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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

#461

Post by viraptor »

rsynnott wrote: post #54
marcus_holmes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but which "mother version"? American English is closer to the original spelling than British English, but getting the actual English to change their use of their own language because the Americans use it differently seems... odd. Plus there's no intrinsic reason to prefer the original spelling over later versions. So maybe we should all use English as it is used by the actual English? But that would see a small mi…

> So maybe we should all use English as it is used by the actual English? Which ones? It's not like English, as actually spoken in England, is particularly uniform. It has uniform _spelling_, but that's about all; a lot of vocabulary and even grammar is quite regional.

Unless you're in Bristol and notice how much the "should'ov" spelling becomes a thing.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#462

Post by daveslash »

"So when I realized [preponed] wasn't "proper" English, I was dumbfounded, flummoxed, astounded, nonplussed," ~ "nonplussed" is a word, but "plussed" isn't. Thought that was interesting given the word being discussed is preponed (vs. postponed).

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#464

Post by NoSorryCannot »

FabHK wrote: post #431
crazygringo wrote: post #415

> But this scenario doesn't fit with Serrano's experiences of English, where nonnative English speakers who learned the language in a classroom are often more educated on grammar rules and complex technical terms than American native speakers. In my experience as an EFL teacher living abroad in multiple countries... this is not even remotely accurate. English students across the world are often "taught" a ton of nons…

It is not so much about English and Americans, but about learning a first language as a child versus learning a second language later in life. Learning a second language usually involves learning the grammar, and explicitly learning the rules that native speakers "just know". I think it is quite plausible that, for any language, speakers that learned it as a second language will know the grammar and grammatical terms…

Why do you think being able to classify the parts of speech would make someone more authoritative on correct usage than native speakers? Imagine documenting a language you don't know, identifying the tenses and the verb order, and finding something surprising so you decide it's the speakers who are wrong and not your model!

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#465

Post by traceroute66 »

Non-native English vs Native English is nothing compared to European French vs Canadian French.

To a EU French ear, Canadian French is a horrible butchery of the beautiful language that is French. The Canadians don't roll their R's properly and all sorts of other unspeakable things. ;-)

Meanwhile, an EU French person visiting the French speaking parts of Canada will often have a significant amount of difficulty being understood. This is not because of their lack of mastery of the French language, but because their true pronunciation of French is not what the Canadian ear expects.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#466

Post by Y_Y »

cafard wrote: post #169
phillc73 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of hyphen use drives me nuts. "Cooperation" is a prime example. Without the hyphen, my internal monologue pronounces the word like "chicken coop"[1]. Whereas, "Co-Operation" makes pronunciation much clearer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_coop

Doesn't the New Yorker still hold the line, and print it with a dieresis? On the other hand, I knew a women who belonged to a food cooperative, and referred to it as the "coop", pronouncing it as if it were a chicken coop.

I think I would be satisfied with the New Yorker-style: "nonn̈ative".

That's a neat solution, thanks!

(Please address complaints about putting a trema over an 'n' to Spın̈al Tap.)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#467

Post by marcus_holmes »

viraptor wrote: post #461
rsynnott wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So maybe we should all use English as it is used by the actual English? Which ones? It's not like English, as actually spoken in England, is particularly uniform. It has uniform _spelling_, but that's about all; a lot of vocabulary and even grammar is quite regional.

Unless you're in Bristol and notice how much the "should'ov" spelling becomes a thing.

I really think that "should have" is going to be replaced by "should of". It already is in most actual usage, and it's only "language snobs" (like me) who care that it shouldn't be used like that.

I have the same feeling about "lose", which is increasingly spelled "loose". It annoys the living crap out of me, but in fairness English is whatever people say it is, and if people want to say it's "loose" then so be it.

I've already seen "moorish" succumb - from meaning (more or less) "spicy" to meaning "something I'd like to have more of". Which to be fair we don't have a word for, while we have plenty for "spicy" so it seems like a fair trade.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#468

Post by thaumasiotes »

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... unless they had received a really expensive education.

Education doesn't affect word choice much. The people who will say things like this were largely already saying them before they received an education.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#469

Post by angry_octet »

yoz-y wrote: post #293
ed312 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should see how Australians fly. SYD-LAX is 13h, SYD-DBX is 14h and another 10h to Europe. There's no pretention about dressing to impress, it is calibrated for maximum comfort and practicality.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#470

Post by TomK32 »

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,…

One take I remember from The Adventure of English[0]: When it's in the kitchen it's germanic/anglo-saxon, when it's in the lord's dining room it's a French (vulgar Latin). Romanized languages are an important part of English, though not that much in those most common words[1]. English is the product of quite a few invaders introducing new elements to a language that was itself invasive.

In regards to "amazing English", how about picking one obscure dialect like Scotish and perfecting that so that the other 95% of English speaker take you as a Scots/Welsh/Californian and don't ask any more questions?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XQx9pGGd0&list=PLbBvyau8q9... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language_influences_in...

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