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

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#361

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

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.

> A native English speaker would never have said that

English has its barbarian roots overlaid with French words from the Norman conquest of England. The French aristocracy moved in and took over. The modern result of that is the "English" words of French origin are tells of upper class origins. Americans use that, consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes it's referred to as "coded speech".

For example, someone from upper class America will "purchase" something while a lower class person will "buy" it.

It's not just slight accent changes that distinguish class in America.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#362

Post by dan-robertson » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

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.

People who dress smartly on business class flights are probably just wearing whatever clothes they Normally wear for business, especially if they came straight from the office. You might find different dress on e.g. business class on a flight from San Francisco to Shenzhen (which is likely to contain engineers out to inspect factories).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#363

Post by jxramos » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #93

azangru wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the first seems to be a native speaker What makes you think so?

It might depend upon what you count as native (as the article talks about later), but she certainly seems to have had constant English exposure since early childhood. Anyone more familiar with New Dehli might have a better guess, but to me it felt like the article was doing what the second speaker complained of: > "I grew up with three languages, as my parents did not share the same 'mother tongue' " Madani says. "An…

I didn't even understand what that sentence meant

> But that day in the classroom, my incomprehensible English taught me that being an linguistic "have" is unstable and delusional at best.

What does it mean to be a linguistic have? Is this a reference to the haves/have-nots. Is she trying to say someone with linguistic fluency? Seems like the "an" is misapplied there too which mucks up the sentence.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#364

Post by loxs » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

potta_coffee wrote: post #324

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.

That sounds like the kind of phrase I would use as a mild joke while hanging out with someone. It's my sense of humor sometimes to be intentionally fancy because it sounds pretentious.

Someone please tell me what's the correct way of saying this

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#365

Post by vharuck » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #210

I’m a native English speaker. I argued for the contraction "amn't" through sixth grade, but my teachers kept correcting it. At work a few years back, a Chinese colleague was speaking with an Indian colleague. I had some trouble understanding them with their heavy accents, but they were apparently having no trouble understanding each other. At the same workplace, my Italian boss would sometimes converse with a Canadia…

>I argued for the contraction "amn't" through sixth grade, but my teachers kept correcting it.

I asked my high school English teacher the proper way to contract "should not have" in writing; I was trying my hand at short stories, and I wanted it in the dialogue. She said it wasn't a thing. Not that there's no standard convention, but that it's not a thing.

Despite me saying and hearing "shouldn't've" all the time.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#366

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

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…

> It sounds more natural

Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself?

Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka?

My father was felled by Alzheimers. What was interesting is his sentences became an incomprehensible jumble of words, but the words were from a well educated man's vocabulary. He never sounded pretentious, it was just how he talked.

(My family does not hail from English aristocracy as far as I can discern. He was the first to attend college.)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#367

Post by dsr_ » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #277

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 think the typical word probably has no cognate in English. Eg. I don't speak fluent Portuguese but the closest cognate to o lado that I can think of would be to suggest to move it laterally .

To the side.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#368

Post by dj_mc_merlin » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

My girlfriend recently enrolled in a university and one of the requirements was a certificate from one of the official places (TOEFL etc., I forget the rest). They exist just to leech money off non-native speakers. Anyone can pass an exam as long as they go to the right place and pay the fee, and besides, why do you need a long written and spoken test to test people's English? Someone's level of English is immediately obvious from even a brief conversation. If they can't speak it, they'll fail out after the first exams or learn it anyway.

I guess it bothers me even more as someone who wasn't born in an English speaking country but spoke it nearly exclusively after childhood. It's a common sentiment - one of my old history teachers lived in England for 20 or so years, and was asked if he can provide some proof he can speak English for his citizenship. How would someone live in the damn country for 20 years as a teacher and not be able to speak the language?

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#369

Post by myohmy » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

tcgv wrote: post #287

chris_j wrote: post #154

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: The chap in question was from Portugal. If I understand correctly from your website, you're from Brazil, right? Is there any difference between how that word would be used in Brazilian vs European Portuguese?

That's right, I'm from Brazil! The meaning is the same, both in Brazil and in Portugal. As a curiosity the two countries (along with others) are part of the Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990 [1] whose purpose was to create a unified orthography for the Portuguese language, to be used by all the countries that have Portuguese as their official language. Nonetheless there is a lot of differences in usa…

Honestly we need the same for English.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#370

Post by WalterBright » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

tcgv wrote: post #94

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.

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…

> "move the burgers to the periphery of the barbecue"

To my ear, that sounds like something a non-native English speaker would say, rather than what an educated native would say. In my head the phrase comes complete with a vague foreign accent :-)