Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3507
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Thu May 20, 2021 3:37 pm

Cainntear wrote:I wasn't going to demand proof. Again, when I mentioned evidence before, it was because you were saying that what you said was objectively true and what I said was objectively false.

I'm actually quite surprised by that, though. As a professional historian, I would have expected you to understand that history is open to interpretation. History tells us correlation, but not causation, because there's no control experiment -- we can't say for sure things would have turned out significantly differently if one particular event hadn't happened. And as a professional economist, I would have expected you to understand about complex systems and emergent phenomena, rather than offhandedly poo-pooing the whole idea as "Woolworth's pick-and-mix".

Dear me. The thing is I'm not trying to work out various probabilities and suppositions or alternative histories, only describing two things: what is objectively the case right now; what research has shown as causal factors. Luckily the majority of this confirms the common-sense view of how English established itself. You may not want to hear it, but your view is a minority view not supported by any facts outside of obvious pockets of English take-up among individuals and groups feeding on English as an already-existing and established major language. There is no hiding behind the 'many points of view, all valid'.

Cainntear wrote:If English's strength comes through propaganda, one of the most powerful forms of pro-English propaganda came unintentionally from the eastern bloc authorities. By overemphasising the evils of America, they created a false dichotomy, and given that the regimes in communist countries were oppressive and authoritarian, in doing so they effectively presented the idea that America was the epitome of freedom and free expression. Not only did bootleg US recordings gain even more cachet than their legitimate counterparts in Western Europe, the act of learning the language became an expression of rebellion.

Aaleks has addressed this and I'd say that much more successful propaganda came from the West (particularly the US) than ever came out of the Soviet Union. There is going to be some evidence of people deliberately wanting to find out about and learn English through their own motivation, but you will have a very, very difficult time establishing this as a majority of individuals and the main motivation for English becoming global along the lines of some undirected 'free-market'.

Cainntear wrote:I suggest that the lifting of the iron curtain accelerated the uptake of English as a lingua franca, as the first eastern Europeans to break out into the wider world had pretty good English (by the standards of the time) and likely good German, but no knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian etc.

I can only echo Aaleks on this. It's a fairly astonishing suggestion. There's no doubt that English picked up speed leading up to the point of the opening of the USSR, but since only a minority had travelled - and not to English-speaking countries - I'd say the other languages like German and French had more currency. French in particular; have you never seen the long-existing fan base among Russians for old French music and TV? French has long been a major foreign language in Russia.

Cainntear wrote:Even within eastern European countries where Russian had served as the common language for decades, English quickly took over as lingua franca, not as a western imposition, but as a means of eliminating Russian.

Again I'm going to have to say this is largely irrelevant posited as a 'cause', because it is part of the momentum of something already in motion which is routinely maintained. You don't seem to be understanding the concept of 'soft power'. No doubt people began to associate English with the idea of 'western freedom' as talked about by Aaleks above, which turned out to be more of a disappointment. This itself flows from the promotion of 'western freedom' directly by western countries and natural curiosity.

Cainntear wrote:Now I'm not going to ask you to accept that I'm right, but I don't see how you can say I'm definitely wrong.

'Definitely wrong' is a classic black/white perspective and, I suspect, set up as an easy way to make me look rigid and ideological. I'd say rather that you are relying upon the piddling exceptions and putting these forward as a cohesive theory of the huge growth of English as some sort of massing of small contributions; without any deliberate political or economic decisions such as those carried out during the period of England's huge empire and the post-war successor empire of the U.S. It's a story of the language being impressed upon places and peoples' sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly as a means of maintaining administrative power in colonies, mostly through schooling in the colonist language. This caused the language to take root after a couple of centuries. Since then it has benefited by remaining as a lingua franca in decolonised countries where various groups have disputes over which native languages should take precedence .

