41–50 of 249 posts
Too real. I've spent some time in Italy where, due to my broken Italian, I was very much so an introvert. People noticed it too when Americans would come by and I'd talk to them - they said I "became a different person."
As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…
See http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/04/spanish-vowels-vs-english-... for a comparison.
I can communicate well with people over the internet, but only recently have I met people in the flesh with similar interests to me. This means that I mispronounce jargon. Cache, deprecated, whenever I use words like these in conversation, people have no idea what I am talking about, I have only ever been exposed to them via text. I realised that I have never heard people say them before. This was probably not helped by the fact that I prefer an essay to a videoed talk any day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Counter argument: everything is dubbed in Austria and yet we're pretty good at English. Why? Education and a multi-cultural background in the last 30 years.
Although when you compare the English that Austrians and Germans speak (I'm from Germany) to the English of Scandinavians and Dutch people, the latter are noticeably better than the German-speaking countries. So the argument probably has some merit. Edit: At the same time, Scandinavians, the Dutch and Germans/Austrians all have a language that is more closely related to English than the Romanic or Slavic languages.
Historically sure, but if you look at people from my generation I doubt that's the case still. Focused English education in Austria only really started 15 years ago.
When I went to school our first english lesson was with 10, now it's 5 or 6.
I can relate to this despite being a native English speaker from the UK. I misspent my childhood in IRC and messing around with dozens of UNIX machines. I can communicate well with people over the internet, but only recently have I met people in the flesh with similar interests to me. This means that I mispronounce jargon. Cache, deprecated, whenever I use words like these in conversation, people have no idea what I…
Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont…
I think this fact (and he's obviously not wrong, though I don't know if I'd label it a secret - everyone knows this about English, I thought?) is inevitable from any language which gains the reach English did, or at least, gained the reach English did at the time English did... whether it would be different now we have global communication all the time remains to be seen I suppose. How do you have a language spoken b…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish_(Nerriere)
John McWhorter's 'magnificent bastard tongue' has many quirks to trip up anyone learning it as an adult, and which could be simplified without making the language unintelligible to those who already speak it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3143472-our-magnificent-...
As a native English speaker who is hard of hearing, I can echo his pain with phonetics. I learned most of English from reading and writing, and I say a lot of words incorrectly. People I am talking to that do not know me well often treat me as if I am retarded. I can imagine it is far worse for people like antirez.
English is my third language; I've read and written English almost every day for 30 years, but I've only ever spent two weeks in English-speaking countries. I sometimes find myself unable to pronounce words that I've used for decades in writing – often, it's the type of more formal vocabulary that doesn't often come up in movies or TV series. For instance: cuticle, paean, echelon, emaciated, heinous, comely, disreput…
As a native English speaker, I can understand pretty much every other native English speaker (though I may struggle a bit with Cockney or Nigerian english, the point gets across). I'm also pretty good at Spanish, and living in Southern California I mostly hear the Mexican accent. When I hear Argentinian or Cuban Spanish, I have no fucking clue what's going on. Does that mean Spanish is phonetically broken? It, like I…