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Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

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Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#101

Post by Clewza313 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #47

This article seems to take an angle that any of this is unique to English. Are things any different for non-native speakers growing up in India, China, Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc?

English is unusual for being polycentric. For the vast majority of the world's languages, there's exactly one prestige dialect (Parisian French, Mandarin Chinese, Tokyo Japanese, etc) and a bunch of "inferior" dialects, and the first scenario (highly educated professor goes to a different country and is tripped up by using the "wrong" word) would not be possible.

As it happens, though, Arabic is also a notably polycentric language, although it has a single prestige dialect too (MSA). And English is the closest thing India has to a prestige dialect, since all other languages are regional.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#102

Post by biztos »

yosito wrote: post #74
biztos wrote: post #29

I'm a native English speaker who's lived in other countries a lot and speaks three languages, now trying to learn a fourth. The weirdness of "English" is something I think about often. For starters, you have to live in it before you can really speak it. And our spelling is the least rational, least consistent thing I've ever seen. In addition to the weird way we spell a lot of things, many of the sounds are not prono…

> For starters, you have to live in it before you can really speak it. I know plenty of people who haven't "lived in English" before they're able to speak it. But I don't think English is much different than other languages in that the most effective way to learn it is to use it.

Sorry, I should have emphasized really.

Compared to the other languages I know, the difference between "school English" and "English on the street" is larger. But of course the other two (German and Hungarian) could be exceptions!

I have heard the same thing said of Spanish, at least as spoken by the working class in Madrid.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#104

Post by biztos »

mbg721 wrote: post #97
biztos wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean in English, I would say look to the poorer corners of blighty, or deep enough into Australia, and you may find what you need. Or, if you're in Los Angeles and white, ride the bus from Santa Monica to DTLA on any given weekend and just listen to people talk: that's English just as sure as mine is, but I get maybe half. (Also, is Scots not a dialect of English? I'm not sure -- a mix at the very least. Great…

For the benefit of confused Americans like myself: English as it is spoken in Scotland, Scots, and Scots Gaelic are three different things.

Interesting, I think Wikipedia is saying it's a distinct language that shares a lot of words etc with English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

And I admit I have no idea where the line is between a dialect, and that.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#105

Post by ljm »

brk wrote: post #79

I think some of the confusion is that "pone" is not a root word or term. So, the opposite of postpone is not prepone, in the same way that prepartum is the opposite of postpartum.

I like 'sublime' for that. It sounds like an object could have three states: lime, sublime, and superlime.

Something that is sublime would somehow be inferior to its lime counterpart. Like everything has an innate limeness.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#106

Post by awillen »

I can understand why it would be annoying to constantly be asked about your accent, but on the other hand, it's someone taking a bit of information they have and using that as a starting point to learn more about you. That's a good thing! Obviously it shouldn't be asked in a way that derails an existing conversation, but we could use more people trying to learn about each other these days, not fewer.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#107

Post by meheleventyone »

mwcampbell wrote: post #77
meheleventyone wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People’s writing ability is really variable as well though. Here in Iceland you get some comically translated written stuff in English purely because everyone thinks they know it well because they on the whole have a very high level of spoken English. That naturally holds true for native English speakers as well but probably with smaller variance.

Fair point. But, and I might be wrong here, I figure people can much more easily control their writing than their speech, especially if they're not expected to send an immediate written response (e.g. in chat). Perhaps my mental model of foreign accents is wrong, and forgive me if I'm being an ugly American here, but I've often thought of a foreign accent as a disability, as if the person had a stutter or other speec…

There’s plenty of accents amongst native speakers. The way you feel about other people’s speaking voices is very much on you and belies a lack of worldliness. It’s a big place and I’d recommend checking it out. You do seem conscious of that though but it’s not something I’d accept personally.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#108

Post by anotherhue »

fsniper wrote: post #90
heurisko wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there are dialects that are pretty much incomprehensible to people who grew up in the mainstream dialect (true of many other languages as well) I think there are differences in accent, but I don't recognise anywhere as being "pretty much incomprehensible". I speak "standard" German as a foreigner, and have definitely found dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible". I haven't found differences to such a d…

I moved to Ireland 4 years ago. And for at least 2 years, I could not understand ( or hear ) a word my - not direct - Irish manager said. It was alien to me.

And you probably got off lightly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#109

Post by anotherhue »

brk wrote: post #70
FriedrichN wrote: post #41

There is such a thing as Indian English, maybe not officially but it certainly exists and it does differ from British and American English. As a matter of fact, if you look up prepone in Wiktionary "prepone" is mentioned as being used in India, so it's not that weird that the teacher in the article used it. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prepone

There is such a thing as Indian English If there is one phrase that, to me, defines Indian English, I think it would be "do the needful". For American English speakers, I think the first time you hear/see that, it is totally confusing and jarring in an odd way.

Heard this phrase growing up in Ireland also so I think you may be over generalising. A quick search shows Irish origins actually.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#110

Post by ipsi »

mwcampbell wrote: post #31

As a midwestern white American, I've certainly had prejudices based on people's accents, and I've probably misjudged whether someone was a "native" speaker. Having read this article, I will renew my efforts to fight those ugly prejudices. For a few years now, I've thought that the ideal work environment for encouraging diversity and inclusion would be an all-remote team that used only written communication, preferrin…

On the other hand, somewhere in the region of 10-15%[1] of the UK population is dyslexic (I'd expect that to be similar in any English-speaking country), so exclusively-written communication will be somewhere between "unpleasant" and "awful" for them.

That, and people will start judging on grammar, ability to spell, word choice, etc, etc. I think you'd just be trading one set of prejudices for another.

[1]: https://www.cache.org.uk/news-media/dyslexia-the-facts

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