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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4837 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 217 of 221 25 April 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you are technically correct, but evidently (as emk tells us), French is different, since one can say "c'est moi". But in colloquial speech in English we also often say (e.g. on the phone) "[Hi,] it's me ". So we break our own "rules", which is again more or less what emk was saying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Itadakimasu Diglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4198 days ago 31 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 218 of 221 07 June 2013 at 7:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Anyone who says natives speak correctly all the time is simply being ignorant. I speak wrong all the time. Oh look, that sentence was wrong, it was "Incorrect". Hah, that's a laugh. I can't remember the last time I heard someone in actual speech say "incorrect". You may hear it in books, or some false documents, but anyone whose spent time in the UK or America or has done massive English input via computer knows that people don't speak like that. I could purposely mess up all my sentences, and because you guys are natives you could understand me fine. Just like a kid has no idea of these rules and still communicates effectively the same goes for a foreigner. For some reason people think you need this damn near "angelic perfection" or grammar, syn-taxes, and verb conjugations to be able to speak. This is what holds people back.
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| jeronz Diglot Newbie New Zealand Joined 4867 days ago 37 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian | Message 219 of 221 18 July 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I have studied all of Professor John McWhorter's three courses on linguistics from thegreatcourses.com and I feel I should chime in here regarding this issue as to what the mainstream contemporary view is: John, Mary and me are going is CORRECT. That it should be otherwise is based on the idea that English should be more like Latin. The notion that it needs to be John, Mary and I are going comes from a man called Robert Lowth who wrote an English Grammar in the 1700s. His premise was that English should be more like Latin. He therefore made up several rules as to how we should thenceforth speak English, this is called prescriptivism. The technical thing he insisted on is to have the subject pronoun form instead of the object pronoun form. He insisted on this because in Latin it would be the nominitive form. Note that no-one was speaking like this before he came up with these rules, and NO child speaks like this before they are "taught" in school. Not to mention that to import grammar rules artificially like that from one language to another is just crazy. Especially as many languages such as French use the object pronoun and no one in those societies complains about that. He also insisted on having the subject form even in sentences such as "It is I", "It is they" or "It is we" Note how no-one would insist on someone using these sentences. These sentences just don't work, they don't sound right. Why for John, Mary and I ? And then how come most people wouldn't object to "Me, John and Mary," but something like "I, John and Mary" just doesn't sound right at all. Basically in conclusion, what we are taught in school is not logical and it is not the language we speak as a child before we are "corrected" in school. However in formal settings you should still say "John, Mary and I are going" because that is the accepted thing. However no-one should say that this is in anyway logical. Edited by jeronz on 23 July 2013 at 4:15am 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5307 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 220 of 221 19 July 2013 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
So what you are saying is that 5-year-old children are the ones who speak pure, uncorrupted English and should be the only legitimate normative force? Is that because they had less time to deviate from the universal inborn grammar? Edited by lingoleng on 19 July 2013 at 7:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jeronz Diglot Newbie New Zealand Joined 4867 days ago 37 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian | Message 221 of 221 23 July 2013 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is "natural" really comes down to how a language is spoken on a day to day basis. Robert Lowth's legacy has resulted in generations of teachers attempting to artificially change English to be more like Latin. Yes, languages do change and evolve, however the fact remains that most parents are still teaching their children to use the object pronoun. If most English speakers started using the subject pronoun then that would be more correct, but the fact is that, when speaking, most people don't. It has nothing to do with universal grammar, it is simply the English that you learn "on your mother's knee." This doesn't have anything to do with an inborn universal grammar. In formal settings the subject pronoun is more accepted and so one should go with that in those circumstances. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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