we've come very close of late to actually® saying something serious about the differences between 'dialects' of English; here's something John Fowles wrote in "Daniel Martin":

Nothing distinguishes us more clearly from the Americans, nothing characterizes better the very different ways we use our shared language -- the way they use it as a tool, even when they are being poetic, and the way we treat it as a poem, even when we are using it as a tool.

comments?