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Native speakers’ feelings about the lang. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 1 of 34 03 February 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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So the thread English: What’s this called? Is it wrong? made me think of the attitude native speakers have towards their languages and how this differs. More specifically, I thought "English speakers are so insecure!". I'm interested in hearing about the attitude of native speakers of the languages you guys speak and study. Here are some of my observations:
English speakers are some of the most insecure speakers I know of. They constantly worry if what they say themselves, what comes naturally to them as native speakers, is correct. They'll ask "Can you say it like this?" after they've just said it and they fret about Latin plurals, split infinitives and double negatives until they're blue in the face. English speakers tend to place an inordinate amount of trust in grammars, teachers and dictionaries, and if someone says something is wrong, then no matter how many people do it, it's still wrong. This leads to some problems, as many things that have been, for no apparent reason, declared as wrong, like split infinitives, passive voice and singular "they", have been used for centuries by illustrious authors like Shakespeare and Dickens. This is somewhat strange, considering the way English is gramatically relatively simple, full of weird loans from other languages, and has changed extremely much in the last few hundred years. You'd think that'd give people a laissez-faire attitude, but instead they get insecure and run around in circles worrying about the plural of "octopus". What's more, people, once convinced of how some natural expression used by the majority of speakers and with a history of usage of hundreds of years is somehow wrong, they'll not only fastidiously monitor their own speech, but this self-imposed censorship will apply to others', too. An English speaking prescriptivist will at the sight or sound of a sentence ending in a preposition be filled with a mixture of righteous wrath and childish schadenfreude, the latter at the thought of getting to thoroughly rebuke the offender in question. --- French has a similar but in many ways different issue. The French have established an institute, an "Academy", that believes it has the power to make decisions about the French language. Language is an unruly, chaotic, but fundamentally democratic phenomenon, but somehow the French, of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" fame, have got it into their heads that they can change this into a dictatorship. They can't, of course, but there's a massive conspiracy to convince everyone (mostly themselves) that they can. The Academy will issue decrees, and sometimes these decrees will fall in line with majority usage, at which point they will pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Sometimes, however, usage will differ from this decree. At this point, people do their best to pretend like what evereryone is saying doesn't really exist and everyone's following the "official" version. --- Swedish is in many ways more laid back. Perhaps because the grammar allows one to construct new words on the fly, neologisms are common and lists of "new words" are published here and there, informing people of the latest portmanteus and clever puns. Most of these, of course, never make it into common usage, and die a lonely death a year or two after their invention. A special breed of linguistic inventors are the tabloids who, in the constant search for attention, invent new compound words every day. words like "sexpräst" (sex priest) and "lyxknark" (luxury drugs) are posted outside every tobacconist, enriching the linguistic landcape for everyone to enjoy. Of course, there are "language police" people and people fretting over loan words, but they have little authority and most people just don't listen. --- Mandarin is another different animal, somewhat related to French, but of a more sinister breed. This language is constructed and standardized and everyone compares their language to the official standard. "Standard" is the best compliment you can get for your language and many people are ashamed of the way they speak, both native speakers with a dialect, and non-native speakers with an accent, both of which there are plenty of in China. People who speak a regionalized form are characterized as crude and unsophisticated, and actors portraying Chairman Mao, who spoke with a pretty strong accent back in the day, will often pretend he spoke perfect Modern Standard Mandarin. --- Cantonese is sort of the opposite of Mandarin. It's completely unregulated, doesn't even have a standardized writing system. New slang is invented all the time and puns and playfulness forms an integral part of the language. Most people couldn't care less about how you speak and there's no tradition of prescriptivism at all. It's sort of an anarchist free-market capitalism kind of language, where anything goes and if an expression strikes the fancy of the speakers, it can make it big, but if not, it'll be replaced by foreign imported goods. Code switching is very common and accepted but loan words are often quickly cantonized into new hybrid forms unrecognizeable by a native speaker. Whereas in English, people still insist of keeping the foreign plurals of Latin words generations after they've been integrated into the English language, Cantonese will warp the words, shorten them and change the pronunciation in a matter of years, and soon they'll have switched meaning, too. Anything goes, and you'd better keep up. But then there's actually a little undercurrent of prescriptivism when it comes to pronunciation. Cantonese is going through some sound changes, and some speakers feel that the "new" sounds are wrong. I don't think anyone actually corrects anyone else, but some people do watch their own speech. The average speaker will use these new "lazy sounds" themselves, but is convinced he/she doesn't do it at all. Then there are some that actually don't use them, but these will instead often fall prey to hypercorrection, correcting words that had nothing wrong with them in the first place. Which to me makes them sound more silly than the people who have embraced the "lazy sounds". --- The above are my thoughts and observations, and might not correspond to yours. Please correct me! And please tell me about your own thoughts on this subject. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 2 of 34 03 February 2012 at 11:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Dutch people are notoriously lax about their own language and seem to prefer to loan every English word for new concepts than bother developing one of their own. They are quite unapologetic about this too.
