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Over Correctness? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| wber Groupie United States Joined 4302 days ago 45 posts - 77 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Vietnamese, French | Message 1 of 15 14 February 2013 at 5:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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This is a thought that just came to mind. Do you guys ever over correct yourselves in your target language? When I say over correcting, I don't mean that you sound like a drone or pompous or elitist or too much like a textbook. You understand the slang, colloquialisms but you just don't use it as much as the natives?
For example: I know that in spoken French, natives often drop the "ne" in " ne...pas" However, I'd memorize the standard phrase for about 50 times (it's an exaggeration but you get the idea) before I do the same thing as the natives do. For English, it's not a problem for me since it's my native language. For example: I would say something along the lines of : Whad'ya wanna do today? but I already know that it means ( if said slowly, and correctly): What would you want to do today? etc.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4966 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 2 of 15 14 February 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know if this is appropriate to the discussion, but when I was a freshmen in my university, our English professor from Hawaii told us never to answer her with a 'Yeah.' : we should always use "Yes, (Ma'am is optional)' Since then I avoid using the word 'yeah' when talking to anybody over the internet.
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| HMS Senior Member England Joined 5108 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 15 15 February 2013 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Caveat: I speak as a native English speaker.
Personally, I would find it strange or even pretentious if a non-English speaker spoke to me incorporating slang or "shorcuts" - unless they were 100% certain of the context. If I was spoken to in perfect "textbook" grammatically correct English (Which would actually be unusual between British - English speakers) I would not find it strange at all. I have commented on here before - I pity the guy from farawayistan who turns up in Glasgow and thinks mimicking their vernacular will somehow endear them to him. I realise the OP was asking about "shortcuts" and not neccesarily slang - I speak for myself here but to my ear - all the "Dya wannas, whadya reckons and ya wanna bets" are all the exclusive property of the native speaker. I personally would think a foreign speaker of English would sound daft using terms as, and similar to such. And before the pedants dive in - you know exactly what I meant by 'foreign speaker of English'. Bet that ruined someone's day! :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nonneb Pentaglot Groupie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4752 days ago 80 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French | Message 4 of 15 15 February 2013 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are plenty non-native speakers in my area and most of them have a very strong
dose of the local accent/dialect (Appalachian/Southern), which includes lots of slang and shortcuts. No one thinks it sounds funny or seems to notice it at all, because most people do it. I enjoy hearing non-native speakers who use the language like we do, even imperfectly. Speaking more like a native is a sign to me that you are more likely to have immersed yourself in the culture and life of your target language, because you know the kind of things that can't be taught in a book. So to answer OP's question, I find myself using fewer colloquialisms in Spanish than natives, but that's in part because I studied at school, and my immersive experiences have been in different dialects. I just never got comfortable with it, even though I'd like to sound more natural.
In my community I would imagine it's the opposite, but most foreigners here are either Asian or Latin American; their command of English isn't normally too good when they get here, so most of their speech habits develop during their stay. There's actually a pretty funny clip of people from east Tennessee correcting Stephen Fry's pronunciation I saw somewhere. We're very happy to hear other people talking like us. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 5 of 15 16 February 2013 at 10:46am | IP Logged | |||||
My own experiences of having lived and studied in the UK and the US also seem to reflect this difference in attitudes. In England (Oxford, to be precise) where I was studying at an IB school whenever I used region-specific slang or displayed awareness of some of the more obscure local (pop-)cultural artefacts the native speakers would nearly always act surprised, and not always pleasantly. In the US (the Atlanta area) the native speakers just seemed to take it for granted: it's kind of expected that a newcomer to the region will end up using the word "y'all" sooner or later and my awareness of local memes was never a conversation stopper. The only time I can recall getting a reaction similar to what I got in the UK was when I quoted the First Amendment in its entirety (What? It was an election year, and I was going through a bit of a "US politics geek" phase back then..). I'm not exactly sure if the difference in my experience reflects a genuine difference in cultures and attitudes, or just a difference in my own circumstances. The school I went to in Oxford was an international school with Brits comprising less than a quarter of the student body, while Russian-speaking students made up more than a third of it. Most of my experiences outside the classroom were limited to a Russian bubble of sorts. It could be that me greeting people with an "Awright, mate?" was unusual precisely because I had no "mates" among the native speakers. By contrast, Russian speakers in the college I studied at in Georgia were less than 1% of the student body and my main group of friends were all Americans, so picking up on their slang usage was only natural - I don't recall them ever asking me to pay a user fee for all those "dya wannas, whadya reckons and ya wanna bets" ;) Also, it's probably harder for Americans to judge what aspects of their culture are obscure, since so much of their cultural output gets exported worldwide. In response to the OP's question, I wouldn't say that I "correct myself" by avoiding colloquialisms, but I guess I have some limits as to how far I go in appropriating them. While "y'all" has become perfectly natural to me (I haven't been back to Georgia in almost four years and I still prefer "y'all" to "you guys"), "ain't" hasn't; "gonna" and "wanna" have, but "gotta" hasn't (probably because of my British-influenced accent). A special case is "who/whom" - while the use of "who" in all cases by native speakers doesn't strike me as ungrammatical, I myself always maintain the distinction, even in the most informal settings. This most likely has to do with the fact that my first language retains a clear distinction between the nominative and the oblique cases, so all the "rules" on when to use and when not to use "whom" in English are perfectly intuitive to me. Edited by vonPeterhof on 16 February 2013 at 10:59am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6943 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 6 of 15 17 February 2013 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I get that a bit, yeah, just the other day a German guy found it amusing that I said "bei Weitem" in conversation. I asked him what he would have said and he replied "well, I would have said bei Weitem too because I'm educated, but most Germans would say "auf Jeden Fall"".
Odd. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 15 17 February 2013 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've never heard the term "bei weitem" but I am familiar with, and frequently use, auf jeden fall. I guess that means I'm not very educated. Seriously though, a lot depends on how and where you learn a language. If you study university textbooks, you will be learning the standard written form. If you find yourself living and working with native spekers, you will naturally adopt more colloquial patterns. Edited by beano on 17 February 2013 at 12:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 15 17 February 2013 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mirroring your conversation partner's body language, facial expressions and speech patterns as well a adjusting your accent so that its rhythm resembles the other's to a certain degree is usually a rather good strategy for making your conversation partner more engaging. The problem with it is that is doesn't work across boundaries created by social status. It probably depends on the culture and boundary in question whether the conversation partner feels offended or amused - and offers you a correction. I try to avoid saying things that native speakers say themselves, but correct me for. Edited by Bao on 17 February 2013 at 10:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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