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English v Other Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Achmann Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5655 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 28 07 June 2009 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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While learning German and when I was over there I noticed English is creeping into thier language. For example some of them say "sorry" now instead of traditional Entschuldigung and Tut mir leid.
There were some other things as well. Now I know that a lot of people learn German still so it is far from being dead and abandoned. This I find particularly annoying as an English speaker cause my language is not a private language as it is already. So when I find it getting in another language I want to learn it gets a little frustrating for me. I know English took words from German in the past and now it is switching around and I know I can't fight the way this works. However I was wondering if there are other languages out there, or other people who are learning languages who find English seems to be slowly trying to "kill" or "invade" the other languages. Is this the case in other languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6271 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 2 of 28 07 June 2009 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have heard Dutch people saying sorry. But the Dutch are especially prone to English getting into their language, and some of them even watch British television.
Speakers of the languages of India and Pakistan often intersperse the speech with English words and phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Geordieboy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5936 days ago 32 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 28 07 June 2009 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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i have a pakistani workmate for example who was talking to a an old pakistani customer in their own language about bread, (i'm not sure which language) and he was saying, yada yada yada, and then "it has the same taste" in English.
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| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6202 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 4 of 28 07 June 2009 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Do you live in Pakistan or an English-speaking country? Because I think it is quite normal for immigrant communities to code-switch, whether into English, Spanish, French, German, or whatever. In my opinion, this is a different phenomenon than what the original poster was referring to. As far as using English words in non-English-speaking countries, in most situations it doesn't bug me, at least from what I've seen. I mean, it's quite common for people to say hola, adios, gracias, etc. when speaking English, but this doesn't mean that they don't know or use the words hi, bye, thanks. Where the situation is more grave to me is in countries like the Philippines or India, where I have the impression that such code-switching is even used in the media, and much of schooling is in English and the national language and native languages are ignored (please correct me if I'm wrong!). Edited by anamsc on 07 June 2009 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Weizenkeim Diglot Groupie GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6103 days ago 70 posts - 72 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 28 07 June 2009 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I never had this feeling of invasion. I know that a lot of people are more conservative about German language, claiming that new words from English as well as German-english neologisms will deform the language to the worse. For me it is like this: Of course you hear people often say 'sorry' nowadays. But that doesn't mean that 'sorry' killed 'Entschuldigung'. The word is still there. But now I have one more option to appologize. Wether I say 'Sorry', 'Tut mir leid', 'Entschuldigung', 'Pardon' or even 'Sorrytutmirleid'schuldigung', every one of them sounds a little different, has its own subtle shade of meaning. And I like that a lot.
There are some other aspects about this, like the ridiculous and often wrong usage of English words in commercials in order to fake some international flair (while every second customer won't understand the slogan at all. :D ) but I don't care for that either. Commercials have ever been a pain in the ass, even without English words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5668 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 28 07 June 2009 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I sometimes wonder if teenagers are behind this - since they are usually the ones that make something "cool" and from there "popular".
In the Czech Republic a few years back I started to hear kids say "sorry", and now it is very common for adults to use it too. This year, I have started to hear kids say "yes" (in place of the Czech word "ano"). They do not use the English word "no" presumably because it would cause confusion with a slang version of "ano" (wherein "no" means "yeah"). Instead, they still use the Czech word "ne". Therefore, I sometimes hear kids asking each other the funny construction "yes nebo ne" (i.e."yes or no"). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5831 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 7 of 28 07 June 2009 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | ||
I've never come across anyone saying 'yes' before when speaking Czech but the German ja (pronounced more like yaw, maybe Austrian influence?) is very common. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5908 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 28 07 June 2009 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
"Sorry" has found its way into Norwegian too, but like you say, it is subtly different from the other options people have - and I've found that sorry has a more light-hearted feel to it. So in situations where a mild apology is needed the Norwegian equivalents might be too strong, sorry has - at least among people I spend any time with - become a word that lets you apologize where you wouldn't otherwise want to or be able to, to diffuse tension. A lot of people have a high threshold for apologizing, and having a simple 'sorry' at our disposal helps sometimes. A bit like how some people will say (in English) "thank you so much" for something small, and it feels utterly inappropriate for that situation, but "thank you very much" would've been fine. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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