smallest country on Earth, but it is a dead language.

Yes, I'm being especially difficult because... Playing devil's advocate is fun.

[jshm2]

No.

That's like saying proper coffee and Starbucks and are the same thing.

American English is a dialect, British English is the real thing. Scots is a brand of English in some regions, but has it's own Gaelic and Germanic branch.

[purplepoppy]

They're the same language but different dialects. Linguists would argue there's several different American dialects that are as different from each other as they are from British English.

[dovendyret]

Lol of course it is.

I don't even know which I'm using half the time - thanks to Hollywood & the internet.

[CountessSarah]

Yes. It'll always be English until the two languages are so distinct you need like... a translator to converse between two speakers from the different places. And with the way the world is now the differences are lessening not increasing.

[Asker]

Speakers of Portuguese don't need a translator for Spanish but they are different languages

[Kaneki05]

Are you seriously asking is English... English? lmao. Also English was also made up by this exact thing adoption/ borrowing of words from other languages. About 80% of English are loanwords.
So... yes of course there the same.

[WhitneySnow]

I think so. I can still mostly understand British people even with their accents.

[LimitedBenefits101]

No, British is weirder.