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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

#301

Post by dmingod666 »

Causality1 wrote: post #172

"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.…

STEM is taught in English so kids that aren't taught English growing up have a particularly hard time adjusting with both language and the content.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#302

Post by thethought »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #170

My favorite example of one of the difficulties of learning English comes from my friend who's an adult ESL teacher. Multiple adjectives always have to be in the order: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose. You can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife, or a beautiful big new oval blue nylon sleeping bag. Those sound completely natural and intuitive, but any tw…

Thank you for this. I did try a few combinations and it does sound funny in my head. Wondering how this ordering evolved for a non-native speaker like me. I did not hear or know about this rule.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#303

Post by xxpor »

chris_j wrote: post #166
FriedrichN wrote: post #41

There is such a thing as Indian English, maybe not officially but it certainly exists and it does differ from British and American English. As a matter of fact, if you look up prepone in Wiktionary "prepone" is mentioned as being used in India, so it's not that weird that the teacher in the article used it. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prepone

If Wikipedia is to be believed [0], India ranks third in the list of countries ranked by number of English speakers and it's only fair to regard Indian English as a form of the language that is at least as valid as those from other countries. Having said that, one of the things that you have to learn when you start speaking with English speakers from around the world is to recognise which of the words in your vocabul…

The difference is that Indian English exists almost entirely as a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) language, so it'll never sound as natural. It's not the language of the street or the discourse.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#304

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

Portuguese sometimes has a strangely literary cadence and the sentence structure tends to formality.

It's quite an unusual language - a mix of Romance, Arabic, and a hint of English, which sounds like Russian when spoken. There are also plenty of false friends which confuse native speakers of both languages.

That still doesn't explain why someone would say periferia when they meant lado or maybe bordo.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#305

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

StavrosK wrote: post #217
tcgv wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I'm a portuguese language native, and I can relate, but not because we talk like this in portuguese: > "move the burgers to the periphery of the barbecue" That would be really formal over here too, the kind of wording that I'd expect in a grilling manual explaining how to use it, but not at a barbecue. I can relate because sometimes I find myself speaking like that when talking to english counterp…

I'm Greek, and "periphery" sounds fancy here too :P We'd just say "to the edge".

We also say "Perifereia Attikis" for the municipality (?) of Attica. I don't find it fancy, just not often used.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#306

Post by pmoriarty »

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…

I find it similarly disturbing to hear of kids torturing animals, which apparently is/was kind of common?

I've never done it myself and only knew one person who (as an adult) admitted to doing it as a kid, but apparently it is/was a thing.

When I read that many serial killers tortured animals when they were young before moving on to attacking humans[1], it somehow didn't surprise me.

The phenomenon reminds me of Hogarth's famous series of engravings on "The Four Stages of Cruelty"[2], which starts by showing children torturing animals in the streets of Eighteenth-century London.

It's appalling to me that this sort of behavior was ever tolerated.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/magazine/13dogfighting-t....

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Stages_of_Cruelty

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#307

Post by ot »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #288

>> Sergio Serrano has participated in many international scientific conferences across the globe. "In a typical situation, a group of foreign researchers are discussing a complex technical issue with very precise and elaborate formal English," Serrano says, "until an American joins the group." I'm not American but I don't like this. If an American author had written that everything is fine until "a foreigner joins th…

> If an American author had written

This is a common pattern of false equivalency, like "reverse racism" and the likes.

The analogy is invalid because the harms of discrimination come from the power imbalance.

In this case, immigrants in the US are in a position of disadvantage, due to linguistic/cultural struggles and the perception issues they cause. Perpetuating stereotypes that reinforce that perception causes harm.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#308

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

fidelramos wrote: post #282
manuelmoreale wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

We say "parabólica" in Spain.

That too (like "periferia") comes to Latinate languages through Latin from Greek.

Seems all you nice folk think of Greeks as... posh? Must be all the philosophers :P

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#309

Post by Brajeshwar »

English has been adapted by many communities as common medium in India, where none are native-speakers. The Indianized English that we speak are understood well by other Indians and it can vary/struggle a bit as you move across the country (north-south, east-west).

Now, we Indians find it hard to understand when others non-native speakers speak English just as others for Indians.

I had had my experiences being the "English Translator" for Indians and Japanese speaking, well, English. I enunciate, use simpler words, and shorter sentences.

I happen to grow up in a corner of India where languages and dialects differ every quarter-mile. So, English happened to be the common thread. Our schools fined us ₹0.50 in my times if we do not speak in English since very early grade.

During early 2000s I started visiting countries outside India, such as US, and UK. Then I realized, that my English sucks. I have been learning a lot more since. Working mostly with Native English Speaking clients did do a whole lot of fast-forward into "speaking English" the proper way.

Unfortunately, I feel my own language is limited and very complex. My family switch to English if we need to understand things faster and better. My daughters are learning our original language but they sounded very funny and kinda "language-retarted" to their counterparts (cousins, relative back home).

The interesting thing is I can speak and understand a minimum of three languages (English, Hindi, and our Language) like most Indians. I can also get away with exchanging info with people speaking in Marathi, Gujarathi, and a bit of Bengali, Punjabi, Haryanbi, etc.

Attempting and preparing to learn Japanese soon.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#310

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

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 was in a hostel where I and a Southie were the only native English speakers, and the Southie was unfortunately trying to explain how to "speak American" to someone from Eastern Europe. Cringe-worthy doesn't describe it.
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