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

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#351

Post by fmihaila » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

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 think a better correspondence is "a utiliza" -> "to utilize" and "a folosi" -> "to use".

Edit: Mediterraneo10 explains it better.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#352

Post by cpursley » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

n4bz0r wrote: post #257

e17 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Coming from English, I struggle with when to use я vs Мне.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#353

Post by fyijbxmuyidudm » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

ptudan wrote: post #350

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American who travels, it is incredibly embarrassing to be associated with people like this. All I can think of when I see someone in pajamas on a plane is "hellooo white trash". I also feel bad for the flight attendants who have put so much into their appearance, and then have to babysit a sleepover party in a metal tube.

Dude, I think you should loosen up a bit. When I see someone calling people white trash for wearing comfortable clothing, all I can think of is "they think they are better than other people for no reason".

Even worse, they think they are better than other people because of their money.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#354

Post by Oreb » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #239

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 heard on a podcast the other day about people joining the US Military or Police that have never been in a fist fight in their lives. Being nearly 50, that is incredible to me.

I’m 46 and have never been in a fist fight. Neither have most of my friends of similar age, as far as I know. I’ve lived in Norway for most of my life. Based on what I read in Norwegian news (I no longer live there myself), it seems that fist fights and other forms of violence are far more common among teenagers now than when I grew up.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#355

Post by cpursley » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #318

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.

As an American who travels, it is incredibly embarrassing to be associated with people like this. All I can think of when I see someone in pajamas on a plane is "hellooo white trash". I also feel bad for the flight attendants who have put so much into their appearance, and then have to babysit a sleepover party in a metal tube.

Pretty sure racism is prohibited on hn. This should be flagged.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#356

Post by wirrbel » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

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 German) realised a similar thing happening because I tend to use some syntactical features that lend itself naturally to Germans, like use of "whom" (corresponds to German 'wem', but 'wem' is pretty standard German and 'whom' is hardly used in colloquial English).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#357

Post by slver » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

notdang wrote: post #269

slver wrote: post #186

I'm not sure why is this here. It's basically a teacher complaining that people don't like when she makes up words, and has a strong accent. Language is a living protocol that you can only learn by listening people use it and using it yourself constantly. Whether a made up word makes sense syntactically and grammatically doesn't matter. In fact whether it's in a dictionary also doesn't matter. What matters is being u…

> Strong Indian accent is especially infuriating for this, I find it very hard to listen to and understand. This applies to any accent you were not exposed previously. I noticed that after some time you get used and understand it perfectly fine.

That's true not just about accents, but about any language. But whether the parties communicating have enough time to actually learn each other's dialects is another question entirely (and usually no, there isn't).

Also, you can get used to a teenager saying "like" every second word and ending every single sentence by raising their pitch, or with excessive vocal fryyyyy. Ar tarnang avary vawaaal to aaah. But it doesn't necessarily mean that's effective communication style.

There are dialects and accents that are actually less articulate than others. So even if you get used to them, it helps, but you still get less information content, and more dialect-specific ambient ornamentation (like some of the teen-speak examples I mentioned above).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#358

Post by Oreb » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #174

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,…

It's very obvious, you're right. I'm French and I sometimes I have to prove people the words are in an English dictionary while they're absolute basic 6-yo level in French. I remember "ameliorate" that an american friend (an adult) didn't even know (but again this guy mixed Portugal and Porto Rico so maybe not the best sample lol), while for me it was clearly an easy cheat because I had more trouble reaching for "enh…

> I like to claim English "stole" all those French word then proceeded to misspell and massacre them.

Fair enough, but then French is nothing more than horribly misspelled, massacred and ungrammatical Latin.

Of course the same could be said about any other current language, after replacing Latin with whatever our ancestors spoke a couple of thousand years ago.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#359

Post by qw3rty01 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

eralps wrote: post #240

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.

I am a non-native English speaker. “Even I” would come to my mind first and then that. For some reason it means “I also” in Indian English and it sounds weird to non Indian dialect. Like “Even I don’t understand this” sounds obnoxious to me because in my mind it means “Even I, an almighty being, don’t understand this, who are you to think you can understand it” but it means “I also don’t understand” in Indian English…

"Even I" is pretty common for native speakers, although it's normally used to break an assumption rather than being a full replacement for "I also".

For example: you are in a class and someone asked a question about a topic. The person next to you turns and says "I can't believe they don't understand this topic." Your neighbor is making the assumption that you also understand it. So if you didn't understand the topic, a response could be "Nah, even I had some questions about it."

Although someone could definitely use it to be condescending, or just trying to be cheeky.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#360

Post by qart » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #303

chris_j wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The difference is that Indian English exists almost entirely as a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) language

A huge number of kids in India learn English as their first and only language. Especially kids born in cities, whose parents' linguistic backgrounds differ.

> it'll never sound as natural

It already sounds perfectly natural to everyone here.

> It's not the language of the street or the discourse.

Wrong. India is not homogeneous like that. In Bangalore, an Indian walking into a shoe shop on Brigade Road will get addressed by the shopkeeper in English. Or an Indian visiting a pub in Koramangala, also gets addressed by the waiter in English. The consumption numbers of English news channels, English newspapers, etc. should give you an idea of the prevalence of English here.