SR V: To boldly go where no room has gone before

James wrote: Let's not put down the Italian race though, Rico.  There's a lot of beautiful and lovely Italians, like our Raff, for instance.

I have made no mention to the Italian race whatsoever. Some Italians women are simply stunning.

Now don't make me be so cheap, and mention Monica Bellucci.

James wrote: Raff, I'm curious to know what accent you have when speaking English? And have you now got a slight American twang?  Something you said in here the other day sounded a little bit American, hence why I was asking.

Mainly British, I'd say - most people who hear me have trouble in 'placing' me. As far as I can remember, I don't sound Italian at all - which is something I am happy for, since I hate the way Italians pronounce English. Here in the US I have often been asked if I was from Britain, especially in restaurants - I usually ask for water to drink, and I pronounce it the British way. I also pronounce the 't' in words like 'twenty' or 'centre', which is something Micky doesn't, though he doesn't have a twang as many have here.

On the other hand, having lived here for over seven months now, you can expect me to have taken on board some linguistic features of American English. If I want people to understand me, I'd better say 'sidewalk' instead of 'pavement', or 'gas' instead of 'petrol' - though I still find it hard to say 'mass transit' for 'public transport', and use the British spelling of words most of the time.

Raff wrote: Ricochet wrote: James wrote: Let's not put down the Italian race though, Rico.  There's a lot of beautiful and lovely Italians, like our Raff, for instance.  I have made no mention to the Italian race whatsoever. Some Italians women are simply stunning. Now don't make me be so cheap, and mention Monica Bellucci. I don't really think I am beautiful (though not ugly either), and certainly don't look like Monica Bellucci... However, Italians are not a 'race', but a people, and race (an extremely dangerous concept) does not exist anyway.

Ha, my time to excuse for James' bad word choice.

What do you mean races don't exist? I admit it can be volatile as a concept, but nonsensical too?

I'm glad Mauresmo is winning actually.

Karlovic vs. Federer will be interesting...

Yep, I'm surprised Hewitt isn't doing so well.

Raff, sorry, poor word choice by me there.  It's good to hear though that you don't have that stereotypical Italian twang when speaking English.  I was watching something on television the other day with an Italian lady speaking English and it sounded bad, to be honest.  There is also a German lady who gets on the bus where I live sometimes who has that typically German English voice.  She must be in her '70s though but I think she's lived over for quite some time.

It will if Karlovic just aces him all the time. 

James wrote: It will if Karlovic just aces him all the time.

Federer will win the tiebreaks, he showed this against Soderling.

Rain at Wimby!!

Oooh, Hewitt is making a comeback.

EST

I made a typo.

MAAHAN IS NOT THEIR WEAKEST. IT'S GREAT.

And the only comparison with Elixirs was based on the fact that they're both my favourites.

I just listened to some Between the Buried and Me...

...tell Harry I said "."