Let us not pretend that maintaining and promoting English in Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and the Far East isn't beneficial for maintaining outsourced labour markets. At this point the work is being done by a lot of people themselves in order to be able to 'take part' in an English-dominated economy established through historical decree and deliberate decisions. It's now a self-perpetuating 'market' fed and maintained by foreign policy.

U.S. colonisation also has pre-WW2 origins, such as in the Philippines which they colonised and where they put in place schooling and administration in English only. This was likely a practical decision since there was no 'national' system or unified national language, but they didn't even attempt to go that route because they were economic colonists, not benevolent public servants aiming to broaden the cultural horizons of Filipinos.
After the war this is less directly the case. Such as in Japan, which was certainly nudged in a particular direction by the U.S. but where English is not as widely spoken as many other places.

I think this post is long enough.
Last edited by Le Baron on Thu May 20, 2021 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
4 x

User avatar
IronMike
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2554
Joined: Thu May 12, 2016 6:13 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Languages: Studying: Esperanto
Maintaining: nada
Tested:
BCS, 1+L/1+R (DLPT5, 2022)
Russian, 3/3 (DLPT5, 2022) 2+ (OPI, 2022)
German, 2L/1+R (DLPT5, 2021)
Italian, 1L/2R (DLPT IV, 2019)
Esperanto, C1 (KER skriba ekzameno, 2017)
Slovene, 2+L/3R (DLPT II in, yes, 1999)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
x 7265
Contact:

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby IronMike » Thu May 20, 2021 5:23 pm

Image
3 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3507
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 21, 2021 1:49 am

To shift tack just a little bit... I read this article earlier on the Actualités front page of France Culture:

https://www.franceculture.fr/sciences-d ... e-de-dante

I've seen a few of these about over the last few years and they usually come from a French point-of-view. Often they are a populist complaint, usually conservative. As in this article there is also a tension between what the younger generation - teenage to 30 - sees and what older people and some language professionals see. Some sections of the youth, as in this article, travel more and partake in the globalised-English culture. Others are not so immersed in this and experience it as often unnecessary language pollution. I see both sides.

Here in NL there has long been a discussion on different levels from different perspectives. English is heavily pushed here and has been installed into higher education - especially 'masters' courses which attract high numbers of fee-paying foreign students. You do however get the idiotic spectacle of native Dutch people pursuing courses in English in a country where the official language is not English. I once sat in a train where some students puzzled (out loud to show off) over the word 'appreciate' in the textbook they were reading in the sense of 'financial appreciation' . They were led astray by one student misinforming the rest about its usage. English-based neologisms abound here, some of them decades old. The bizarre adoption of the words 'shit' and 'f*ck' employed as, what people here seem to think are, quite 'mild' expletives such as 'oh bother!'. Not many people would use 'poep' in a polite interaction with e.g. a shopkeeper, but most people don't think twice about saying 'shit!' if they drop their bank card while paying.

I was embarrassed when my ex-girlfriend took me to her mother's for dinner and proceeded to use the word 'f*cking' repeatedly in the same sense you might use 'damn/damned'. This is what happens when words are adopted in a confused, out-of-context manner where the meaning doesn't have the same tangible meaning as it does for those who natively speak the language they come from.

In the linked article there is mention of how so much global culture lexicon is English; which is not so surprising, but it does point to the domination. And before anyone brushes this off as trivial it is worthwhile remembering that language does actually influence thought patterns. It also affects the ability for equal participation. In mixed company I've had the great advantage of everyone defaulting to English so that I can dominate a discussion as some people scrabble for vocabulary and ways of expressing themselves, whereas they may well match or demolish me in the language in which they have total mastery. It gives you the whip-hand. I've met a lot of foreign English-speakers in my time, but I can count on one hand the ones who can really hold their own against a confident native speaker. It's okay when it's non-native among other non-natives because that can be either perfectly functional at that level or it's like the blind leading the blind.

