|
 |
Natives mistakes in their own languages | ||
Tags: Error | Native Speakers | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5360 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 17 of 65 20 April 2011 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just went and had a quick read. "Sarah Palin and her elk". Tee Hee. I think I can use that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5360 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 18 of 65 20 April 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
But just to get back to the original questions.
It seems pretty pointless to try and keep up with the latest slang and usage, but you also need to be aware that most of the "rules" of grammar are enforced by people who learnt them as a child, based on a book written 50 years previously, where the author probably favoured usages from his childhood, and so it could easily end up with usages from over 100 years ago. As a learner, you need to aim for some kind of standard though, so it seems sensible to follow what's in the course books, and be ready to be adaptive when you actually encounter it. If you adopt a very informal modern style, it actually makes it very difficult for anyone ever to correct you, so you have to be pretty confident in your own ability to reflect and adopt the "in" usage. Edited by schoenewaelder on 20 April 2011 at 6:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| simonov Senior Member Portugal Joined 5389 days ago 222 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English | Message 19 of 65 20 April 2011 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Because in this case "well" is NOT an adverb, but an adjective meaning "in good health, fine physically", the antonym of "UNwell". 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6157 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 65 20 April 2011 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Not quite the same, but I constantly hear people "in high places" say "nucular" instead of "nuclear."
**************** Why Does Bush Go "Nucular"? - By Kate Taylor - Posted Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2002, at 6:29 PM ET When speaking about nuclear weapons, George W. Bush invariably pronounces the word "nucular." Is this an acceptable pronunciation? Not really. Changing "nu-clee-ar" into "nu-cu-lar" is an example of what linguists call metathesis, which is the switching of two adjacent sounds. (Think of it this way: "nook le yer" becomes "nook ye ler.") This switching is common in English pronunciation; you might pronounce "iron" as "eye yern" [Yes I do! - TerryW] rather than "eye ron." [Never heard that in my life, any of you? - TerryW] Why do people do it? One reason, offered in a usage note in the American Heritage Dictionary, is that the "ular" ending is extremely common in English, and much more common than "lear." Consider particular, circular, spectacular, and many science-related words like molecular, ocular, muscular. **************** But if grammar mistakes are good enough for a recent former Prez of the U.S., they're good enough for me: **************** George Bush's Latest Language Gaffe Occurs In Front Of English Teachers - 2007/09/27 | CityNews.ca Staff Oops, he did it again! No, this has nothing to do with Britney Spears or her ongoing personal and professional woes. It's the latest episode of malapropism, starring that master mangler of the English language, U.S. President George. W. Bush. The Commander-in-Chief was at an event with school kids in New York City Wednesday. It was a photo op designed to show the importance of education. And that's where his latest tongue twisting emerged. Talking about his education policy, Bush boldly told the crowd - which included some horrified English teachers - that "childrens do learn." "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he made clear. It's worth noting that when the official transcript of the event was issued by the White House, the mistake had been corrected. It's not the first time the U.S. leader has left the grammar police grimacing. During his first run for the Oval Office, Bush famously asked "Is our children learning?" If the query he posed on Wednesday is any indication, the answer appears to be definitely not. Bush is famous for his use - or abuse - of the mother tongue. His most recent slips came during a summit in Australia earlier this month. But here are just a few other examples from 2007: "This process has been drug out a long time, which says to me it's political." ... "And my concern, David, is several." **************** 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6382 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 21 of 65 20 April 2011 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I try to learn a way of speaking and writing that is reasonably standard while I'm learning. I see no conflict here. Again, there's plenty of expressions that are simply never appropriate. As I get to more advanced levels I try to adapt my speaking to the listener. My spoken English, when used amongst friends, is spiced up with colloquialisms ("That's pretty hardcore"), words and expressions that "don't exist" ("I am tripping so many balls right now") and yes, "bad" grammar ("Them's good apples!").
Well, there are heaps of textbooks who teach English colloquialisms, of course. I saw shelves of it in China and Hong Kong. Most complete language teaching programs will of naturally teach an "educated" way of speaking, as most language learners who spend cash on these programs are business people who will interact with other business people. There are exceptions, though. One of the reasons I like ChinesePod so much is the focus on how people speak rather than how they ought to speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5493 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 22 of 65 20 April 2011 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I guess what's important to me is that people KNOW how to speak "correctly," even if they choose not to. I assume many speakers of minority dialects could also choose to speak the "official" or "standard" dialect if they wished.
I love dialects and alternative linguistic conventions, I have to say. When Dr. John sings in his New Orleans drawl "Is you IS or is you AIN'T my baby?" I think it's absolutely brilliant. However, if all native English speakers started talking like that and after a while were unaware that there had ever been any such possible sentence as "Are you or are you not my baby?", then I might become sad at the loss of a more "standard" English dialect. Plus, the very fact that NOT everybody talks like that only makes the "Nawlins" way of talking more special, in my opinion. I make purposeful mistakes in English all the time (such as Ari's "Them's good apples!"), because English is a wonderfully flexible and expressive language that allows for stuff like that. However, the only reason I feel okay about doing that is that I also know what the "correct" way to speak is. For instance, when speaking to my very eloquent Swiss-born academic adviser, I use the most correct English possible, because A) it's an academic context, and B) he's a foreigner who speaks English almost perfectly, which means B1) I would be embarrassed to speak my own language inaccurately in front of him, because he practically speaks it better than me, and B2) I don't want to model inaccuracies that he might still pick up from me. So, in a nutshell, I love "inaccurate" talking, as long as we don't lose track of accurate speech completely. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5098 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 23 of 65 20 April 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, same here, of course (ok, I speak German, not English). But I think this makes learning a foreign language even more complicated rather than easier: You cannot just say "Oh, fine, it's all correct, no matter what I say", one has to tag words, phrases and grammar rules with descriptions of region, dialect, situation .... Full awareness of the real complexity of every language is both fascinating and intimidating. And so almost everybody starts and should start from a neutral, widely accepted standard. This kind of discussion is always a bit accademic, the ones behave, as if they would not use any non standard language (we all participate in a wide spectrum of different standards, at least in our native language), while the others want to make us believe, that linguistics gives us a justification to ignore any rules, conventions, you name it, what is simply not true. Linguistics just gives us the means to explore any variety we want with the same methods and techniques, and there is a tendency of trying not to discriminate speakers of substandard varieties by using pejorative terminology. When writing a book about his preferred variety the linguist will most likely use standard language (mixed with some terrible jargon; ok, I agree he uses just another substandard.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 4886 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 24 of 65 20 April 2011 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I would like to stress here the difference between an error (a violation of a rule) and a mistake (writing or speaking something other than what is conceived in ones mind).
"I would like to eat your mother" is more than likely a mistake as someone meant to say "I would like to meet your mother". The variation "eat" for "meet" is very unlikely to occur, simply because it provides such a barrier to communication. That is why despite the free variation in language, people are still able to communicate. If I develop a variation that nobody understands, chances are I will stop using it in a big hurry. Now if a whole group of people developed in together, then it would probably stay. It would become a dialect, and yes, eventually would be a barrier to communication. Consider Arabic, the different "dialects" essentially amount to different mutually unintelligible languages. That is the fate of all languages that exist long enough, they split. So in short, there are forces that prevent individuals from descending into their own little babble that nobody else can understand, but language change as a whole is completely unstoppable. Telling children to say "I" instead of "me" has about as much impact as telling them that they ought not to get any bigger because 4 feet is such a lovely height. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
