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English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

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Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#171

Post by kwhitefoot »

School-Cotton wrote: post #79
pizzeys wrote: post #34

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…

English has been "weird" for the reasons you're describing since before it spread anywhere. It has more to do with the number of different cultures that have conquered England, combined with the fact that written English has existed for a very long time compared to most European languages. The fact that there isn't an authority that can dictate major spelling reforms doesn't help either.

> The fact that there isn't an authority that can dictate major spelling reforms doesn't help either.

Nor is there any need for it. An authority that could dictate spelling would soon start dictating pronunciation. It's bad enough that the pernicious influence of Estuary English is levelling pronunciation over the whole country but at least people, theoretically at least, have a choice. The only influence such an authority has is to artificially slow the development of the language and to try to shoe horn regional variations into a single formula.

People often complain that written English doesn't correspond with pronunciation. But no one ever says whose pronunciation that the spelling is supposed to reflect.

I'm from the south west of England and my pronunciation of words like house, boat, castle, book, etc. is quite different from that of, say the North East. So how would you like us to spell house? Should it be /'haʊs/ which is probably about what I would say and is also regarded as RP. Or should it be /'hu:s/ which is the best I can do for the pronunciation that at least used to be common in the North East and in parts of Scotland.

Would the spelling authority also specify which syllables to stress? Then how will it deal with American English which stresses the final syllable in cases where most Brits would stress the penult.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#172

Post by camillomiller »

xixixao wrote: post #29
petke wrote: post #16

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…

Yeah, what you noticed is correct, but the reason is completely wrong. edit: see the map on wiki[0] The reason it might be true that people from smaller countries speak better English is emphasis - in a small country, people are fully aware that knowing foreign language (English, German, French in Europe) is super important. People in big countries (Spain, Italy, France) don't think it's that necessary, because they…

It is correct. First and foremost, in Italy we dub our movies so well, the dubbing itself could be considered a mastered art. We really like our dub actors. George Clooney, in Italy, has a very specific voice, for example, and that's the voice of Francesco Pannofino. That's so bad that when you hear the same actor dubbed by someone else, you feel like something's out of place in the movie. Italy has a very strong history of good Cinema, we're still quite proud of that. On top of it all, English in school is definitively not taught enough. My English, for example, comes from American songs and videogames.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#173

Post by baby »

xixixao wrote: post #29
petke wrote: post #16

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…

Yeah, what you noticed is correct, but the reason is completely wrong. edit: see the map on wiki[0] The reason it might be true that people from smaller countries speak better English is emphasis - in a small country, people are fully aware that knowing foreign language (English, German, French in Europe) is super important. People in big countries (Spain, Italy, France) don't think it's that necessary, because they…

> but the reason is completely wrong

Or not. I know people who learned spanish just by watching TV (in Romania). Here in France people have no idea how english sounds because everything is dubbed, from the news on TV to series and movies...

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#174

Post by LoSboccacc »

petke wrote: post #16

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…

From Italy here, can confirm. It is more than accent tho: has something to do by not being exposed to the full spectrum of sound the humans can produce.

We Italians can't say the th right, because we cannot even _listen_ it right. We can't just process the sound, yet alone reproduce it.

Then we get on internet and we learn written English, but since the rules are inconsistent we mostly are left to make wild guesses as their sounds and English pronunciation is extremely irregular. Most of the complexity comes from having to know if a word radix is or isn't saxon and apply a different set of pronunciation rules, so for example think -ice- which has very different sounds in different words in two groups or this about "A/I/E" https://i.imgur.com/zncINPy.gif

but what gets me is you have people that speak like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nj5MMURCm8 and tell foreigners they are not understandable

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#175

Post by ajmurmann »

One interesting thing to me I the comments to the original article was the mentioning of the weird "have got" instead of just "have" you learn in European schools. I hadn't thought about it since I started learning English I school in Germany many, many years ago. I think even the teachers dropped that in later classes. But I remember always having to say stuff like "I have got an apple" instead of just "I have an apple". I live in the US now and have never heard that and also don't recall ever having heard that in the UK either. What's up with that? Sounded like BS even to my fifth grade self who knew nothing about English.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#176

Post by pandler »

joeyspn wrote: post #88
xanderstrike wrote: post #21

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…

> 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? No, it just means that you need more exposure. That very same thing happened to me while learning english (as my 3rd language after Spanish and Catalan [0]). I started to interact and shared flat with people from USA, England, Wales, Australia, Ireland, e…

> I wasn't able to differentiate between Scottish and Australian, only between American English and non-American English

I've spent quite a bit of time in New Zealand, and a common complaint I've heard is that when they travel to the U.S., people often ask if they are from Australia. When I first rocked up to NZ I couldn't tell the difference either, but now the two accents are like night and day. Beyond that, every country has its own regional accents as well.

