polenta

SIMPATIA (SYMPATHY) is the abstract noun coming from SIMPATICO. You would never use it when somebody dies. For that, people like psychologists, etc use the technical word EMPATIA (EMPATHY)

Dragon

In english the word sympathy would mean something similar to empathy. I would describe sympathy as feel bad for someone when they are feeling down or have recently suffered a loss. Wanting to help them by letting them know you are thinking of them. When one of our really good clients at work has to euthanize their pet we often send them flowers with a note that says "Our deepest sympathy on the loss of your pet".
Empathy (to me anyway) means you feel the same thing as the other person. Your emotional pain causes me emotional pain because I have empathy.

Dragon

+ing = feeling

polenta

Yes, Dragon I went to your profile and saw you are a veterinary assistant. Thanks for your comments.

matthew

I have lived all over the United States and have heard all of our accents. I have yet to hear "been" pronounced any other way other than "bin"...

You know those English can't speak proper English... LOL

polenta

oh my God , am I starting a war between British people and Americans. God forbid!!!!!

Qsilv

Nah, no war, but ooohboy, the pronunciations AND certain usages are soooo different!

When I first moved from California to England, I actually needed a translator! lol...

Dragon

I heard a story of a Texan travelling to London. In the hotel he was given directions to his room and the consierge told him he would need to take the lift up to his floor. When he finally understood that he was talking about the elevator he made a big stink about using the word lift. He loudly announced that it was wrong to call it anything but elevator and that Americans had invented it so he should know. The consierge slyly said "Yes sir but we invented the language"
I always got a little chuckle out of that.

maddyjean08

I was talking to this person about flags, and he said the word 'flag' and I'm like 'what'? And he's like, 'FLAG!'. And I'm like, 'Oh, you mean flag?', because where I live we don't say 'flag' short A, we say 'flag' long A.

polenta

Well, then from US to UK you need an English-English translator. LOL
I've always wondered if Canadian English is more similar to US or UK.
Will they say lift or elevator? LOL

Dragon

Canadian english is almost indistiguishable from American english except for a matter of accent. I'm told by Americans that we tend to lift our voices at the end of a sentence making it seem like we're always asking a question.

puzzler

Dragon, I had to laugh at your comment 108. It brings to mind the old quotation:
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
--George Bernard Shaw

maddyjean08

Does anyone think that's weird how I say 'flag'?

Nylecoj

I love listening to people with different accents. I have a Texan accent. I think it is strange that they call ponds 'tanks' here instead of a pond, I always thought a tank was above ground, but they call a pond a tank.

belladonnis

I'm from the south and never thought I had a very southern accent but several years ago I went to New York to visit relatives and they had the best time showing me off to their friends just to make me talk!

inked_gemini

Accents are funny that way. I was not born in Oklahoma but have lived here for 20+ years, so I must speak with a somewhat southern accent. But if I do, I myself cannot hear it.

I often ask people that are not from this area if I talk weird. A friend of mine from the west coast told me that I speak with a normal accent (whatever that means) except for certain words. The word “care” for example. I tend to draw it out and add a syllable, so it becomes “cay-er.”

I still don’t hear it though.

Robindcr8l

When I moved to Boise from Buffalo, everyone thought I had an accent. I thought that was strange, because to my ear, the people in Boise spoke pretty much the same as Buffalo. I mean, if they heard an accent with MY speech, then it stands to reason I would hear one with theirs. The only obvious difference I could see was with certain vowels. In Boise, the seem to flip the short e sound and the short i sound. So to me, the word pen here sounds like the word pin. Also, in Buffalo, the name Don is pronounced distinctively differently than the name Dawn, but in Boise it is exactly the same name, only different spelling for gender. There are also certain colloquialisms (I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong) here that bug me. When they pluralize a plural word, they do it grammatically wrong. For instance, in the sentence "His kids' teachers are nice", it would be pronounced here, "His kidses teachers are nice." You have no idea how badly I want to correct that, but even the most educated people here do it.

sheftali52

All this talk about accents is charming. Sheftali grew up in Hawaii, where what we call pidgin English is common. Pidgin English is a local language that has a sing song quality to it, a somewhat odd grammar, and a lot of Hawaiian and other languages mixed in. Sheftali was not allowed to speak pidgin English, due to her father's insistence on "proper" English. However, even a lot of folks who speak "proper" English in Hawaii have been known to adopt the sing song qualities. Made things interesting. Sheftali speaks without discernible accent, so no one can ever guess where she's from in the US! Sheftali's husband is from the midwestern US, famous for its lack of accent for the most part. I still love hearing a Texas gas station owner tell me," Ya'll come back now, hear", with the "hear" sounding like "he-yer". And my southern friends eat grits, which they pronounce gree-its. It's all good.

Robindcr8l

Yes, once I was visiting West Virginia and my friend and I were kind of chuckling at how these 2 young guys had such thick accents they would turn a 3-lettered, 1syllable word into 2 syllables. Like bed became bay-yed. They overheard us laughing, and asked us where we were from. We said Buffalo, NY. They asked us, "What do you call a group of people there?" We looked at each other like, "What the hell are they talking about??" then answered, "Umm, we call them a group of people." "No," they said, "we mean do you say Y'all or do you say You'ns?" Well, we had never heard of "you'ns" before, so that really got us tickled! But again, we answered, "No, we still just call them a group of people. Unless of course you're from South Buffalo. Then you would call them, 'you's guys'!" LOL

And by the way, sheftali, I love the sing-song quality of pidgin, but never knew it was called that!

marg

hey, Dragon (going back a few posts..)..

d'you think it's because of the French influence that you 'go up' at the end of sentences, because European French certainly does..?