Dutch feels like a language with an inferiority complex. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 34 03 February 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I totally agree. Almost all of the Dutch language partners and people I speak some Dutch with are very curious about why I am "wasting my time" learning Dutch. They generally mean that I don't need to learn it because Dutch speakers speak English so well. I lived in The Netherlands for six years and saw this attitude almost everywhere. As I understand it, most graduate level education is in English in both The Netherlands and Belgium. Business and international affairs are largely conducted in English. The royal family is fluent, near native, in English. The situation is even much more extreme on the Dutch islands in the Caribbean. I think part of the issue is that the Dutch and Flemish people are such practical people in many respects (lots of examples of this), they just find it much more practical to switch to English rather than struggle with foreigners fumbling with Dutch. Perhaps you could even say they are a bit lazy in helping people speak Dutch. The same could be said about the Dutch government. Look at the lack of language learning material on Radio Netherlands Worldwide and public broadcasters. From my point of view as a Dutch language learner, I wish it were not so. I worry where the language is headed. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 34 03 February 2012 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I do not know whether I can say that I have noticed differerences between nations on this, but most definitely differences within a country. There are approximately 5 million Norwegians and around 4.9 million different views on this particular issue.
Personally I am firmly in the prescriptive camp. Listening to people saying the equivalent to "Her has done it", or "That book is theyses" is my linguistic counterpart of fingernails drawn over a black board. Receiving little notes from my children's school every week, where there has not been ONE SINGLE ONE without spelling errors in the 10 years I have received them, also makes me very sad. But I am a dinosaur, so at some point I should probably just learn to ignore it. I think my Alzheimer would have to be in a fairly advanced stage for that to happen though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 34 03 February 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't noticed anything extraordinary and what I have found can be thought of as part of the oscillation/tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism. I recall while travelling, one of my Finnish hosts told me that he thought that Estonian made more sense than (standard) Finnish. I suspect that he meant that the difference between standard and colloquial (i.e. what's most frequently used) Estonian is a lot smaller than the difference between standard and colloquial Finnish. He added that to a Finnish child entering preschool or kindergarten, it must be a bit strange at first to learn that you're not supposed to say something translatable as "they is" (ne on) but "they are" (he/ne ovat) even though the former is VERY common in speech regardless of the educational background of other native speakers. However in Estonian, they pretty much say "they is" (n(em)ad on) and learn it in school as such (cf. t(em)a on "he/she/it is"). Conversely the shared use of on in singular and plural of "to be" here can also be translated from Estonian and colloquial Finnish as saying "he/she/it are" (Est: t(em)a on; Fin: hän/se on). The only wrinkle worth mentioning is when that tension carries political baggage. Not to beat a dead horse but I've seen it clearly in BCMS/Serbo-Croatian where a few nationally-inclined native speakers (and mainstream native linguists) are dead set on what constitutes a "Serbianism" or "Croatianism" and meticulously ensure that their usage and that of others in the community/tribe lack structures or words that are imagined or dubiously emblematic of the "enemy". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 34 03 February 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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American English - It seems like the only people who care about other people using English wrong are the educated and/or "grammar nazis" (yes, that is what it's called in English).
