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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

#291

Post by blt »

mariodiana wrote: post #111
pta2002 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with performant? (Non-native speaker here)

It's a neologism. Some people love it. (Actually, it seems like a lot of people do.) To others however, it strikes the ear as awkward sounding. I wouldn't say there's anything "wrong" about it. It's a matter of taste. It's a bit of a pet peeve for some of us. I bought a book a couple of years ago: iOS and macOS Performance Tuning. I took note that the author had not used the word "performant" even once in the book's…

The main argument against "performant" isn't linguistic, it's technical. "Performant" is vague. It can always be replaced by something more descriptive like "fast", "uses little memory", "asymptotically optimal", "parallelizable", and so on.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#292

Post by tengbretson »

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)

Meanwhile in America, you will often hear a satellite dish be shortened (incorrectly) to just being called a "satellite."

You'll even hear the word "satellite" mis-applied to parabolic antennas that are not directed at an actual satellite!

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#293

Post by yoz-y »

ed312 wrote: post #274
caymanjim wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's true through an upper middle class level, then you get into always traveling business class (aka humanely-sized seats, better food). The bump from business/first -> private is not that much better.

Honestly, even in business class, sweatpants are just the better choice.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#294

Post by Dumblydorr »

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…

I'd take our spelling system over Chinese characters or hieroglyphics any day. English has weird exceptions but with spell check and autocorrect, I think it's manageable. Their they're there, where we're were, there are many bad combos that unfortunately do need memorization.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#295

Post by ot »

anotherhue wrote: post #112
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.

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

As an Italian in the US, I initially had trouble in stores asking for "sodium bicarbonate" (baking soda) or "talc" (baby powder). I would have never thought of those names since I didn't need them for either baking or babies.

But maybe it was just my accent.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#296

Post by werber »

javierga wrote: post #221
karaterobot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just think of Futurama

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#297

Post by croh »

notdang wrote: post #253
croh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It used to be like that but not any more. These days upper people mostly speak 'accented' english.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#298

Post by twic »

alickz wrote: post #118
JackFr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'gaol' always throws me for a loop when I'm reading something British. I need to remind myself it's pronounced 'jail'. (A quick google tells me that all the major British newspapers switched over to 'jail' by the 1990's - score one for the good guys!) I remember reading 'Mutiny on the Bounty' as a child and talking about it with my father and I said something about the 'boatswain', and he (a former naval officer) loo…

I've known the word boatswain for decades at this point and never knew it was pronounced like that! Speaking of military terms, lieutenant as "leftenant" always threw me. I had just assumed they were different words.

And it's only "leftenent" in the army; in the navy it's "latenant".

(or at least, was - it is possible navy use has shifted)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#299

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

bluetomcat wrote: post #88

As a non-native speaker living in a non-English speaking country who has started learning English decades ago at school in my teenage years, the sheer richness of the English vocabulary never ceases to fascinate me. There are so many words with subtle and nuanced meanings (primarily of Latin and French origin) you can almost never hear in an American movie or a reality show. I have encountered them primarily in Briti…

> Using them among other non-native speakers even seems snobbish and counter-productive.

Non-native here, but I have an opinion on your choice of examples. They aren't posh or counter-productive, on the contrary, they are just specific to fields under-represented in popular culture (political history, fantasy/longevity research, music/acoustics). I don't see any obvious ways to convey the same meaning using more common words.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#300

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

carlosf wrote: post #244
jrochkind1 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm assuming there is some cognate to "periphery" in portugese -- a portugese word that sounds very similar to that, becuase of shared Latin etymology. so it's not that that word isn't fancy in portugese too. It's that that word might come easier to a portugese (or other romance language) speaker, since it's a cognate, so they use it, and end up sounding fancy in English. An English speaker could do the same thing…

Exactly, periferia.

Only it comes (through Latin) from Greek :)
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