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Broken English, is it offensive to you? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 81 of 83 18 October 2013 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
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Broken English isn't offensive if the said speaker is humble, but what really causes my blood to turn into black
pudding is when a speaker of broken English, or even decent English claims that it is such an easy and pidginized tongue. Oh I have seen so many exchange students, youtube commentators, and forum members say such. Many of these folks in the same breath regard Mandarin as complex and sophisticated despite being a completely analytical language lacking all forms of inflection to a certain degree. Aspect suffixes may be a kind of inflection. Inflection is now thought of as the determiner of how hard a language is by the common masses, it can be frustrating when irregular (Polish, Ancient Greek to some extent...) but it is simply a different method. A boat needs no wings, English needs no cases if it has other methods. Broken English is the lingua franca nowadays, all over the internet it is too apparent. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jingwumaster Newbie United States Joined 4670 days ago 33 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* | Message 82 of 83 18 October 2013 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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I have a few things to say regarding this thread.
1. Does broken English offend me? Not really, but the question itself, being pretentious, does. There's no reason to care at all about how other people speak yours or any language unless you teach it and they are your students. When you're offended by something, that implies that you're above it, and I really dislike snobbish attitudes, especially when it's dealing with something so trivial. 2. The premise that they were speaking broken English could be false. A linguist might consider what they were speaking to be a legitimate dialect of English regardless of how you perceived it. 3. Like others have stated, learning a foreign language requires a lot of time and effort so being able to communicate in a foreign language at all could be considered respect worthy. 4. A lot of what people consider proper language is arbitrary rules that really don't apply to spoken language but were meant to improve written language and literacy. There's also some elitist history behind many grammars, where people were trying to impose their opinion or another language's rules on their own language, such with Latin and English. If you study linguistics, then you'll learn that languages are not static entities but are in a continuous state of evolution and are not bound by many of the rules that grammarians would suppose. Lastly, I agree with Kato Lomb's sentiment that "language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly". p.s. You'll probably notice grammar and punctuation errors in my post, I don't care. The school system completely failed me; I had to teach myself to read and write my own language. The American education system is a joke. Of course, because I love logic so much, I do want to improve my grammar and punctuation with the written language for clarity and precision of thought, but I'm not quite there yet. Peace. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| AIRBORNE_DELTA Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Dutch | Message 83 of 83 06 November 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged |
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I think it is amazing that people take the time to learn English, and not just expect us to learn their language (as we often do). Thats not to say it is not frustrating sometimes, i spent the summer in Hungary and it was quite hard to communicate with many of them, but their English was way better than my Hungarian!
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