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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

#331

Post by jkingsbery »

brk wrote: post #70
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

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.

The first time I heard/read "prepone" and "do the needful," it was maybe jarring because I had never heard either of those before, but in both cases it was pretty obvious what they meant.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#332

Post by kadoban »

jpindar wrote: post #285
mumblemumble wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What else does anyone use the term satellite dish to refer to?

Any antenna that's parabolic in shape that isn't designed/used to communicate with a satellite is just called a satellite dish is common usage, but technically really shouldn't be.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#333

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

ot wrote: post #307
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 ha…

I appreciate this of course, but for me any stereotype is harmful beause it teaches people to be intellectually lazy. From this intellectual laziness many evils are born and racism is one of them. If the goal is to eliminate racism, we're not going to get there any faster than we will by not accepting any stereotype at all, whatsoever, regardless of who is at the receiving end.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#334

Post by shakow »

cafard wrote: post #152
TacticalCoder wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you! A long time ago I was in the US and I used the word "labyrinth" because I didn't know "maze" and, well, in french for a maze we say "labyrinthe"... I still remember the reaction of my american friend, very surprised by my "advanced" english vocabulary. We native romance language speakers have it easy ; )

Richard Feynman had a similar story about speaking Portuguese, coming up with a longish word because he couldn't remember the common one, and impressing his hostess. But is "labyrinth" from a romance language? It appears in Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon with the remark that it is a foreign word.

It's not originating from romance languages, but it's the “default” (and virtually only) word in romance languages (well, at least French).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#335

Post by incrudible »

bigbillheck wrote: post #35
charcircuit wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard it or even seen it in my life.

Me neither, but it's a perfectly cromulent construction.

My thoughts exactly, it would embiggen our vocabulary.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#336

Post by StavrosK »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #330
StavrosK wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the context, you wouldn't say "στην περιφέρεια της ψησταριάς", that sounds pretty fancy.

It does. To be honest, I don't know how I'd phrase "on the edge of the barbecue". "Στην απέξω μεριά"? We also use "περιφέρεια" for the circumference of a circle so I could say "στην περιφέρεια της ψησταριάς" to make a nerdy joke... but that supports your point.

"Στην άκρη" I'd say.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#337

Post by mariodiana »

notdang wrote: post #275
mariodiana wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for telling me. Having been using it for ages and never realized that it can be interpreted in this way. In my native Romance language it is written the same and it's an usual word. I never thought that it's a neologism in English and perceived as pretentious.

You're welcome. But I have to say that I think one of the other replies to my post makes a better case than I.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223555

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#338

Post by asimpletune »

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 think the reciprocal is also true. I’m a native speaker, who speaks Spanish as A second language. It’s sort of amazing how using “fancy”English words often results in correctly guessing correct Spanish cognates. I guess one downside though is that people don’t perceive me as having said anything remarkable because it’s all quite normal to them.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#339

Post by katsura »

Izkata wrote: post #201

> "In one instance," he said, "while working at a large Swiss firm, an American manager quibbled at my CV asserting that English was my native language. > " 'Why not?,' I asked." > " 'Because 'native' refers to the language you spoke as a child,' she answered with a tender, patient look." Most people think of it like that because it's accurate in like 99.999% of cases, but that's not what "native speaker" means. It's…

> So native speakers mostly learn through memorization and internalizing grammar over a long period, instead of explicitly learning the rules of a language.

Based on this, I could be considered native English speaker even though I've been speaking English only for the past 1/3 of my life. But that's exactly what I did. There were times when I sat down and read about the grammar in books, but to this day, I have no idea what a second or third conditional is, I just use them "naturally". It was two years ago that I realized what the difference was between an adjective and an adverb.

So, I don't really think this is a good explanation of what a native speaker is.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#340

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

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…

The concept of "U English" vs. "non-U English" was written about in the '50s. Don't say "pardon?", say "what?" or you'll be marked as a commoner ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

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