Languages are quite arbitrary things. In languages there really are no absolutes. Nothing is set in stone, and all attempts to define rules that fit people’s usage of them inevitably come up short.
Standards for languages are created by declaring one region’s dialect the “official” version of the language at some moment in time, and the rules of the language are continually modified to meet the changing speech patterns of the language’s users. There is no right or wrong in language.
The United States and Great Britain are often referred to as two nations divided by a common language. For a foreigner learning English then, they have two major options in learning the language: learn British English or American English. While there is no “linguistically correct” language, there is a correct choice, and Germans always choose the wrong answer.
Purely from an unbiased standpoint, Germans should learn American English in school for a multitude of reasons. If a German were to watch the undubbed version of a movie, 9 times out of 10, that movie would feature actors with American accents, and the same goes for television. It just doesn’t make any sense to watch a movie about high school and then talk about your upcoming “A levels”.
A German is 5 times more likely to come into contact with an American than someone from Great Britain if the two people are picked up randomly from the planet and dropped into the same bucket.
In 2006 the GDP of Great Britain was $1.93 trillion, a paltry sum in comparison to the $13.13 trillion of the US. A German is more likely to be doing business with an American company than a British company.
A tourist in Germany is more likely to have come from the United States than from Great Britain. It would seem that the proximity to Great Britain would encourage British tourism in Germany, but the British also need to spend their vacation in some place sunny like Portugal. Plus they already have old stuff to look at at home.
If a German is going to visit long lost relatives whose ancestors emmigrated to an English speaking country, or vice versa, then those relatives will almost certainly be speaking with an American dialect.
It would seem like a good idea to go to the source for a language, but then Germans would just be learning German, when they actually want to learn English, and that doesn’t make any sense. So Germans instead learn what they refer to as “Oxford English”.
In theory there is nothing wrong with learning England’s version of English, just like there is nothing wrong with learning that Swiss language Rhaeto-Romanic . It can be done, but it is just not a worthwhile pursuit. English is the world language because of America, not because of England, so it only makes sense to learn America’s version.
In German schools you will receive bad marks for speaking with an American accent or using American spelling if you picked it up during your high school year in the States. Instead you should be receiving bonus points for learning the standards of a world economic and cultural super power. Mickey Mouse doesn’t speak with a British accent.
Any German reading this article will completely disagree with me, but it won’t be a bag of crisps that they are munching on whilst reading.
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