And to be fair, I reckon a good number of Americans who haven't traveled can hardly differentiate accents beyond American English vs non-American English too.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#177

Post by mamcx »

graeme wrote: post #93
joeyspn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? No, it just means that you need more exposure. That very same thing happened to me while learning english (as my 3rd language after Spanish and Catalan [0]). I started to interact and shared flat with people from USA, England, Wales, Australia, Ireland, e…

Spanish speaking people tell me they find the Cuban accent difficult. Of course, it's all inter-comprehensible, but you're not refuting the OP's point.

A kind-of-rule based in personal observations, is that spanish people closer to the sea talk FASTER than the rest.

We have somebody in the family that is know as:

"Blah ahk guak fiuya sdsds caramañola ñame!". And " caramañola ñame" is the only thing you will understand 100% of him ;) -- the other text is not a perfect rendition. In fact, nobody agree how exactly him talk when left him at full speed!

How fast is the talking is not the only issue. Is the slang. We can have the same language... but, o boy! the slang is diverse even in the same country.

And some words have reverse meanings, or don't make much sense.

For example:

"Esta haciendo sereno"

"Is doing serene (???)"

If use this dictionary, you could get it wrong:

http://www.spanishcentral.com/translate/sereno

Instead, despite the fact "sereno" is exactly "serene", this in colombia mean "colder wheater".

Is so funny when we teach the slang to outsider. Is crazy fun for them ;)

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#178

Post by ap3 »

noamyoungerm wrote: post #165
andreasvc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I agree with all your points, except that the subtitling/dubbing issue is the cause of all this. The subtitling/dubbing is an effect, not a cause. Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language. The status/prestige/coolness is a cultural thing, and this is what explains the difference in motivation to learn languages.

> Mere exposure does not make you learn/enjoy a language Then how do babies ever learn to speak? The most fluent speakers of foreign languages are almost always immigrants, because exposure is the key to learning to speak.

Anecdotally: my kid that grew up in the US in a spanish speaking home speaks fluent english. The other one that moved to the US at 4 speaks english with an accent.

No one speaks english at home, same people at home - only difference is the language on the TV. It works.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#179

Post by russell »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #59
petke wrote: post #16

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…

> English spelling is another thing though. Im still struggling with that. You're in good company since many native speakers can't spell either. English's greatest virtue is a high degree of fault tolerance.

I think the degree of fault tolerance depends on the age of the reader. My first computers used discrete transistors. My high school English teacher was a strict grammarian. I paid close attention because I was dating her daughter, also a strict grammarian. To this day the misuse of "to" for "too" will bring my brain to a full stop. I am moderately adapted to the confusion of "fewer" vs "less". (It's countable vs uncountable.) And I even use "they" as a gender neutral third person singular, but you should never do it in formal writing.

I read an article sometime in the past year that maintained that all the prissy rules were imposed on a perfectly good language by self-imposed arbiters of the language. Sorry, I cant locate it at the moment.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)

#180

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ajmurmann wrote: post #175

One interesting thing to me I the comments to the original article was the mentioning of the weird "have got" instead of just "have" you learn in European schools. I hadn't thought about it since I started learning English I school in Germany many, many years ago. I think even the teachers dropped that in later classes. But I remember always having to say stuff like "I have got an apple" instead of just "I have an ap…

Wow. You have made me remember that I also learned it like that at school. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that since school (maybe once in a blue moon, but it seems to be really infrequent), so I just forgot about it and say "have". It would be interesting to have the opinion of native speakers on this.

For the record, I'm now learning some Mandarin Chinese and apparently this kind of phenomenom is even stronger in that language (I say "apparently" because my Chinese level is still very basic, but that's what people who know more say). The first word you learn when studying Chinese as a foreign language is 你好 (nihao) for "hello", but apparently no one says that in China in real life, and the same goes for 你好吗？(how are you). There is also a controversy about a tone which is taught as a falling-rising tone but it doesn't actually rise unless the syllable is pronounced in isolation (and you hardly ever pronounce a syllable in isolation in real life...)

Weird stuff. I wonder what similar absurdities foreign students of Spanish (my native language) are subject to :)

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