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Do You Appreciate Your Native Tongue?

  Tags: Native Language
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
Poll Question: Do you appreciate your native tongue?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
64 [79.01%]
17 [20.99%]
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27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4  Next >>
Kounotori
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 5349 days ago
136 posts - 264 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 17 of 27
03 January 2011 at 2:49pm | IP Logged 
math82 wrote:
However, this to me is out weighed by a lot of negative points:

1. Most educated* people will learn English anyway (so I get no exclusive culture or literature or identity out of it)
2. It doesn't have a particularly exciting set of phonemes
3. Barely any morphology
4. Simple verb structure
5. + I don't know if this is culturally bias, but it seems to miss many of the "word level" subtleties that other languages have. (the difference in German between "ob" and"wenn", or in Russian between "но" and "а", for very simple examples)


As a lover of English I must address your points!

1. Well, the level of English of these educated people isn't always as staggeringly high as stereotypes might lead you to think ("Boy, all those Nordic people sure speak English like natives!" comes to mind as an example; most young people here (<40 years old) do speak good English, but even among them I'd say that more than 90% couldn't read a book and understand every word in it). I've got some work experience with asylum seekers and it's shown me that English is nowhere near the lingua franca even among educated people of the world, say, Iranians (and in their case we're talking about highly educated people, such as engineers). So yes, English can become a very exclusive language once you leave anglophone countries and Western Europe.

2. English has an absolutely huge inventory of phonemes if you look at all the dialects. It's far richer than in languages like German or Russian. English even has a lot of the more exotic elements of phonology, such as palatalization, retroflex consonants (Indian English!), sounds like ü (British dialects ahoy...) and the glo'al stop (u followin me 'ere, eh guvna?).

From my point of view as a native speaker of Finnish, even your garden variety American English has a really wacky R sound (it would surely make any Beijing Chinese happy).

3. Well, have to agree with you on that. English morphology is quite simple (but still people manage to eff it up and say and write things like "he say" or "pretty butterflys").

4. Even though English verb structure is simple, the usage of English verbs is far from it. Just look at all the possible forms of the verb "wait": even though the present, past and future tenses are straightforward (waits, waited, will wait), it's when we start going deeper into all sorts of past and future pluperfect progressive tenses we have far more expressive and nuanced verb forms than many other languages could have (would have had waited, will be waiting, should have had been waiting, etc) (Russian on the other hand has only a single past tense, although admittedly you can do wonders with aspects and small words like уже). English verbs are pretty ingenious actually.

5. English has many of its own subtleties that other languages lack. Very few languages have the same kind of "class associations" with different accents as British English does (in England you can/could literally tell not just the location/origin, but also the social position of a person just based on his accent).

If you speak a language that lacks definite and indefinite articles such as Russian, Finnish, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi or Japanese, then getting the hang of the usage of "a" and "the" can be even more excruciating than grasping the difference between "ob" and "wenn".

English also has a ginormous word-hoard (i.e. vocabulary). I love it how many nuanced alternatives there are which allow you to express your thoughts neatly and precisely. Good writing in English with the so-called "ten dollar" words is, after all, not about how many of them you use, but how effectively you are able to employ them. As you can see, English is not a jejune language at all.

And finally, a note on English words that have no equivalents in some other languages.

Edited by Kounotori on 03 January 2011 at 2:50pm
8 persons have voted this message useful



Lindsay19
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5826 days ago
183 posts - 214 votes 
Speaks: English*, GermanC1
Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic

 
 Message 18 of 27
04 January 2011 at 11:03am | IP Logged 
I must admit that I love the English language. So many words and great literature; I feel
at home when I speak it. I think it's also an extremely flexible language that allows you
to make up words and phrases to exactly fit the thoughts you're trying to express.
1 person has voted this message useful



RealJames
Diglot
Newbie
Japan
realizeenglish.com/
Joined 5129 days ago
37 posts - 42 votes
Speaks: French, English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 19 of 27
04 January 2011 at 12:09pm | IP Logged 
I appreciate English for the employment opportunities abroad, and the ease of travel.

It sounds coarse to me and I prefer the sound of the romance languages but I wouldn't have it any other way :)
1 person has voted this message useful



g.polskov
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5257 days ago
37 posts - 50 votes
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 20 of 27
05 January 2011 at 1:52am | IP Logged 
Although I love my language like my family (no special reason for it, I just feel it), I also sometimes think that I would have enjoyed speaking a "rarer" language; romanian, swedish, guarani. Mainly because I will probably never get to learn these. And they would make a good "secret" language!
1 person has voted this message useful



math82
Newbie
United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5432 days ago
17 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 21 of 27
05 January 2011 at 9:48am | IP Logged 
Kounotori wrote:

As a lover of English I must address your points!


