And the Celts...and the Picts...and the Angles...and the Jutes...and the Danes...

An interesting thing about the Canterbury Tales is that many (most?) Americans can understand it much better read in Middle English than they can reading it.

Speakers of current dialects of English are often unintentionally insulted by others because of words that have local/cultural connotations. For example, there is another thread running right now where one contributor (according to her, an American) is using a word "eejit" in what is supposedly an humorous Irish sense, and another contributor (also an American) is feeling insulted because he understands that to mean "idiot" and isn't amused.

Personally, I can deal with most British English dialects, at least as much as I've encountered them on BBC television shows imported into the States, but I have a hard time with the South Asian (India/Pakistan) version. Americans LOVE Australian, BTW.