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Language Learning Orthodoxy You Ignore | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 81 of 116 05 December 2014 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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It all depends on the situation.
In the general, for something like the case cited where there is potential for embarrassment or serious misunderstanding, I think I'd want to say something. If it's a tourist asking directions, I'll just give them directions (assuming I can decode their utterance). If it's a colleague in a business meeting, I'd possibly repeat the statement in what I believe to be the correct form and then proceed to answer the question or whatever. If it's just the two of us discussing something, I'd probably just say "do you mean X?" and then move on. If they keep making the same mistake and there's no ambiguity, then I'm not going to repeatedly correct them. It all depends on the context. There are lots of ways of correcting people, although several of them could just as easily be seen as confirming that you've understood them before expending any further effort on reaching whatever the goal might be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5226 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 82 of 116 05 December 2014 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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So be it agreed by the HTLAL board:
1. Mistakes are bad. 2. Be polite when correcting others. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 83 of 116 05 December 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
That's interesting. It seems like I always hear it in the negative, "ne pas faire long feu." A blog from Le Monde about the expression (or perhaps two expressions...) got a lot of comments: link Guess the issue raises some passions! Edited by tastyonions on 06 December 2014 at 1:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5226 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 84 of 116 05 December 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seems to be a deep-seated human urge, to correct other's use of language. I mean, I know full well that many, indeed all of the words and expressions I use today would have struck previous English speakers as being incorrect. My language, as Iversen says, is a collection of fossilized mistakes.
So it's somewhat hypocritical for me to get mad at people who make similar mistakes today, when the only difference between the mistakes they make and the mistakes I make is that mine have a longer pedigree. I know this. So why oh why do I still get infuriated when people say chomping at the bit? Edited by ScottScheule on 05 December 2014 at 10:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 85 of 116 07 December 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
Because you haven't read this? But there is a large difference between the common "mistakes" made by native speakers, and common mistakes made by learners. Just like native pronunciation can vary, native "accuracy" can vary as well. In both cases the learner has difficulty knowing which ones are "acceptable" differences, and which ones mark them as a foreigner. In some situations, grammatical accuracy can even be a telling sign that the person has learned the language as a second language. Edited by Jeffers on 07 December 2014 at 10:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 86 of 116 07 December 2014 at 10:33am | IP Logged | ||
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As Joey from Friends said, "It's a moo point".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 87 of 116 07 December 2014 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you sure that the influence from English couldn't lead some poor Francophone native astray? Any change has to start somewhere, and one person may be all it takes. It is not even necessary that the person who starts the avalanche takes the name of the instrument in churches into account - actually it is more likely that the person doesn't even care about church organs, but so much more about the electric gadget used by rock and pop ensembles. If the 'organ' virus hasn't spread yet in France it could simply be due to the habit in Anglophone countries to refer to the electrical thing and the guy or girl who plays it as the 'keyboards'. 'Errors' can be caused by sloppiness or systematic sound changes (like the kind that transformed Latin 'organum' into "orgue"), by external influences (which may not yet have led to the use of "organ" for the keyboards in rock/pop, but it could have happened) or by misunderstandings or 'folk etymologies. But in all these cases a minority must have started the process, and then it is up to the language community to adopt the new usage or not. I have a few things more to say about organs ('orgues'), but I'll do so in my log. Edited by Iversen on 07 December 2014 at 5:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 88 of 116 07 December 2014 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
So are these graffiti the product of a native mind or a second language learner and a spray can :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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