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Slaughtering of English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 1 of 37 31 December 2009 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||
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So I went to see the movie Avatar (which was absolutely fantastic, the best movie I've ever seen.) and there was a preview in which a man said this about the new apple iphone.
"Yo man, I'mma do dis right quick here, ya'll w'see what I'm sayin' dis lil' thing dohs it all, I get all o' my work done wit dis, ain't nuthin' can't stop me." I literally started laughing (no one else was) I couldn't help it. Learning languages just made me want to immeadiately correct it and fix it to make it "work." That was the worst advertisement I had ever seen. My ears are scarred. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5807 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 2 of 37 31 December 2009 at 4:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, modern English is kinda like a slaughtering of Old English by French. And French is
a slaughtering of Latin by the Francs. Look what happened to Latin in Spain, Portugal, France and even Italy. Portuguese sounds like slaughtered Spanish to me. Many words are shortened and endings blended into diphthongs. Languages morph. However... I really hate when people adopt a style of speaking to be "cool". So many people eagerly eat the shite they are fed by media. Some days it seems there are so many morons in the world that its certain someone has been peeing in the gene pool. Edited by ChiaBrain on 31 December 2009 at 4:57am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 37 31 December 2009 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love it that English contains so many different ways of expressing oneself. From the dry wit of an English
academic to the colorful expressions of an ebonics speaker, the wonderful Cockney slang or the southern American "hillbillie" speech. There are so many different varieties of English and one can switch register to color one's expressions in so many ways (or mix it up, in the true spirit of the language). That is, to me, the very best feature of English. As someone said on this forum a while ago, if a native speaker makes a mistake, it can very well be argued that it's not, in fact, a mistake. If the speaker in question doesn't him/herself think it's a mistake even when it's pointed out, I'd certainly argue that it isn't. I expect that an ad from Apple does not contain mistakes from negligence or typos, so I can only conclude that you can't possibly "correct it", since it is without mistakes. You might not like the way he expressed himself, but that's a completely different matter. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5523 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 4 of 37 31 December 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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English is not alone, Dutch is getting heavily Anglicized and the youth is trying to imitate American hip-hop artists so English is definitely not the only language getting slaughtered by modern ‘coolness’.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 6 of 37 31 December 2009 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Funny, I never thought that about English until you mentioned it, but often though and think that about Flanders because of Belgian Dutch and the many dialects of Flemish. For example, in standard Dutch you say 'het moment', 'het boek', 'het valies' but you will often hear 'de moment' and 'den boek', I've even had an argument with a Fleming who didn't believe 'valies' was a 'het' word because everyone in Flanders uses it femininely... I know one example of this in French too, 'le/la job' depending on the area. (though purists will probably call anything that isn't Parisian French false...) Is it not like that in other languages too? Edited by elvisrules on 31 December 2009 at 3:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 7 of 37 31 December 2009 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I LOVE learning from materials that were produced in a formal sense, such as Berlitz Self Teachers, and the older Made Simple courses.
I don't believe you can ever be "too proper" although on the contrary you can always be very informal. In my opinion, start learning with extremely proper and constructed sourses, speech, and reading, then learn the culture and colloquialisms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 37 31 December 2009 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you know where this form of English comes from? Let me tell you a little story. A long time ago, there was a place called "Africa" and a place called "Europe". Now the Europeans had something called "the gun", whereas the Africans had no guns and skin that was a darker shade than the Europeans, so the Europeans decided they were better than the Africans, and started treating them like animals. Some they killed. Some they rounded up into boats and transported across a vast ocean to a continent called "America" where they were used as something called "slaves". They weren't given schooling -- heck, they often weren't even given enough food -- but they were expected to speak the same language as their "masters". And after all that, you've got the cheek to criticise their resulting way of speaking as "slaughtering of English"?!?! Let me give you a hint: The message Apple's going for isn't "it's cool to be like this guy" but "this is for everybody, not just posh kids with broomsticks up their backsides". 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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