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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

#91

Post by mwcampbell »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #83
mwcampbell wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. But, and I might be wrong here, I figure people can much more easily control their writing than their speech, especially if they're not expected to send an immediate written response (e.g. in chat). Perhaps my mental model of foreign accents is wrong, and forgive me if I'm being an ugly American here, but I've often thought of a foreign accent as a disability, as if the person had a stutter or other speec…

do you feel the same about a regional accent - I mean southerners in the US often feel discriminated against as their accent is used as a shorthand for many negative stereotypes. What regional accent do you have?

My regional accent is midwestern (I'm from Kansas). I don't think I feel quite the same about regional accents, but of course, unconscious bias is a thing.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#93

Post by tgb »

azangru wrote: post #27
tgb wrote: post #7

Strange choice of interview subjects given the article title: the first seems to be a native speaker and the second asserts he is a native speaker. They're just not from the US.

> 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. "And, in any case, how would this manager know what language I grew up with? I was especially miffed as she spoke but one language."

It's my (possibly mistaken) assumption that anyone from India, self-described as a linguistic "have", and majoring in English and teaching English now, probably has been speaking it since before they started school. It seems strange that article doesn't actually clarify anything about her language education and the second interviewee specifically shows that the authors didn't only select for non-native speakers. I assume the editor wrote the title without sufficient thought and the author would have chosen something else.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#94

Post by tcgv »

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.

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 counterparts, but mostly because when I'm "translating" my thoughts into sentences I have to choose between a group of words of similar meaning, and due to my inexperience, I often choose a less "popular" one.

EDIT:

After reflecting on this a bit more I also believe I often sound formal when speaking english because it's easier to use more/fancier words for the sake of not being misunderstood than it's to come up with a short, direct sentence that transmits my message in a clear way.

It's like adding redundancy to the message for reducing the risk of transmitting unintentional errors ;)

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#95

Post by bellyfullofbac »

_asummers wrote: post #32
TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a funny example to use, since you can move up a date, but nobody talks about moving down a date. Same problem in the opposite direction. "We're moving up the launch" is common, but never heard anyone say "we're moving down the launch", even though delays are common. The issue with "prepone" is that "pone" isn't really used as a world. A quick googling shows that it is a word, but in regular speech it's not use…

"Yesterday morning" and "tomorrow morning" is my favorite example. Several previous Indian coworkers of mine would say "today morning", which always made me smile a bit. It's not an unreasonable phrase to exist, given the others do as well.

In German the word for morning and tomorrow is the same, "Morgen".

But "tomorrow morning" becomes "Morgen früh" which is "tomorrow early" (or "early tomorrow" in English). "Morgen vormittags" ("tomorrow before noon") is also a variation.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#96

Post by uryga »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #16
no_one_ever wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than 'up and down', I think the visual is supposed to be 'up and back' (like forward and backward). English is fun

More usually (in the UK) it's forward and back, which make more sense as direct opposites. It's a little confusing though because pushing something back means move it later and bring it forward means move it earlier, whereas when talking directly about time the meanings are usually reversed (e.g. "back in time" means earlier).

in this case i'd interpret "forward/backward" as "closer towards you / further away from you", with the metaphor being that you're standing on a timeline looking "in the future direction" and moving stuff closer/further.

when using "back" to talk about the past, it's "backwards" as in "behind you". "further back" = "further behind you" = "more in the past"

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#97

Post by mbg721 »

biztos wrote: post #89
heurisko wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there are dialects that are pretty much incomprehensible to people who grew up in the mainstream dialect (true of many other languages as well) I think there are differences in accent, but I don't recognise anywhere as being "pretty much incomprehensible". I speak "standard" German as a foreigner, and have definitely found dialects that are "pretty much incomprehensible". I haven't found differences to such a d…

If you mean in English, I would say look to the poorer corners of blighty, or deep enough into Australia, and you may find what you need. Or, if you're in Los Angeles and white, ride the bus from Santa Monica to DTLA on any given weekend and just listen to people talk: that's English just as sure as mine is, but I get maybe half. (Also, is Scots not a dialect of English? I'm not sure -- a mix at the very least. Great…

For the benefit of confused Americans like myself: English as it is spoken in Scotland, Scots, and Scots Gaelic are three different things.

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#98

Post by rocknor »

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.

Then you need to learn more about it, Indian English is more than just that one phrase. That's like saying, "if there is one phrase that, to me, defines American English, I think it would be "Howdy".

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#99

Post by oytis »

brk wrote: post #79

I think some of the confusion is that "pone" is not a root word or term. So, the opposite of postpone is not prepone, in the same way that prepartum is the opposite of postpartum.

Why? The stem is from Latin ponere, to put, so could theoretically work both ways

Re: Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English

#100

Post by mwcampbell »

alistairSH wrote: post #57
mwcampbell wrote: post #31

As a midwestern white American, I've certainly had prejudices based on people's accents, and I've probably misjudged whether someone was a "native" speaker. Having read this article, I will renew my efforts to fight those ugly prejudices. For a few years now, I've thought that the ideal work environment for encouraging diversity and inclusion would be an all-remote team that used only written communication, preferrin…

"Native" is such a weird construct with language. I'm Scottish, and while I've lived in the US since early childhood, I still retain a few pronunciation "quirks" inherited from my parents. At least in my case, it's mostly to the amusement of friends (haha, you say "wheel" funny or "ooh, that rolled 'R' is sexy"). But still so strange, since I think my pronunciation is closer to "correct" than American's.

> "Native" is such a weird construct with language.

The article raised my awareness of that. That's why I put the one usage of "native" in the GP comment in quotes, and mostly avoided the word.

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