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Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

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Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#41

Post by metters »

nickkell wrote: post #31
metters wrote: post #6

Sadly I also experienced a native (Canadian iirc) speaker mocking me for my pronunciation of 'power'. Indeed, I used heavy German accent on that specific situation, because I was excited at that moment. It shocked me quite a bit and I didn't know what to do back then. Now I can laugh it off - English was my first foreign language but only one of three in total back then. And it must have sound funny (like Arnold Schw…

Our "Anglo" nations are mostly monolingual, but take it for granted that everyone else should speak English. As a result we sometimes forget how much effort was put into learning it, probably partly because we ourselves never achieved the equivalent. It could be that your English is so good, that individual mistakes (here I'm going to be guilty of using an idiom) stick out like a sore thumb! You were probably right t…

> stick out like a sore thumb

I am going to memorize this one.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#42

Post by Digit-Al »

Google234 wrote: post #29

> "Professor C leaned back in his chair and repeated in a dramatic mock British accent, 'Intervene!' " The professor was drawing attention to Rodríguez's way of pronouncing the word. > "Nowadays," Rodríguez notes, "I would have filed a grievance against [this professor] so heavy that he would have had to sell his soul to remain employed." It must be fun to be a member of a humanities department today. I imagine every…

I have to disagree with you. That was not a slip up or a micro-aggression.

If you have a good friend who is foreign (or even just has a different regional accent) and you know they can take it as intended then it's okay to partake of a little light hearted mocking; but in an environment like that and with someone you don't know it's both highly unprofessional and tantamount to bullying.

At the very least someone should have pulled that professor aside and told him that his behaviour was not acceptable. There's a time and a place and that was not it.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#43

Post by zajio1am »

As a non-native speaker, i rarely have an issue with advanced vocabulary or idioms from native speakers. The thing that is hard to me is understand heavy accents of other non-native speakers or local accents.

Also some ungrammatical constructions are hard to understand, e.g. when i first saw sentence with "your" instead of "you're" it took about minute to decode it.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#44

Post by oytis »

timthorn wrote: post #37
oytis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Russian I did a hitchhiking tour over Northern Europe when I was young, and while I gained some "fluency" in English as a result, the quality of my language use dropped noticeably. Not only because I was forced to use the first language construct I can pull from my head, but also I had to simplify it to be understood. Being personally interested in equality, acceptance etc. etc. I find it sad to see more sophist…

I agree, and it's not just the loss of that rich communication in other languages but in English as well.

I mostly meant English. Other languages probably simplify as well, but English does it much faster because of the scope of use by nonnative speakers. Same thing happened to Greek and Latin once

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#45

Post by Y_Y »

chmod775 wrote: post #16

> The test also requires making a clear choice between British and American spelling and vocabulary. That "can trip up people whose English comes from various sources" — say, a third from British textbooks and two-thirds from American movies, Repečkaitė said. As someone who had trouble learning English in class and ended up self-teaching using the Internet and reading English literature, I would have no hope of passi…

I think that's especially silly, since (almost) everyone uses some combination of these two. Particularly in the rest of the Anglosphere each country's norm will have elements of both British and American conventions. Even in the UK and US different publications will have standards specifying the use of one or another spelling for "ise/ize" or "practice/practise" and things like that. It would be weird to mix dialect like "garbage can" and "dustbin" but spelling is absolutely fine (as long as you're consistent with each choice).

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#46

Post by barry-cotter »

chmod775 wrote: post #16

> The test also requires making a clear choice between British and American spelling and vocabulary. That "can trip up people whose English comes from various sources" — say, a third from British textbooks and two-thirds from American movies, Repečkaitė said. As someone who had trouble learning English in class and ended up self-teaching using the Internet and reading English literature, I would have no hope of passi…

You made no mistakes in spelling or grammar in writing two short paragraphs and used quite complex vocabulary along with using one idiom and three complex sentence structures. Believe me you would not have any problems.

The author of the article is uninformed or lying. I would guess they just don’t know what they’re talking about but never rule out malice.

https://answers.scottsenglish.com/discussion/209/is-correct-....

