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

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

Postby tiia » Sun May 09, 2021 9:43 am

Le Baron wrote:And yet when native English speakers actually do go the route of "speaking in ways that are accessible to everyone, using simple words and phrases", they're portrayed as 'talking loudly and simplifying as though non-English people are idiots.'

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.


I think mokibao has a quite important point here:

mokibao wrote:
Also, words like holistic don't stump people, because fancy words tend to be cognates. (Holistic, as it turns out, is olistico in Italian, holístico in Spanish... you get the idea.) The real difficulty lies in very idiomatic expressions (such as you hit it out of the park indeed), slang patterns, regionalisms, and above all locutions whose meaning is completely different from that of its constituent words: see off, draw back, make out, and so on. Non-native speakers aren't adept at using them and will avoid them in favor of equivalent words that don't follow this confusing pattern.


When natives "dumb down" their speech they often do not know how to to this correctly. They may even make it more complicaed for a foreigner. This is a problem not only English natives are facing.
Natives may not explain words that are easy for children. However, the same words may be unknown to foreigners. On the other hand natives may consider latin-based ("fancy") words as complicated, while those are usually easy to understand for adult non-natives.
By choosing more words suitable for children, the speech may be more difficult to understand for a non-native. So if you adjust your language, always keep in mind whom you are talking to.

When I think about German speaking foreigners, an example would be that they overuse words like "studieren" and "praktizieren" (study and practise). Most of the times a native would use "lernen" and "üben", words with germanic roots, instead of "studieren" and "praktizieren". Children however, barely use "studieren" or "praktizieren" at all. (Note that the German "studieren" refers almost exclusively to studies at a university or similar institution, so oftentimes it is not the right translation for the English word "to study".)

Another aspect is, that one does not have to speak louder, but articulate the words more clearly. (The foreigners are most likely not deaf.) Background noise is more disturbing for foreigners, so then you may indeed have to raise your voice a bit, because they cannot fill in gaps so well. When speaking to a foreigner it can help to actually speak into their direction and complete your sentences.
From my own experience I can say that walking in front of native speakers made it easier to follow their conversation than walking behind them. Just because it meant they were talking into my direction.
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby tractor » Sun May 09, 2021 10:19 am

Cainntear wrote:Asking a few people to enunciate their Ts and stop making baseball metaphors is a lot more straightforward than demanding a few dozen take on full-time English classes for a year or two, surely?

Do Brits understand baseball metaphors?
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby gsbod » Sun May 09, 2021 11:17 am

tractor wrote:Do Brits understand baseball metaphors?


I'm not good with sports metaphors in general, apart from the obvious ones. I once had a boss who favoured cricket metaphors, which I would occasionally have to get colleagues to translate...
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 09, 2021 11:42 am

tiia wrote:When natives "dumb down" their speech they often do not know how to to this correctly. They may even make it more complicaed for a foreigner. This is a problem not only English natives are facing.
Natives may not explain words that are easy for children. However, the same words may be unknown to foreigners. On the other hand natives may consider latin-based ("fancy") words as complicated, while those are usually easy to understand for adult non-natives.
By choosing more words suitable for children, the speech may be more difficult to understand for a non-native. So if you adjust your language, always keep in mind whom you are talking to.

I'm not sure what 'correctly' can ever mean because different people understand different things and it would be about gauging how competent you think the individual person is, which isn't easy. Not everyone is going to do that. Some of it would be not altering your way of speaking at all, since the aim of the learner is to understand how natives speak most of the time. True though about the assumption surrounding Latin-based words, but I find this is more of a problem for people coming from/to fully Germanic-based languages. For example a friend of mine initially raised in France had to learn Dutch at school at a later age. When they started on English he was plodding through the early Germanic base and then started flying easily through the so-called 'difficult' words which are cognate with French, whereas Dutch natives had much more trouble. I've seen that in e.g. graded reading material for Dutch learners of French at school, the words they choose to put in the supplementary explanatory vocabularies (in a little additional booklet or the back of the book) are not words that would much trouble an English speaker from secondary school onwards.

tiia wrote:When I think about German speaking foreigners, an example would be that they overuse words like "studieren" and "praktizieren" (study and practise). Most of the times a native would use "lernen" and "üben", words with germanic roots, instead of "studieren" and "praktizieren". Children however, barely use "studieren" or "praktizieren" at all. (Note that the German "studieren" refers almost exclusively to studies at a university or similar institution, so oftentimes it is not the right translation for the English word "to study".)

Yes this is a always a problem. Choosing vocabulary more familiar to words you already know. I still do this in Dutch even after many years. It always gives you away as a foreigner. Some language courses (generally the more informal ones online) go this route to ease you into the language, but in the long run you develop a habit of using those words rather than using the more common vocabulary.

tiia wrote:Another aspect is, that one does not have to speak louder, but articulate the words more clearly. (The foreigners are most likely not deaf.) Background noise is more disturbing for foreigners, so then you may indeed have to raise your voice a bit, because they cannot fill in gaps so well. When speaking to a foreigner it can help to actually speak into their direction and complete your sentences.
From my own experience I can say that walking in front of native speakers made it easier to follow their conversation than walking behind them. Just because it meant they were talking into my direction.

I think the speaking louder thing is largely a stereotype of a once common reaction which has now generally subsided. You see it from time-to-time (I saw a Dutch couple doing it with two older Germans looking for het Centraal Museum), but it's much less common. Completing sentences is indeed crucial, at least when you're talking to someone with whom you're less familiar.
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby rdearman » Sun May 09, 2021 12:13 pm

gsbod wrote:
tractor wrote:Do Brits understand baseball metaphors?


