Interesting Dell article 1072

It's often a question of the dialects of English spoken by two people, and their respective familiarity with the dialect of the other.

People in India are educated by what is essentially a British educational system, a remnant of the British Empire. Surprise, but the English taught in these schools is a prim and proper prestige dialect, Oxford or Cambridge or whatever, almost completely free of the vulgar slang that we Americans have introduced to corrupt a pure langauge. The accented English spoken by Indian Indians modifies the prim and proper British pronunciation somewhat. People unaccustomed to hearing any of the British dialects either need to adjust or they will have difficulty. Unfortunately, all too many people are unaware of how much slang they use or how many American English words and phrases are in their speech. The result is not too different from two people speaking foreign tongues at one another.

Clearly, Europeans will have less difficulty than Americans communicating with people in India. On the continent, British English is taught, not American English. And in Great Britain, most everyone understands the prestige dialect spoken on the BBC and other radio and TV media... Ben Myers