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Common errors vs language evolution | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 49 of 72 19 November 2013 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are people that can't roll their r's either. That's called a speech defect (for that particular language). What I personally am arguing against is that diglossia is impoverishment. There are plenty acceptable phrasings (for example, someone saying "Ik wou" instead of "Ik wilde" in Dutch for "I wanted" (ik wou also being used for "I wished that...) There is no problem with using a diglossic convention when that is widespread and encoded in a particular dialect. The Brabantian dialect in Dutch uses the pronoun gij/ge over jij/je. That is not impoverishment, that is people speaking their local dialect and it is clearly not wrong. It is different from uttering an ungrammatical sentence "Ik woude dat..." or saying "Gij willen niet meewerken" or pronouncing woude as woode or something, or not being able to produce the Dutch /g/ sound (and using an English /g/ instead). I have to hammer it into foreigners when I teach them that the Dutch /g/ is NEVER. EVER. EVER. ENGLISH G. except in ONE LOANWORD. That pronunciation is wrong (and sometimes intelligible, but I find it really hard to deal with). There is a difference between codifying "That is themses" and "That is they/them". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5052 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 50 of 72 19 November 2013 at 2:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And how would you suggest that those of who succumb to this "fallacy" determine what counts as standard? Because the way that it determined now is that the people with political and economic power determine that their dialect is the standard, and every other dialect is wrong, which is no different than deciding that your race is the "correct" race, and every other race is the "wrong" race.
No, the idea is that you don't arrogantly assert that your dialect is "normal" and every other dialect is "abnormal". There is absolutely no scientific reason to determine that certain languages are better than others. The only reasons are related to ignorance and privilege. Note: this applies to natives of a language. Not L2 learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6952 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 51 of 72 19 November 2013 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I would merely point these people to the relevant descriptive dictionaries. A good application of that kind of exercise came recently when I was doing my comparison of transcripts in "Beginner's Croatian" and "Beginner's Serbian. Despite the overwhelming similarities, there were differences between them. However rooting through descriptive dictionaries and comments on usage by native speakers made me realize that what may be construed as a genuine difference (hence a "Serbian" form is incorrect to the Croat and vice-versa) is acceptable and attested in both variants despite popular (mis)conceptions and factoids. While it's debatable to call one's dialect "wrong" and another's "right", there is something to be said about the benefits to agreeing on a standard within the speech community. Misunderstandings are never good regardless of value judgements thrown about being perceived as a "grammar-nazi" (e.g. is it wrong for Britons to call that sport "football" when Americans call it "soccer"? Regardless of the difference, if one's not careful, a genuine misunderstanding can come about) You might the following interesting: Should dialects exist? Why’s there no empathy among anglophones? Using Slang Standarising the national language 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5052 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 52 of 72 19 November 2013 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Chung,
What you fail to realize is that dictionaries are only descriptive of a certain dialect,and "pointing people toward them" is prescriptivism. These dictionaries are not handed down from a divine power, they are made by people, who choose to codify their dialect and declare other dialects wrong. What you are doing is trying to assert your dominance over others by forcing them to speak your dialect, and then justifying it by saying you're just concerned about miscommunication. Miscommunications happen regularly, and they are easily resolved. There is no reason to force others to adapt your dialect in order to avoid communication errors than there is to rid the language of homonyms. If I say that something is in the trunk and you think I mean an elephant's trunk when I meant the car trunk, it would be a brief moment of confusion followed by laughter and the problem would be resolved. We don't need to homogenize culture in order to avoid miscommunications. Furthermore, even if we did, where would we stop. If we make everyone in the US speak the same dialect should we then force the same on the UK and India? Why stop there? Why not just subsume all Germanic languages. We can just point them toward the "relevant" descriptive grammar of English, and tell them that they need to speak a normal language so we can avoid miscommunications. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6952 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 53 of 72 19 November 2013 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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At the risk of sounding like an ass, you fail to understand how a descriptivist and prescriptivist act.
