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Natives mistakes in their own languages | ||
Tags: Error | Native Speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cntrational Triglot Groupie India Joined 4927 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Telugu, English* Studies: French | Message 25 of 65 20 April 2011 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Having a standard language is fine, nobody has a problem with that. What we take issue with is the idea that the standard language is "correct" and everything else is "wrong".
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Edited by cntrational on 20 April 2011 at 8:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 4886 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 26 of 65 20 April 2011 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks cntrational. My specific knowledge of Arabic is pretty limited, so I didn't want to make too bold of a statement without being able to back it up. I appreciate the heads up.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5811 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 27 of 65 20 April 2011 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's overstating the descriptivist case. I believe that teaching requires a standard form -- of course it does. I just think that the standard form should be a statistical norm, not an arbitrary one. Some deviation from the norm has to be acceptable -- very few dialectal forms are different enough from the standard to cause problems in comprehension.
And in fact that's quite correct -- but the problem here isn't deviation from the published "rules", it's just poor composition. A little anecdote. A conservative UK newspaper carried an editorial complaining about the decline in English grammar skills, which included a list of "common errors". The editor of one of the liberal newspapers then went through that very same issue and counted up the "errors" and the "correct" forms. The "errors" outnumbered the "correct" forms. How did these get past the editor (who, after all, has final approval on all stories)? Quite simply because they were not a barrier to comprehension. The articles were written by professional journalists, well trained in prose composition. Teaching "correct English" to native speakers usually comes at a cost to things that genuinely matter and therefore results in worse writing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5811 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 28 of 65 20 April 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
In this case I'm not so sure. I still use "well" to mean the opposite of sick/ill/unwell, and that's why I don't use it in response to "how are you?" Why would anyone expect me to be ill? There's plenty of negative conditions that aren't ill and that are more likely -- tired, busy etc. I want to deny all of them, so I answer "not bad". I don't say "not ill". 3 persons have 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 29 of 65 20 April 2011 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Cainntear says it better than me, but I want to speak for myself in answer to this. I might just as well say "It doesn't matter what I say; it's all incorrect" as "it's all correct". What I was trying (and failing miserably) to do by objecting to the words "correct" and "incorrect" was to object to the notion of universal standards for a language. The point I am trying to make is that the standards we adhere to ad dependent on the situation. I can't say whatever I want and expect to be understood. I need to adapt my speech to the listener or writing to the reader. If my audience is someone I don't know very well or if it's a large group of people, I will have to use forms that are statistically probable to be understandable (and not draw focus from my message) to a varied number of people. And if I'm just starting out learning, it makes sense to start with these statistically understandable and, as you say, neutral usages. This does not mean that these widely understood forms are more correct than other forms. And often I can use forms that will alienate a portion of my audience, but not all, and the decision of whether or not to use these forms is mine. There are no moral implications of this decision. I might want to use a certain form that will detract some attention from my message, just because I like that usage. There is no moral reason why I should stick to someone else's standards. However, I must naturally take responisibility for the consequences if I choose not to. And if you really grok the language you can make a more informed decision. So we study the language in order to be able to make that informed decision. Edited by Ari on 20 April 2011 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5098 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 30 of 65 21 April 2011 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe another aspect:
When we act, speak in our usual environment, we are less likely to make errors. (Of course we make errors all the time due the our limited capacities, the mouth is often faster than the brain, but this is trivial, in most cases we can correct these errors almost at once, we are bad performers but know our own standard.) When we try to adapt to another environment, one we are less familiar with, things are different. People who are not very well trained in the more formal, generally accepted standards of their language, and there are many of them, find it difficult to write and speak when they are forced, or think they are forced, to use a more general, formal language, maybe when posting on a forum. They try, they want to, but they are not able to use it the way they(!) want. Now from what I read here most people would say: No problem, he is using his private idiolect, which can by definition not be a bad thing. Does such a statement justice to the intentions of the failing writer, who would certainly rather use a flawless language? Would he himself say that he does not make errors? Is his only problem that he has never heard about the wonderful egalitarian theories of descriptive linguistics? Does a more competent language user commit social discrimination by noticing the errors in a speech act that was meant to aim higher? The thing works the other way round, too. When the professor who teaches English literature wants to socialise with some "normal" people and is not able to adjust his language to a less formal usage: Won't he be painfully aware that all his studies have not enabled him to have a simple conversation with some normal, less educated people? We would be less prone to call his failing a consequence of errors, but the matter is not different than in the case above. Both fail, may feel miserable, and only more competence can make them happier beings. 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 31 of 65 21 April 2011 at 6:22am | IP Logged | |||||
Hm. I doubt that most people here would say that. Heck, I doubt anyone here would say that, but I may be wrong. I certainly wouldn't say it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mrs. Dalloway Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 4769 days ago 70 posts - 95 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: GermanA2, French, Danish | Message 32 of 65 21 April 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you're focusing too much on these aspects seen from the English-speaking point of view. English is the most flexible of languages I've ever heard of, which allows its speakers to render their thoughts in a multitude of ways, grammatically correct or incorrect, but still comprehensible. We shouldn't even be speaking about that, it is so obvious. It seems to me that you're all going around in circles, basically only aggreing with each other on the necessity of adaption to different situations. And now we're slowly slipping into the "foreign" mistakes topic.
I think this topic would be more valid and less academic, if we would just speak of our other target languages, which have all a more fixed grammatic, since they're less widely spoken and don't suffer the foreign influences or adaptions. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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