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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

#21

Post by gmfawcett »

prvc wrote: post #12

As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.

Taking your point to its limit, all contemporary languages are a useless waste of energy. Let's adopt a terse and efficient esperanto so that the billions can easily conduct business.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#22

Post by Grustaf »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #4
bovermyer wrote: post #3

"Prepone" makes sense even if it's not a word. Closest equivalent I can think of is "move up."

That's a funny example to use, since you can move up a date, but nobody talks about moving down a date. Same problem in the opposite direction. "We're moving up the launch" is common, but never heard anyone say "we're moving down the launch", even though delays are common. The issue with "prepone" is that "pone" isn't really used as a world. A quick googling shows that it is a word, but in regular speech it's not use…

Pone not being an English word on its own is not really relevant.

A lot of, if not most, Greek/Latin neologisms and combined words use a root that is never used as is.

Both “neologism” and “combine” above are examples of this…

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#23

Post by krona »

prvc wrote: post #12

As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.

I think you've missed the point of English, which is a collection of languages that evolved over time. Unlike e.g. French, there is no definitive, latest version of the language decreed from above. The dictionary is post-hoc, and long may it stay that way.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#24

Post by kbutler »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #16
no_one_ever wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than 'up and down', I think the visual is supposed to be 'up and back' (like forward and backward). English is fun

More usually (in the UK) it's forward and back, which make more sense as direct opposites. It's a little confusing though because pushing something back means move it later and bring it forward means move it earlier, whereas when talking directly about time the meanings are usually reversed (e.g. "back in time" means earlier).

Does "back in time" mean earlier when speaking of future events? Or only past events?

A future meeting "moved back" is definitely postponed. (US English)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#26

Post by pdpi »

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, there is a very sudden phase change where people around you go from "you speak pretty good English" to "you speak amazing English" with nothing in between — all of a sudden you're perceived as a peer, and you choice of vocabulary then sets you apart. Ever since I've noticed this I've been trying to make my vocabulary "worse" by incorporating more mundane words into it.

1. https://msburkeenglish.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/uncleftis...

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#27

Post by azangru »

tgb wrote: post #7

Strange choice of interview subjects given the article title: the first seems to be a native speaker and the second asserts he is a native speaker. They're just not from the US.

> the first seems to be a native speaker

What makes you think so?

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#28

Post by ido »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #4
bovermyer wrote: post #3

"Prepone" makes sense even if it's not a word. Closest equivalent I can think of is "move up."

That's a funny example to use, since you can move up a date, but nobody talks about moving down a date. Same problem in the opposite direction. "We're moving up the launch" is common, but never heard anyone say "we're moving down the launch", even though delays are common. The issue with "prepone" is that "pone" isn't really used as a world. A quick googling shows that it is a word, but in regular speech it's not use…

    you can move up a date, but nobody talks about 
    moving down a date.
It reminds me of this scene from Stargate SG1: https://youtu.be/LxK0ZIk_sSE

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#29

Post by biztos »

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 pronounced at all, or pronounced differently, in different countries.

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) but then we add weird things like Americans hearing race in accent and dialect, while the British can hear class but for the most part the opposite is not true.

I think simple English is one of the easiest languages to learn, because of its ubiquity and in most places the material advantage of speaking some; while good English is one of the hardest.

Thanks to the magic of the innernets I have recently discovered a Finnish comedian named Ismo who talks about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGcDi0DRtU

(Arguably NSFW if you work in a kindergarten.)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#30

Post by viraptor »

prvc wrote: post #12

As a Commonwealth inhabitant, having to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants, each with a small number of differences in orthography and vocabulary, strikes me as a useless waste of energy. Difference and local particularity for its own sake may please the odd local jingoist, but it is simpler to simply take the mother version to be definitive.

In what way do you "have to deal with a multitude of formalized language variants"? How does that impact you day to day?
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