Hey, thanks for looking through my points. It's really interesting to read the views of someone who can kind of take
a look at English in a relatively objective way. I guess English ( along with Romance and other Germanic languages)
do have some fairly cool and complex compound tenses, and the other points you raise do make me appreciate my
native language a little more.

I still wish I spoke some kind of polysynthetic beast with ergative alignment, evidence markers and about 80
phenomes : )

Edited by math82 on 05 January 2011 at 9:49am
1 person has voted this message useful



CheeseInsider
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5127 days ago
193 posts - 238 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin*
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 22 of 27
05 January 2011 at 9:58am | IP Logged 
Kounotori wrote:
math82 wrote:
However, this to me is out weighed by a lot of negative points:

1. Most educated* people will learn English anyway (so I get no exclusive culture or literature or identity out of it)
2. It doesn't have a particularly exciting set of phonemes
3. Barely any morphology
4. Simple verb structure
5. + I don't know if this is culturally bias, but it seems to miss many of the "word level" subtleties that other languages have. (the difference in German between "ob" and"wenn", or in Russian between "но" and "а", for very simple examples)


As a lover of English I must address your points!

1. Well, the level of English of these educated people isn't always as staggeringly high as stereotypes might lead you to think ("Boy, all those Nordic people sure speak English like natives!" comes to mind as an example; most young people here (<40 years old) do speak good English, but even among them I'd say that more than 90% couldn't read a book and understand every word in it). I've got some work experience with asylum seekers and it's shown me that English is nowhere near the lingua franca even among educated people of the world, say, Iranians (and in their case we're talking about highly educated people, such as engineers). So yes, English can become a very exclusive language once you leave anglophone countries and Western Europe.

2. English has an absolutely huge inventory of phonemes if you look at all the dialects. It's far richer than in languages like German or Russian. English even has a lot of the more exotic elements of phonology, such as palatalization, retroflex consonants (Indian English!), sounds like ü (British dialects ahoy...) and the glo'al stop (u followin me 'ere, eh guvna?).

From my point of view as a native speaker of Finnish, even your garden variety American English has a really wacky R sound (it would surely make any Beijing Chinese happy).

3. Well, have to agree with you on that. English morphology is quite simple (but still people manage to eff it up and say and write things like "he say" or "pretty butterflys").

4. Even though English verb structure is simple, the usage of English verbs is far from it. Just look at all the possible forms of the verb "wait": even though the present, past and future tenses are straightforward (waits, waited, will wait), it's when we start going deeper into all sorts of past and future pluperfect progressive tenses we have far more expressive and nuanced verb forms than many other languages could have (would have had waited, will be waiting, should have had been waiting, etc) (Russian on the other hand has only a single past tense, although admittedly you can do wonders with aspects and small words like уже). English verbs are pretty ingenious actually.

5. English has many of its own subtleties that other languages lack. Very few languages have the same kind of "class associations" with different accents as British English does (in England you can/could literally tell not just the location/origin, but also the social position of a person just based on his accent).

If you speak a language that lacks definite and indefinite articles such as Russian, Finnish, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi or Japanese, then getting the hang of the usage of "a" and "the" can be even more excruciating than grasping the difference between "ob" and "wenn".

English also has a ginormous word-hoard (i.e. vocabulary). I love it how many nuanced alternatives there are which allow you to express your thoughts neatly and precisely. Good writing in English with the so-called "ten dollar" words is, after all, not about how many of them you use, but how effectively you are able to employ them. As you can see, English is not a jejune language at all.

And finally, a note on English words that have no equivalents in some other languages.


I want to address your final point. In English, when a word is used a couple of times, a native speaker will think "this is too redundant" and will swap that word which conveys the meaning they want perfectly for another word that only kinda expresses what they mean. So you see, while English has a huge vocabulary, it is perfectly acceptable, and almost mandatory in literature for one to exchange redundant preciseness for varied clumsiness.

Edited by CheeseInsider on 05 January 2011 at 9:59am
1 person has voted this message useful



Scoobs
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5668 days ago
27 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Persian

 
 Message 24 of 27
06 January 2011 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
I love that English is my native language- I don't think I could ever have learnt it otherwise:) I love English poetry and books and personally I think it's the best language to write in. However, being half-Iranian, and being completely in-love with all things Iranian, I wish I had picked Persian up when I was younger and could have enjoyed interacting with my family when I was a kid.

I love my native language but I just wish I could have been brought up bilingual.


1 person has voted this message useful



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