I'm not good with sports metaphors in general, apart from the obvious ones. I once had a boss who favoured cricket metaphors, which I would occasionally have to get colleagues to translate...

I hate sports metaphors at work. (I hate sports generally, although I did once go to a fight and a hockey game broke out.)

One particularly enthusiastic CFO used to get on my nerves with this sports rubbish, and he loved golf. One day while he was droning, on yet, again about golf I asked him if golf pitches rented golf bats or if you had to bring your own. After much laughter it became a thing and the entire management team took great pleasure in talking about "golf bats" every time he started up for the next month or two. Eventually he stopped talking about golf completely.
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 09, 2021 1:05 pm

If our U.S. friends will forgive me I find that Americans are much more prone to sports talk. You get football in the UK (with associated tiresome jargon and metaphors) and cricket has historically furnished English with metaphors (sticky wicket, bowled-out, a googly, outrun, batting for both teams...etc), but some of these are less used nowadays. As above I have very little interest in football - that's the one where you primarily use your foot to move the ball around, as opposed to the one where you wear a helmet and run around holding the ball; which clearly bears the wrong name. 8-)
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Cainntear » Sun May 09, 2021 3:46 pm

tractor wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Asking a few people to enunciate their Ts and stop making baseball metaphors is a lot more straightforward than demanding a few dozen take on full-time English classes for a year or two, surely?

Do Brits understand baseball metaphors?

Not really, but they're such a part of business jargon that many of them appear frequently anyway -- touch base, raincheck etc etc.
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Jinx » Sun May 09, 2021 11:17 pm

I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the concept of mutual conversational feedback, and adjusting your communication style based on said feedback. It's usually easy to tell if the person you're talking to is a little lost or if they're completely on your wavelength. Interjections, reactions, facial expressions, body language, etc. all make this pretty clear. Some people don't display these feedback indicators, of course. But in my experience, they're the minority.

Here are some things I do on a regular basis – and I tend to have pretty successful conversations with people of all different linguistic backgrounds.

- I have two close work friends who are Brits (I'm an American), and we're all language nerds. When we talk to each other, we unapologetically use our own regionalisms in conversation, because we know the others will either already understand them or enjoy learning them. I absolutely loved it, for example, when my friend from Devon mentioned that she was out at "dimpsey" and I had to ask her about that word. How charming!

- I live in Germany and speak mostly German at the office. I'm not 100% fluent. When a colleague says something I don't understand, I ask them to clarify. (Revolutionary, I know.)

- If I notice, in the process of getting to know a new friend in a language we both speak at a high level, that they are the linguistically-minded sort, enjoy playing with language, appear well-read, etc., I in turn make the decision to "let my freak flag fly" and set free all the wonkiness and richness of my inherent communication style so that we can enjoy it together.

- On the other hand, if I notice while talking to someone that they do not fall into the aforementioned category, for whatever reason – if they're not particularly interested in playing with language, or they're weaker in the language we're speaking, or they're less educated, or they're stressed or tired or rushed or annoyed and would clearly benefit from some unambiguous communication on my part – then that's exactly what I do my best to provide.

- I remember a conversation several years ago with a French acquaintance who wanted to practice his English with me. He was not strong in English. I noticed him missing some nuances in my speech, and looking a bit stressed about it, so I rapidly adjusted my communication style – I used a bit more body language and was more facially expressive (not in a patronizing way, just a vivacious way), and every time I said something that didn't seem to "land" right away, I quickly "talked around it" (e.g. "She really hit it out of the park! She did a fantastic job! We were all impressed"). After that conversation, he emailed me and told me that of all the native English speakers he'd ever spoken to, he found me the easiest to understand.

- I avoid doing that silly thing where you pretend you've understood something when you actually haven't. That doesn't benefit anyone. I imagine it usually comes from insecurity. I try to "set a good example" by openly speaking up and asking for clarification so that others will feel comfortable doing the same. In a comparatively multicultural social group, there will always be misunderstandings, and the best we can do is laugh it off and take it as an opportunity to learn something new.

In summary: knowing your "target audience" (do they crave linguistic creativity? or do they just want to stick to the facts?) and paying attention to the feedback they give you (are they delighted by your wordplay and responding in kind? or is their face a blank mask of nervous incomprehension?) makes a huge difference when it comes to effective communication, in any language.

EDIT: tiny editorial fixes.
Last edited by Jinx on Sun May 09, 2021 11:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Adrianslont » Sun May 09, 2021 11:19 pm

I stumbled upon this short video about Cate Blanchett, the Australian actress, and it seemed very relevant to the discussion.

It features native English speakers but different varieties of English, different levels of literacy, reference to native Australian animals and specialised professional vocabulary make it hard for people to understand Cate at times.



I didn’t know two of the words and made a correct guess at one and an incorrect guess at the other.

Cate and I are from the same hometown.

My biggest problem is how fast everyone speaks.

I’d love to know how well people here (both native and non-native English speakers) understand Cate (in this video).
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Re: Tower Of Babble: Non-Native Speakers Navigate The World Of 'Good' And 'Bad' English

Postby Jinx » Sun May 09, 2021 11:26 pm

Adrianslont wrote:I’d love to know how well people here (both native and non-native English speakers) understand Cate (in this video).

I understand all of her "special vocabulary", no problem. (Native speaker of American English here.)
But I'm a language professional – not to mention a language nerd ;) – and have known people who speak various varieties of English my whole life, so I may not be the average listener.

EDIT: After one more watch of the video, I have to correct myself: I actually didn't know one of the words: "quoll". I knew it was a type of Australian animal, but I was visualizing a quokka instead.
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