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Sep 22, 2021 at 10:58 comment added Stuart F To some people (in some contexts) the word "Commonwealth" refers to the parts with a largely white population (Australia, Canada, New Zealand), rather than all the countries in the Commonwealth. This ties in with a view that the Commonwealth has two tiers, with the white nations at the top with the power and money and the rest ignored.
Oct 22, 2012 at 1:56 comment added TRiG @BarrieEngland. I think all the various "Commonwealth" varieties of English become very similar in the formal register, albeit with certain specific vocabulary differences (SA robot = traffic light; Irish press = cupboard). So it is sensible to group them together. (And the fact that Ireland is no longer part of the Commonwealth provides an additional complication.)
Sep 19, 2011 at 11:22 comment added ghoppe However, I believe the phrase is rare because there are reasonably few contexts where it would be appropriate to speak of "Commonwealth English". As you say it's often easier to speak of the differences than the similarities.
Sep 19, 2011 at 11:20 comment added ghoppe While I agree that differences in dialect between English spoken between some commonwealth countries and England may often be larger than between American English and some British varieties, I think it can be useful to group "non-American" English varieties together, especially when talking of learning English as a second language, because they often broadly share vocabulary and spelling. "Commonwealth English" wouldn't be any more homogeneous than "British English" or "American English" which has many different regional variations in accent as well.
Sep 19, 2011 at 9:32 comment added Barrie England There are 54 members of the Commonwealth. Here are some examples of English from just four of them. It would be misleading, to say the least, to claim that they were examples of a common variety of the language. ‘Yu noken draivim kar long sipid nogut.’ ‘Letshowaydoonthabooza.’ ‘This Banaras very old city. Nobody know how old. Varanasi our very oldest city in India.’ ‘He drove through a robot on the way to work.’
Sep 19, 2011 at 7:30 comment added Golden Cuy An extraordinary claim like this needs more than one paragraph. Are you honestly saying that it's just coincidence that Australia, and the UK spell "colour" and "centre" one way, and do their dates one way, and the US does it another?
Sep 19, 2011 at 7:26 comment added Coomie There are many common features in British English, especially in the spelling of past tense verbs. While there are dialects, on the whole, British English is similar throughout the colonies, especially when compared to American English.
Sep 19, 2011 at 6:54 history answered Barrie England CC BY-SA 3.0