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Comment by howlingfantods | Hacker News Reader

Not about cheating, but my friend runs a education consulting service in China and he recently got a call from a father saying that his 20 year old daughter was in the USA studying English but found it too difficult. The father wanted to know if my friend could help his daughter transfer to a school in a country speaking easier English, like Australia. He and his daughter apparently thought Australia spoke some sort of pidgin English that would be easier to learn than American English.

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As an Australian, I can confirm that in some parts of the country this is probably true! Seriously, our elocution is nothing short of atrocious: we drop words, use frequent contractions and then just roll everything into one mumbling, rolling wall of noise. Witness "owzigoin?". Known in more respectable locations as "How are you doing?". FWIW I'm just as guilty as the rest.

This is equally true of parts of the USA, and probably most other countries.

In Hawai'i this is just "howzit?"

As a USA native I can confirm that it is even simpler here. You can just say, "Sup?"

Clearly we have work to do ...

Us Chicagoans optimize that to "Yo!"

I thought it was 'jo' or 'joe'. I run into a lot of Chicagoans and they pepper their speech with 'joe'. I was always like 'joe' who? Found out recently it is a stand-in for dude.

More confusingly it's a pretty harsh insult for a female in Philly

Isn't that typical of most English countries (and presumably other languages)? For example, in Yorkshire (UK), "I would not have" might become "I'dn't've".

A linguist once pointed out to me that this is really common everywhere. She used the example "dijaeet?" Written that makes no sense, but it really is how a lot of people ask the question "Did you eat?"

Surely you can't be serious? I mean, to hear that someone went to Brizzy, had some brekky, and watched some footy on the telly is comprehensible to anyone.

Go consult your linguist about that guilty feeling, you'll feel better afterwards :-)

Sadly, your examples seem to suggest the opposite. The condensing of phrases makes the language more opaque and difficult to learn. So to a versed English speaker, the dropped implied words are easy to fill in; for someone learning, it's requires significant processing.

Singapore would probably work well for that. The people there are reported to speak such a thing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish

That said, if learning English is the goal, then that probably will be counterproductive.

>He and his daughter apparently thought Australia spoke some sort of pidgin English

In all fairness, there is a certain view that most English dialects are pidginized to some extent. et lest tha leksografee iz konsistent with thee observayshun.

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