Quiz: What American accent do you have?

[mlmpetert]

^ Pretty neat.

I feel like "midland" American English is the most neutral English anyone can speak, regardless of country.

One thing that the Australian article points out, but i think is drastically changing, is the formality and lack of idioms and made up words and phrases in American English, which probably go hand in hand (idiom pun?) to some extent. I feel like this is in part due to the growth of the Hispanic population in our country. In my personal experience most of the idioms or “inside” meaning of words and phrases my group of friends use have come from guys that grew up speaking Spanish at home.

My guess is that as Spanish developed in Latin America people were forced to learn multiple meanings of words or learn completely different words that meant the same thing. In order to trade with or conceal things from neighboring countries and regions Spanish speakers would have to learn these multiple and different meanings or words and phrases.

Plus Spanish was an introduced language so carryovers from past tribal languages would have had their input on all the different versions of Spanish. Which is much different than how or why Strine developed the way it did, yet both seem to have a more playful lexicon. Maybe as more latin Americans settle in the US, American English will follow suit?