Forbes  +  401529 Tue, 07 Aug 07 02:27 PM  Anonymous wrote: Why would one presuppose that, "the major interest in the English language lies in the UK."?  I made the observation in the context of the Adventure or Story of English. I was not making any narrow nationalistic point or suggesting that any non-UK varieties of English are "uninteresting". The history of English is usually divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English. By the time the Age of Discovery began Modern English, at least in its early form, was already established and it was Modern English that was exported to different corners of the world. So, if you are studying the history of English from its earliest recorded forms (circa 700) to, say, 1500 it is no good looking outside the UK, or more precisely, the British Isles. When looking at the varieties of English today, it comes down to a question of the degree of homogeneity. Despite the fact that there may be differences between English as spoken in one part of any state of the US and another, as a whole, the English of N. America is more homogenous than the English of the British Isles. Incidentally, one of the major dialect divisions of the US runs east-west through Georgia. Forbes Joined on Thu, Jun 16 2005 Regular Member 895 Dialects, History of English