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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

#171

Post by mattkrause »

pdpi wrote: post #26

As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…

This goes the other way too.

I've definitely gone with `consecuentemente` in Spanish because it's an English cognate and I couldn't remember whether I should have used `porque` (=because), or one of the annoyingly similar `por que`(=so that), `por qué` (=why), or `porqué` (=a reason).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#172

Post by Causality1 »

"I grew up with three languages, as my parents did not share the same 'mother tongue' " Madani says. "And, in any case, how would this manager know what language I grew up with?

The careful omission of a statement whether English was one of those three languages leads me to believe it was not. The manager knew he didn't speak it from infancy because Madani spoke it fluently but without the style of a native speaker. Perhaps the difference in that position would be irrelevant, such as a STEM job. There are positions, however, it would matter, such as sales or public relations where that last one percent can mean everything.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#173

Post by nkrisc »

heurisko wrote: post #49
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…

> 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…

You can definitely find dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible" in the US just by traveling around Appalachia.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#174

Post by xwolfi »

pdpi wrote: post #26

As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…

It's very obvious, you're right. I'm French and I sometimes I have to prove people the words are in an English dictionary while they're absolute basic 6-yo level in French.

I remember "ameliorate" that an american friend (an adult) didn't even know (but again this guy mixed Portugal and Porto Rico so maybe not the best sample lol), while for me it was clearly an easy cheat because I had more trouble reaching for "enhance".

Ofc since I'm also an ass, I like to claim English "stole" all those French word then proceeded to misspell and massacre them.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#175

Post by owenversteeg »

pdpi wrote: post #26

As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…

Funny enough, a similar thing (using obscure, ten-dollar words instead of simple ones) happens with many Russians learning English. It happens for a totally different reason - obviously Russian is a Slavic, not Romance language. Turns out that most high quality translated material for Russian is old literature and scientific papers. So that’s what the translators are trained on, and that’s what many Russians speaking English sound like. As an example, a friend of mine was just learning English and didn’t yet know words as simple as “stairs”, but would use ten-dollar words like “prurient”, “strumpet” and “veritable”.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#176

Post by andrewzah »

There -is- a difference of natively learning a language and learning it later on as EFL/ESL. It has nothing to do with politics, or being perfect. In fact, many ESL/EFL speakers have better grammar and vocabulary than the average native speaker because they have to focus on those things in order to learn the language.

However, a native speaker won't struggle in speech, and they'll know the various idioms used all the time in colloquial speech. Of course native speakers don't have to take the TEFL/TOEFL! They don't consciously think about grammar rules, they just employ them nearly always perfectly in speech. Of course not every native speaker is good at writing at an academic level and we should be aware of that.

This phenomenon is also not unique to English! This article and the one linked are basically following the trend of bashing one's own English; how dare native speakers speak their language like they have been their entire life? Part of learning any language is learning the cultural idiosyncrasies and idioms. Of course, native speakers should strive to make sure they're not overusing idioms with a EFL/ESL audience, but knowing "grammar" and "complex technical terms" doesn't actually mean you can speak [American/UK/Indian/Black American/etc] English.

Humans are just curious when someone has a different accent than the local area. There are various American accents. I've had that question asked a lot when I was living in Korea. Getting upset about it is entirely a personal choice.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#178

Post by the_lonely_road »

I will chime in with a slight anecdote. I have a direct report that speaks fine English but his written communications are just south of ideal. He asked me to help him by explicitly pointing out issues with his writing. I have been happy to do so but the process has really highlighted for him how refined my understanding of WHAT is right is contrasted to how poor my understanding of WHY it’s right is. More than half the time I’m forced to say “ that isn’t right, this is how it should be worded instead but I don’t really understand why”.

Language is a crazy thing.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#179

Post by nkrisc »

amirkdv wrote: post #120
pdpi wrote: post #26

As a non-native speaker, one fascinating phenomenon for me is the flip side to Uncleftish Beholding[1]. Many latinate words are considered more sophisticated, or fancier in general, than germanic words. Because I'm a native speaker of a Romance language, those are precisely the words that I reach for naturally, because they're familiar. What follows is that, past a certain threshold where your English is good enough,…

The dual origin story of the English language is quite fascinating! There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to a list of just what you described, synonymous words with Romance vs Germanic origins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_d...

The first section with the foods helps illustrate the class difference: the Germanic words we still use in English to describe the animal, while the Norman words we still use to describe the processed food products from the animal.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#180

Post by JohnWhigham »

benrbray wrote: post #140
lisper wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I emigrated to the US at age five from Germany and learned a lot of my English from Peanuts comics. One of the words I learned from that strip was "incidentally" which I used for years before someone told me about "by the way". I got beat up a lot too.

> I got beat up a lot too As someone born in the 90s I'm always shocked to hear about how culturally accepted it was for children to be physically abused at school in my parents' generation. People talk about getting beaten up at school like it was nothing, like they deserved it for talking funny or liking comic books. It's so normal that the children's shows I grew up with on Nickelodeon / Cartoon Network / etc all…

Uh, it's arguably worse than ever today. It just doesn't happen on the playground anymore. I contend the situation was better when it was out in the open and not on handheld devices.
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