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Linguistic Ignorance | ||
Tags: Surroundings | Error | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5324 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 156 25 August 2010 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I never cease to be amazed at the ridiculous things I hear about languages. It's as if the fact that everyone spoke a language immediately made them language specialists and entitled them to make hugely misconceived sweeping comments out of thin air.
What are some of the comments or explanations you've heard about language(s) that made no sense or sounded ridiculous? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7319 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 156 25 August 2010 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have this all the time from native English speakers. Two examples:
1) In my kitchen is a tandoor oven, and explaining this to a British friend, he says very self-assuredly "This is not a tandoor. It is a tandoori". When I try to explain that tandoori is the adjective describing food cooked in a tandoor (check the menu from any Indian restaurant), the gentlemen experiences sudden deafness. It is just not possible that his faultless, natural knowledge of his mother tongue could be taken in fault by a foreigner. 2) I just read a book about bathroom designs written by a English lady. In the book she mistakes opaque with translucent with phrases such as "You can provide privacy in the bathroom while letting light through by using opaque sandblasted glass. Should I try to tell her she doesn't understand the word "opaque" with my French accent, she would not be able to hear me. How could a foreigner know better? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5954 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 156 25 August 2010 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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"X is descended from Latin, isn't it?"
No, English is not descended from Latin. No, German is not descended from Latin. No, Gaelic is not descended from Latin. NO, BASQUE IS NOT DESCENDED FROM LATIN!!! 16 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BiaHuda Triglot Groupie Vietnam Joined 5306 days ago 97 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese Studies: Cantonese | Message 4 of 156 25 August 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I am working in the US as I am at the moment. I usually hear some rubbish about "Charlie" or other such Hollywood nonsense. Moreover, some "authority" inevitably tells me how easy Vietnamese is because all the words have only one syllable. Edited by BiaHuda on 25 August 2010 at 9:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5910 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 156 25 August 2010 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Big Mistake: "If I run a spell check on this document, everything will be OK."
Oh no, no NO! Don't do this! Terrible things can happen when the wrong words, correctly spelled, get into a piece of writing. You still need to proofread! More and more errors seem to be caused by software spellchecking/autocorrect functions, which aren't detected if the writer doesn't check very carefully. A few recent funny ones, also known as What Should Have Been: From a newspaper description of an endangered species: "This is a mail lizard" (male) From a recently edited document: "A church warship group" (worship) From a document edited many years ago: "Puking Regulations" (Parking) From a paper one of my Mom's student's wrote: "The flu starts with a sour thought" (sore throat) I think that the more you know about working with language, the more you understand about how easily language can go wrong, and how difficult it is to get it right. I fix other people's writing every day, and every day I learn some little detail I didn't previously know. And I make the same mistakes -- not just in spelling, either -- that I correct elsewhere. So, I think that anyone overly confident about linguistic knowledge, even of a native language, probably hasn't thought about it very much. Never trust your own knowledge too much, even if you have a lot! Of course, everyone on this forum is exempt from this generalization, because we are nerds. A final thought on spell checking (not mine, I don't know who wrote this). A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers... Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it I am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect awl the weigh My chequer tolled me sew. 19 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5977 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 6 of 156 25 August 2010 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
I love the idea of a mail lizard :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| morganie Newbie United States Joined 5367 days ago 31 posts - 41 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 156 25 August 2010 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Lol I didn't think people even knew what Basque is, let alone think that it was derived from Latin. Edited by morganie on 25 August 2010 at 10:28pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 8 of 156 25 August 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have had to explain on more than one occasion that Chinese and Japanese are not the same language.
12 persons have voted this message useful |
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