Dear Lee, Discussions of "standard English" are chimerical. We have no Academy of the English Language. There are only greater or lesser numbers of people, geographically dispersed, speaking different dialects of English. If American English (not a uniform dialect in itself, of course, even if you restrict the field to English in the United States) has numerical priority, British English (likewise heterogeneous) has historical priority. So we can spar endlessly. Hands across the sea... Carlo Caballero