Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 576 posts

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#251

Post by livre »

Y_Y wrote: post #15

Can I gripe about the spelling "nonnative" rather than "non-native"? It the former spelling it looks like it's said all at once, like the word "normative". Probably it's in common use and there are other similar cases we've assimilated, but I don't have to like it.

I don't know about "non-native" but words tend to lose the hyphen over time when their usage becomes more common. A recent example is e-mail, old texts contain the hyphen but more recent books and articles will likely omit it. It doesn't stop just there though, even the word tomorrow used to be hyphenated, you can find it as to-morrow in the book "The adventures of three Englishmen and three Russians in Southern Africa." To-day and to-night too https://episystechpubs.com/2020/05/19/editors-corner-to-day-...

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#252

Post by monkeybutton »

joeberon wrote: post #191
benrbray wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree, it's weird how quickly it has changed. I went to school almost exactly from 2000 to early 2010s and I saw it change before my eyes. Quite literally we were the exact school year (grade) where physical abuse became much less tolerated. I'm not sure what exactly changed, but it a stark contrast between looking at the upper years when young vs when I reached that point. The teachers verified it too, and our gra…

When I went to high school in the mid 2000s I remember it being the dawn of zero-tolerance policies for everything major and minor. Parents were also suing schools, and I think those policies were a bit of a to reaction that.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#253

Post by notdang »

croh wrote: post #225
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.

It's the same in the majority of the languages.

I noticed that the usage of slang, correct grammar is an indication of the position on the social ladder and education.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#254

Post by torstenvl »

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,…

Yep! The reverse is somewhat true as well. When I had to get a photo ID in France I couldn't remember whether «noir et blanc» was idiomatic and in that order, so I said «monochrome» instead. The photographer was impressed that I knew such a "technical" photography term.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#255

Post by pmoriarty »

oblio wrote: post #248
pmoriarty wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

In Romanian "a utiliza" is "to use". I imagine it's the same in other Latin languages. So, see the original comment :-)

I'm talking about native English speakers. It's not as grating if it comes from a non-native speaker, who you know hasn't mastered the language yet. When a native speaker says it, it feels like they should know better and are intentionally trying to make themselves sound smart.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#256

Post by dmingod666 »

'loot', 'dacoit', 'blighty', 'juggernaut', 'punch', 'chappals', 'verandah', 'bunglow' and too many to count all have Indian origins.

'blighty' is a misheard vilaiti(foreigner). It's a tango, that's how the sausage is made and there are no wrong answers.

You make a mess of yoga and Indian cuisine. We add liberal modifications to english. It's all good.

Interesting thing is, if there is a time when are a lot more Indians speaking English and all making the same 'mistakes' than other people, how long till the mistakes are part of the language.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#257

Post by n4bz0r »

e17 wrote: post #194
owenversteeg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have witnessed this phenomenon living in London as a native of the city. A new-to-London Russian colleague of mine used ornate phraseology and what I would consider as 'posh' words quite regularly. A major phrase for her was "It seems to me" as a precursor to saying virtually any opinion. I never knew the reason for it though, so TIL.

In case you are curious what the exact reason might be:

"It seems to me" is most likely coming from the much less fancy sounding, and more casual "мне кажется" (mnye kazhetsya).

"Mnye" would be "to me", and "kazhetsya" could be represented as "it seems". I say "could be" because there is no direct translation for "kazhetsya" as far as I'm aware.

The closest (and most direct) translation of "kazhetsya" that I can think of, and retains the meaning would be "it seems likely that ".

What she was trying to communicate was "I think", I think. (pun intended)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#258

Post by jodrellblank »

pmoriarty wrote: post #230
chris_j wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

It's a pet peeve as well, but they don't mean the exact same thing; you "use" a doorstop to hold a door open, you "utilize" a shoe as a doorstop. "util - ize", to turn something into a utility, in a way that it wasn't before. Use an umbrella, utilize a leaf as an umbrella. Use email, utilize email as file transfer system.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-utilize-a-w...

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#259

Post by soneca »

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 don’t think the opposite of ”idiot” is ”well-educated”.

And I also didn’t like the quoted person in the article that said they had to (my words) “dumb down” their technical conversation whenever an American entered the conversation or they wouldn’t understand the terms they were using. That is just arrogance and borderline xenophobism in my opinion. Neither the implication that speaking perfect grammar and knowing more words is almost equivalent to moral superiority.

Anyway, that represents the diversity in non-native speakers perceptions somehow I guess. I enjoyed a lot the insights of the professor from New Delhi — I loved the word prepone - and I think the concern about prejudice over not being “native” or “mother tongue” very valid.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#260

Post by pmoriarty »

jodrellblank wrote: post #258
pmoriarty wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> Just say "use"! It sounds far less pretentious and means the exact same thing. It's a pet peeve as well, but they don't mean the exact same thing; you "use" a doorstop to hold a door open, you "utilize" a shoe as a doorstop. "util - ize", to turn something into a utility, in a way that it wasn't before. Use an umbrella, utilize a leaf as an umbrella. Use email, utilize email as file transfer system. https://www.mer…

"you "use" a doorstop to hold a door open, you "utilize" a shoe as a doorstop."

Really?

Because I'd use a shoe as a doorstop.

I'd never "utilize" anything.

Update: Well, on doing a bit of research in to this instead of just using my intuition, I found that you're absolutely right about the special meaning of the word "utilize", according to a number of sources like [1].

I guess I must have been too hard on those people who were properly using the word.

Still, a survey of articles on these terms shows I'm far from the only one for whom the word "utilize" sounds pretentious, so in ordinary, non-specialist language I'd still err on the side of caution and use the word "use", which can in fact be used correctly everywhere "utilize" is used.

There's a good discussion of various points of view on this issue in [2].

[1] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-utilize-a-w...

[2] - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-util...

Post reply on HN