> In the TOEIC and TOEFL, the examiners are reading for content, and not specifically spelling mistakes. Your score will be lower if you misspell a word that is written in the question, or if you misspell the same word in different ways. As on the IELTS, your meaning must be clear.

https://www.prepadviser.com/toefl/important-spelling-toefl-v...

> How Important is Spelling in TOEFL?

> The answer to this question is actually really easy – it’s not very important.

> This does not mean that spelling is completely unimportant for TOEFL essays, but it’s only one part, and it is not one of the most important aspects. Most of the time, spelling does not cause any problems. The most important areas to pay attention to are usually others: structure, grammar, vocabulary, details, etc.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#47

Post by Y_Y »

nickkell wrote: post #31
metters wrote: post #6

Sadly I also experienced a native (Canadian iirc) speaker mocking me for my pronunciation of 'power'. Indeed, I used heavy German accent on that specific situation, because I was excited at that moment. It shocked me quite a bit and I didn't know what to do back then. Now I can laugh it off - English was my first foreign language but only one of three in total back then. And it must have sound funny (like Arnold Schw…

Our "Anglo" nations are mostly monolingual, but take it for granted that everyone else should speak English. As a result we sometimes forget how much effort was put into learning it, probably partly because we ourselves never achieved the equivalent. It could be that your English is so good, that individual mistakes (here I'm going to be guilty of using an idiom) stick out like a sore thumb! You were probably right t…

This is absolutely right. It would be cruel and unusual to pick on some particular word when someone is clearly a beginner in English, but when they are otherwise very good and they make an incongruous mistake it grates. I think people feel better about correcting or good-naturedly making fun of errors like this because it's implied that "your English is so good it's funny that you got that one small thing toally wrong". Of course this is often not so well appreciated by the recipient for various reasons.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#48

Post by bonoboTP »

barry-cotter wrote: post #46
chmod775 wrote: post #16

> The test also requires making a clear choice between British and American spelling and vocabulary. That "can trip up people whose English comes from various sources" — say, a third from British textbooks and two-thirds from American movies, Repečkaitė said. As someone who had trouble learning English in class and ended up self-teaching using the Internet and reading English literature, I would have no hope of passi…

You made no mistakes in spelling or grammar in writing two short paragraphs and used quite complex vocabulary along with using one idiom and three complex sentence structures. Believe me you would not have any problems. The author of the article is uninformed or lying. I would guess they just don’t know what they’re talking about but never rule out malice. https://answers.scottsenglish.com/discussion/209/is-correct-.…

I got a really high score on IELTS (equivalent of C2) but I speak a mix of English from various places and my accent is also a random mix of American, British, Australian various European-but-non-native English accents and the accent from my native language.

Its very hard to keep British and American English apart as we don't know in many cases who wrote something on the Internet and we also read and listen to shows and YouTube videos from various places.

Re: Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

#50

Post by marmaduke »

jraph wrote: post #38
marmaduke wrote: post #14

> A group of nonnative English speakers is in a room .. then an American walks into the room .. understanding goes down. I work in a research group with a lot of international people across Europe and elsewhere. As an American there for years, I got used to doing what they say here, speaking at the lowest common denominator, but when a new native English speaker (could be British or Australian too) enters, the same e…

> it all dries up with the first French person because largely they are mostly intolerant of poorly spoken French As a French person surrounded by non native speakers, I am sad to hear this. Many French people should quit their elitism with respect to the language and start bothering about the content instead. Languages are tools, not an end in themselves (they are also a very interesting topic). It is still useful f…

> Languages are tools, not an end in themselves

I suspect most people agree with this, and I don’t personally encounter a lot who or elitist or dicks about it. What is most common, in my experience is a complete lack of effort to (a) interpret what a incorrect phrase might have meant and (b) avoid idiomatic yet superfluous choice of words. These are a lot obvious yet contribute significantly to the inclusivity of a conversation with non native speakers. This, surprising, given how welcoming France is of foreigners otherwise.

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