I hear errors on a daily basis that make my skin crawl, not because I necessarily care about syntax, but because they sound wrong to me. Here are some random examples: "He don't wanna go." "So I says to him, I says..." "I seen that yesterday when I was at the store..." "Alls I know is..." The people who say those things don't care (or know?) that they are wrong, and if you told them the probably wouldn't care because "that's just how they talk." I have also noticed widespread lack of knowledge of perfect past tense. I hear and read a lot of stuff that sounds like this: "Because of my new exercise program, I have ran every day for the last month." "That concert sounded cool. I should've went to it." etc. They make my ears hurt. Also, no one understands when to use "I" vs. when to use "me." But I think I understand why. In English, the (erroneous) construction "Me and Bob (or whoever) are gonna go (do whatever)" is very common amongst everyone from children to college students to business people. "Me and Bob are gonna go to the store." "Me and James are gonna come visit later." "Me and Kim ate at that restaurant the other day." That is very common. So, all throughout elementary school, the teachers drill into your head: "[the other person first] and I." "Bob and I are gonna go to the store." (not "Me and Bob") "James and I are gonna come visit later." (not "Me and James.") "Kim and I ate at that restaurant the other day." (not "Me and Kim") [the other person first] and I is stressed very hard in school. So what happens is people think any time there is you and another person, you're supposed to put their name first and then add "and I." This becomes a problem when you and the other person are the direct object of a verb. I hear CONSTANTLY in the corporate world: "Email that document to Mike and I" (should actually be "Mike and me") "Did you get the fax from Jim and I?" (should actually be "Jim and me") etc. I think it's because "[the other person first] and I" is so drilled into everyone's head that they think it's "correct." I even heard "[the other person first] and I" (as a direct object) on TV. Sometimes people correct you when you say "me" even though it's correct: Person 1: "Hey, when you're done can you email that report to Joe and me so we can take a look at it?" Person 2: (thinking they're being smart) "Um, don't you mean 'Joe and I'?" Person 1: "Um, no... 'me' is the object of the preposition 'to'." Person 2: (blank stare) Person 1: "So are you gonna email it to us then?" Person 2: "You're always supposed to say the other person's name first and then 'and I,' not 'and me'." Person 1: "Only if it's the subject of the sentence. I can send you a grammar lesson if you want but only after you email that report to Joe and me." Finally, English speakers for some reason think that "whom" is a "smart person" word. So what happens is people start using it incorrectly to try and sound "smart." You'll hear things like "whom is that?" which don't make any sense. This is less common, though. Most people avoid "whom" altogether and just use "who." I admit, however, that "Who did you give that report to?" doesn't really sound "wrong" to my ears, even though it should really be "to whom did you give that report?" or at least "whom did you give that report to?" (yes I know that ends with a preposition...) So my point is that American English speakers both simultaneously want to sound smart, but often don't care if they are wrong. Edited by IronFist on 03 February 2012 at 6:29pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 7 of 34 03 February 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
I imagine for a foreigner this is also quite a boon in adaptation (none of that I wanted a tomato, not an orange malarkey in shops) but I have to say, that the Dutch also chronically and consistently overestimate their own English ability. As an average, I would say that Dutch people generally speak English well and are reasonably skilled varying from conversant to fluent (youth tending towards the latter, older people towards the former). But I went through a bilingual immersion programme in my youth, where I was taught by both native speakers of English and Dutch people who had taken courses at, what was it, Cambridge? In England somewhere, at least. The difference, even between those who did speak good English (my chemistry teacher spoke it very well for example) and those who didn't, was miraculously big. After a few years, it was not an exaggeration to say that most of the people in our class could be considered more proficient than almost any of our teachers, apart from the English department and a select few linguistically apt ones. (Of course, I learned English in my toddler days in Canada, before I moved back, so I don't really count). Those of us who did bother learning English properly (there are many) also frown upon anyone using Dunglish. My graduate studies are almost entirely in English and the use of English in my classes is frequently more of a hindrance (most teachers are less comfortable explaining in English than Dutch, and the fact there is often a switch simply because solely one or two people do not speak the lingo) than it is a help to those who do not know the language. It just feels more natural for me to receive an explanation from these people in Dutch, even though I would not describe their English as wrong, or deficient, because it feels more natural when they do this. It really eases the tension on a conversation, it eliminates the pauses and the long trains of thought and the awkward circumlocutions used to define certain concepts. It's particularly frustrating for me, because I was raised in an environment where I did speak Dutch at home but the use of English has always been actively encouraged by my parents and eventually it's become a situation in which I have used and spoken English so much that every time I hear the English language being mangled by many, many of my fellow countrymen, it grates my ears. And I am sure my fellow countrymen (and I know plenty youths whose English would definitely be classified as fluent) would prefer it if more people bothered putting in the effort to learn it properly. It's a sad situation in a way when within my friend group, the common lingua franca is English, even though all of us (except one, who isn't always there) are native (or semi-native; one is half Flemish) speakers of Dutch. This is actually the preferred lingo for communication (so much that it confuses outsiders that we do not speak Dutch amongst each other). It leads to hilarity often, though. I know we shouldn't do this, but we do. An inferiority complex, indeed. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4933 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 8 of 34 03 February 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Do westerners really study grammars at school? We never teach chinese grammar here...
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