The global language problem didn't disappear with 'global English'.
2 x

User avatar
basica
Orange Belt
Posts: 221
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 12:07 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Serbian (A2ish)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... hp?&t=7335
x 412

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby basica » Thu May 27, 2021 8:14 am

Kraut wrote:Global communication specialist Heather Hansen tells us that's because the native speaker doesn't know how to do what non-native speakers do naturally: Speak in ways that are accessible to everyone, using simple words and phrases.


This is a problem almost all native speakers have. You try speak any language with a native, and no matter how broken it is a lot of people will not think of being more accomodating in their speech. I experienced it all the time in Japan and Korea, likewise with relatives who spoke Serbian and knew that I barely spoke it. It's unfair to paint English speakers with this brush, as in my experience more often than not English speakers find it easier to be accomodating, even if it's still fairly common.

On that note, I have a friend who I think is a bit pretentious at times and can't help but try to show off his vocabulary, even when it doesn't make sense to do so. For example, recently he was talking about making a soup and instead of simply saying he needed to every once in a while add a bit of water, said something to the effect of "I needed to intermittently add fluids to the soup". When asked what kinds of fluids, he said "oh, well, just water really".

This is something I think we all need to practice, not only with non-native speakers, but also with people outside of our fields of interest/work. How I talk about my job to another technical person is vastly different than how I talk about it to someone who isn't. If it makes sense that we need to adjust based on familiarity of a topic, language ability should also be kinda obvious. That said, considering my mum's English is B2ish maybe, I've grown up knowing how to adjust my vocabulary accordingly rather easy, so perhaps I shouldn't be so judgemental of those without that experience..

Le Baron wrote:Not many people would use 'poep' in a polite interaction with e.g. a shopkeeper, but most people don't think twice about saying 'shit!' if they drop their bank card while paying.


I think this really depends on the person and their background as well. I'm sure some people here might hesitate to say shit or fuck in a public setting (more likely fuck than shit to be honest) but I grew up in a "rough" environment where swearing was the norm and I most definitely will say shit or fuck or even cunt if I drop something or bump into something or hurt myself even if it's in public. When I moved from a lower class background to a middle to upper class one, I had to learn to adjust my speech around coworkers and neighbours and it was kinda rough lol. You go to where I grew up and no one will bat an eye with two people having a conversation beside an ATM going like this "This fucking machine sucks. Who're the cunts that service it? Every bloody time I come here this cunted thing is out of service or doesn't have the right notes to give me the money I need". You do that in my current neighbourhood and people will clutch their pearls almost immediately.
1 x
Glossika Fluency 1: 16 / 104

Learning or already speak Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian? Join us here! :)

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3507
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Thu May 27, 2021 9:06 am

basica wrote:
Le Baron wrote:Not many people would use 'poep' in a polite interaction with e.g. a shopkeeper, but most people don't think twice about saying 'shit!' if they drop their bank card while paying.


I think this really depends on the person and their background as well. I'm sure some people here might hesitate to say shit or fuck in a public setting (more likely fuck than shit to be honest) but I grew up in a "rough" environment where swearing was the norm and I most definitely will say shit or fuck or even cunt if I drop something or bump into something or hurt myself even if it's in public. When I moved from a lower class background to a middle to upper class one, I had to learn to adjust my speech around coworkers and neighbours and it was kinda rough lol. You go to where I grew up and no one will bat an eye with two people having a conversation beside an ATM going like this "This fucking machine sucks. Who're the cunts that service it? Every bloody time I come here this cunted thing is out of service or doesn't have the right notes to give me the money I need". You do that in my current neighbourhood and people will clutch their pearls almost immediately.


It's not quite the same. I'm also from a rough background and I'd expect swearwords to turn up, but also among people trying to watch their Ps and Qs. These are in the language spoken there. I would be surprised though if the people of Britain adopted low-rent and offensive words from e.g. Japanese and proceeded to use them as mild expletives in polite company. This is what has happened in NL. This is nice middle-class mothers and their young children using these words!
2 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: s_allard and 2 guests