Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English • Hacker News Board

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#221

Post by javierga » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #155

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,…

There's a really fascinating guide for English writing which is all about this: how the best writers in English have used the cultural connotations of Germanic and Latinate words for effect. When to using one or the other, but also playing them off each other, or using the tension between them, and so on. Ahh, here's the book: Classical English Style, by Ward Farnsworth [1]. 1: https://www.librarything.com/work/24739…

As a non-native English speaker, Farnsworth as a last name sounds very fancy.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#222

Post by mumblemumble » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

manuelmoreale wrote: post #137

anotherhue wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Italian friend of mine, when struggling to find the word for a Satellite Dish, called it a parabola. I was very impressed.

I find that particularly amusing because Parabola is exactly how we call satellite dishes here in Italy. It’s technically called Antenna Parabolica but plenty of people simply call it Parabola (at least here up north)

Technically in English you'd only use "satellite dish" to describe a parabolic antenna that's being used for satellite communications.

In practice, though, I don't think I've ever seen that happen outside of a technical context.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#223

Post by anbende » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

goatcode wrote: post #218

1. English is made up of several languages; 2. "Language changes" pretty much equates to people making mistakes, and those mistakes becoming part of the language. Since English has spread over so much of the world, in addition to it not having a central authority that is looked to for its structure (as does French), many mistakes have come in, and made the language weird. This overlaps a bit with (1).

Regarding (2), now that there are on the order of a billion non-native speakers of English who often talk to each other, we will see more and more changes to the language from THEIR mistakes. English will belong less and less to native speakers as time goes on. Wild!

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#224

Post by rocknor » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #208

rocknor wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, nothing like telling people to change the way they have been speaking since childhood for your convenience... Those words and accent is understood by more than a hundred million people, and that number is going to increase manifold in the coming decades. So if you need to communicate with this large group of people, it's better that you learn to understand them, or it will be your fault for not understanding. Tak…

Or both parties can work together since there is no True English. Indian English is different than English. It is wrong for the author to expect their English to be universal, and it's wrong for English's speakers to expect -their- English to be universal. Thick accents are frustrating in any language. I have had to work hard on removing my American accent when learning Korean; it made understanding what I was saying…

I'm not advocating making any particular dialect universal. I'm simply asking people to look at the big picture instead of hating the person that you're talking to because of how they talk.

We have the Internet now, IMO it's only a matter of time until we naturally converge to a universal dialect. It will be a long time, but still.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#225

Post by croh » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #133

Isn't this selection bias? It's like walking in on a flight to US, and seeing how poorly sloppy everyone is dressed. So you might assume that the US is some sort of third world country. But you would be wrong, because the US is rich enough that even the lower class can travel. So if you are talking with some native speaker, you just might be speaking with an idiot, because even idiots speak English as their first lan…

Agree. In my native language, we use tons of slang and ignore grammer all the time. In fact lot of talk is based on context, you literally don't have to finish sentence, still other person understands meaning behind it.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#226

Post by caymanjim » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #133

Isn't this selection bias? It's like walking in on a flight to US, and seeing how poorly sloppy everyone is dressed. So you might assume that the US is some sort of third world country. But you would be wrong, because the US is rich enough that even the lower class can travel. So if you are talking with some native speaker, you just might be speaking with an idiot, because even idiots speak English as their first lan…

I think you're confused about how Americans dress. Even people with money dress casually, and we don't dress up to get on airplanes. In fact, most of us dress extra-casual on planes. I normally won't wear sweatpants in public, but I will on a plane, because it's far too uncomfortable to wear pants and a belt while crammed into a tiny seat. People who normally dress well will wear pajamas on planes.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#227

Post by goatcode » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

anbende wrote: post #223

goatcode wrote: post #218

1. English is made up of several languages; 2. "Language changes" pretty much equates to people making mistakes, and those mistakes becoming part of the language. Since English has spread over so much of the world, in addition to it not having a central authority that is looked to for its structure (as does French), many mistakes have come in, and made the language weird. This overlaps a bit with (1).

Regarding (2), now that there are on the order of a billion non-native speakers of English who often talk to each other, we will see more and more changes to the language from THEIR mistakes. English will belong less and less to native speakers as time goes on. Wild!

Or new languages will spawn from it combined with whatever of the numerous other-language-speakers use it. Steven Fry talked a bit about "Panglish" on QI, was interesting.

The question becomes: Will we call English English, or will some other language per above be called English? I for one don't use "nother" nor place periods before consequents, so I might be speaking my own language right now, based on what people online seem to have done with English :)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#228

Post by brk » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

anotherhue wrote: post #109

brk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very interesting, thanks. I have some Irish friends and we've both commented to each other that it seemed to be somewhat unique to Indian English speakers, makes me wonder more about it.

And in a sense, yes, I was intending to over-generalize a bit, I think that for various languages that used broadly in different geographies, certain words and phrases tend to pop up locally that are often not widely used outside of that region. This is just from observations I have made traveling globally and working with global teams for 20+ years. I mentioned "do the needful" as it popped into my head from the parent comment about Indian English.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#229

Post by brk » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #99

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.

Why? The stem is from Latin ponere, to put, so could theoretically work both ways

I probably should have said "a commonly used or understood root word".

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#230

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

chris_j wrote: post #72

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,…

I (native English speaker) have noticed this a lot. The example that I remember most vividly is receiving advice while trying to cook food on a barbecue: A Portuguese speaking friend suggested that I "move the burgers to the periphery of the barbecue". It make perfect sense but sounded incredibly fancy to me. A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education.

"A native English speaker would never have said that... unless they had received a really expensive education."

There's the opposite problem, too, where people with poor educations will try to use fancy words to impress people (but often wind up just sounding pretentious).

One of my pet peeves is hearing people using the word "utilize".

Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing.

I intentionally try to simplify my word choice, even though my vocabulary is much larger than what I use in writing or daily speech, and even when the first word that comes to mind is long/fancy word.

I try to use a five cent word when even a five dollar word would do. It sounds more natural, and you don't come off sounding like you're trying to impress anyone (which is usually counterproductive if you're using vocabulary to do it).