In the simplest terms, here's how they react to a question on how to use or spell something. E.g. "What's correct: Do you pronounce it as 'tomato' or 'tomato'?" ('toe-may-toe' vs. 'toe-mah-toe')? - Descriptivist: "I say 'toe-may-toe' and that seems more common to me. However some people regularly say 'toe-mah-toe'. It's up to you. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll see what I mean." - Prescriptivist 1: "It's toe-may-toe". Everything else is wrong. - Prescriptivist 2: "It's toe-mah-toe". Everything else is wrong. E.g. "What's correct, 'pepper' or 'capsicum'?" - Descriptivist: "I use 'pepper' and that's typical around here. However I've noticed that Australians usually call that thing a 'capsicum'. Both are correct but to reduce misunderstanding know which one to use depending on whom you're dealing with." - Prescriptivist: "It's 'pepper'. 'Capsicum'? What kind of goofy word is that?" The quest to appear enlightened by being that inclusive of dialects seems a little strange to me since you have no problem in spelling and using English in a certain way (e.g. your posts). If you were so irritated by one dialect or convention overriding others, then what's stopping you from freely mixing forms pulled from several dialects of English? Despite there being standard American English, you know that not every American uses or speaks English identically (e.g. a native Bostonian speaks differently from a native Houstonian). A standard language does affect dialects, but in my experience it's not as drastic as you make it seem. When I've been in Finland, I've seen how everyone learns standard language yet these same people still use items that are peculiar to their native regions in addition to spoken/colloquial Finnish. Finland is not in some cultural crisis because its standard language coexists with colloquial language and regionalisms. As far as I can tell, there's an equation of culture and language in your posts. I don't subscribe to that equation. Culture is more than just language. How about the arts? Science, even? Homogenization or convergence of language isn't tantamount to homogenizing or converging culture Americans learn standard American English, but you'd be a fool to think that all of them form a homogeneous cultural unit on the strength of that linguistic tie. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 3827 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 54 of 72 19 November 2013 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I believe that we should not hinder dialect and such. Dialects allow creativity to come, and I even once wrote a self
made piece on a fictional classifier system for English akin to Mandarin or Thai for my own to come dialect for fictional stories if I ever were to write them. It makes me shed a tear when I hear the last speaker of a dialect dies. Maybe a new one replaces it and that's that, but we ought to record them before they pass away at the least. So I am by no means a prescriptivist. Edited by Papashaw1 on 19 November 2013 at 7:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 55 of 72 19 November 2013 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The OED, for example, describes "football" (the noun) and "soccer" and goes on to mention the usage in the US. Picking on another word at random, the entry for "thong" not only mentions a leather strip but also the Australian usage of "flip-flop". So I disagree that pointing someone towards a dictionary is "wrong". In some isolated cases then perhaps the particular usage in question may not be mentioned, but in general if a significant percentage of your utterances are not in a dictionary of reasonable quality for the language you profess to be speaking, then perhaps you are speaking something else and will not be understood? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4104 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 56 of 72 19 November 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why is it important to note that "it is arbitrary"? Is history arbitrary? Is the reason why a southern English dialect become a standard rather than northern "arbitrary"? It's also not true that any single group or class of people decide on the form of the standard language - it is based on the history of all published discourse and it carries prestige moreso than as simply a language of bureaucracy and accountancy, as you intimate. To the limited extent that you're right, you're distorting the truism that "there is nothing linguistically notable about dialects chosen as the national standard." Nothing purely linguistically notable, but everything culturally notable. If you meant to talk about RP, or other "standard" pronunciations then that's a different story. While some speech communities are more developed than others, no accents are more developed than others. (edited this bit to bring it closer to your point)
No it's not. Languages don't evolve, languages (langue not parole) are a cognitive ability emergent from the activity of human brains. Unless the brains evolve, languages don't evolve. Languages change, but it's just a mistake to presume that the mechanisms are anything alike to evolution.
When does this happen? That stigmatized dialects "come into power" and outst the previous dialect? I think that actually what you find is mass conformity to prestigious phonetic/prosodic/lexical features, in accordance with general behavioral conformity to prestigious social display. Edited by Retinend on 19 November 2013 at 5:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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