|
 |
Broken English, is it offensive to you? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Mike14 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5229 days ago 25 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Croatian, Italian | Message 49 of 83 02 August 2010 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm not affected when people use broken English.. at least they're trying..
However, if they mention that English is an easy language.. and they are talking like an English 2 year old.. then I'd be offended 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dragonsheep Groupie United States Joined 5271 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes  Studies: Tagalog, English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 50 of 83 02 August 2010 at 8:22am | IP Logged | ||
I'm starting to really wonder if I'm offending people with my 1st year highschool level Spanish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5856 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 51 of 83 04 August 2010 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||
|
If you want to experience broken English, come to Singapore. In fact most colloquial "English" conversations are conducted in a creole of English, Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay know as Singlish.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Polyglotted Triglot Newbie Joined 5230 days ago 35 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 52 of 83 07 August 2010 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
|
To me it's not offensive in the slightest, unless it comes from native speakers, I think it's good that they're trying. I mean I can think of native speakers of English who can't speak as well as a lot of people learning it as an L2 (think Jeremy Kyle/Jerry Springer guests and you'll get the idea).
I've found English people are often dismissive towards people learning their language, and some people seem to expect people to know it, which is probably because of the amount of speakers and how it is probably the most learnt language and one of the most spoken, so it becomes less necessary to learn a foreign language and so people don't know the difficulty and can't appreciate this. But imagine you were learning a quite difficult and much less widely spoken language (Icelandic, Finnish, Hungarian for example)and you went to their country and people were complaining about your lack of grammar or pronunciation. I think that's how to appreciate being lucky enough to speak such a highly used language. Treat people learning your language as you'd expect them to treat you if you were learning theirs. If you call it offensive, then it's discouraging and disheartening, whereas to aid them will help them progress so that they won't have 'broken' English and can improve. :) Edited by Polyglotted on 07 August 2010 at 1:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hertz Pro Member United States Joined 4514 days ago 47 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 83 15 March 2013 at 2:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
Offended? Never. I find it invigorating. I come away from a conversation thinking "maybe I should learn that
language too! Uh, after Russian and Farsi. And Hungarian and Vietnamese." If you wish to complain about the misuse or corruption of English, try reading "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken. It begins with a long list of diatribes by English writers bemoaning the use of language in America. There were laws preventing too many American movies from being shown, to prevent the corruption of the language. There were authors writing in horror of colloquial phrases, once thought extinct in England, preserved in America and amplified. BUT... it goes on to point out that language is enriched and energized by usage. It stagnates in the face of rules and grammar prescriptionists. If there weren't Asian people speaking English, where would we get words like anime, karaoke, and cosplay? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Woodstock Newbie United States Joined 4306 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 54 of 83 15 March 2013 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
|
The broken English does not offend me at all. However, I try to be a friendly person in general and I usually try to help people if they are struggling with something. I have never been in a situation in which I did not understand such English; it may take a little patience on my part to do so, but so what?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4587 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 55 of 83 15 March 2013 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||
|
I don't have a problem with "broken English" if it's spoken. I also don't have a
problem with it if it's written by a learner. After all, learning and using a foreign language isn't easy. I'd be lucky to speak flawless Mandarin even though I've studied, spoken and worked with it for over 20 years. I'm a patient guy and will correct their English if appropriate. My problem is when bad written or printed English is produced by those with ample resources to put out quality work (e.g. corporations, governments, and even language schools). I'm bothered by (again, written) phrases such as "on XXX basis" (instead of "on a(n) XXX basis"), "as followings" (instead of "as follows"), "the followings" (instead of "the following") and other standard set phrases that are easily looked up in books or online. Edited by ling on 15 March 2013 at 4:03am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 56 of 83 15 March 2013 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm not really bothered by broken English as long as those people are sincerely trying to improve their English. English is a crazy language. If English was not my native language and I was learning, I would say "someone must've been very high while creating this language" So nope. Broken English does not annoy me except for these factors:
1) Those people have been immersed in an English speaking environment for a long time, since I''m generous I'll say around 5+ yrs and still can't string together a comprehensible sentence ( or don''t bother to). 2) Like someone has said before, they say English is easy, but then they speak like a 2 year old. Mind you, these are professionals or high ranking members of society. Especially university professors. How can you teach an English class if your English is fuzzy in the first place? ( Immigrants are an exception). 3) Double standard. You are forced to tolerate their horrid and agonizingly painful English. You try to help them a bit, and they get pissed at you and yet, when you make one simple mistake in their language, they scoff at you and give you that " if you're trying to learn my language, why don't you try to learn it correctly?" 4)Saying English is easy. If it's so easy, why does it "lack culture" when you can't produce a correct sentence? 5) This is just a pet peeve, call centers. I understand that they're just trying to make a living. However, since you're in an emotional unstable mood to begin with, it just make things worse. Add that with the " I'm sorry sir, I still can't understand you" and you can see how things can go south from there. 6)When people get too used to broken English, that they don't understand you when you speak normally and order food at a drive-thru. I understand that most of these jobs are done by either high school students ( they have no excuse), recent immigrants and international students. Still, when you're hungry and you have to literally spell out the word for them to understand so that you get the order you wanted, it's really frustrating. You can understand micro-whatever but a simple smoothie gets you confused? This is a personality quirk of mine, I get extremely irritable when hungry. 7) Another pet peeve, especially among Asian communities. You weren't born in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam etc.. yet since you look Asian, they expect you to speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese etc.. perfectly even though you weren't even born in said countries or emigrated at a very young age. Yet, when those same people speak crappy English, they say, it's not my language. Edited by wber on 18 March 2013 at 10:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
