Erm. Not really sure what you're saying here... - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 29/07/2015 11:43:48 PM
View original postTrue: There is far more to dialect generally. That only underscores the significance of modern British English being practically indistinguishable from that taught and spoken in India, all of Western Europe, most of Africa and the remaining British colonies (just for the record: Indias population ALONE outnumbers the US (not just its Southern region) by a factor of 4, and Europes by a factor of 2.) Given all dialect involves, the nearly perfect equivalence between UK, Continental European, African and Indian English strongly suggest they are not just superficially and/or incidentally identical, but ACTUALLY so. That those speakers outnumber Southern US English speakers by an order of magnitude irrefutably establishes British English as the "larger" dialect by population as well as area.
Is there any particular definition of "British English", or alternatively of "practically indistinguishable" and "nearly perfect equivalence", that one needs to be aware of to make sense of this paragraph? Because it's not making a whole lot of sense to me using the normal definitions of those concepts.
As for "Continental European, African and Indian English" - apart from the question of what those actually sound like, you intentionally refer to populations of which the vast majority speaks English only as a second language? Is it really fair to include those when comparing dialect sizes?