There are a myriad of ways of classifying all sorts of different ‘Englishes’. Since leaving the UK and moving to Spain, I think about this a lot more than ever before, and it strikes me that I’m dealing with three different kinds of English on almost a daily basis:
1. Native-Speaker Level English
2. International English
3. The kind of English only understood by non-native English speakers who share the same same native tongue.
Let’s start with number 1. Needless to say, not all native English speakers understand each other, and even if they do, they like to squabble over whose version is the ‘correct’ one. I quite relish these little disputes, and, as a non-native English speaker myself, I enjoy the privilege of picking and choosing what takes my fancy without being sneered at as a ‘traitor’ to my linguistic roots. For example, I’ve adopted “gotten” as the past tense of “get”. A Brit would rather take a swig of sulphuric acid than let that one pass his lips. For the most part, though, I stick to British English, ’cause that’s what I know.
As for International English, it is arguably THE tool of global communication. But oh, it’s insipid, bloodless, without zest, stripped of all cultural context and regional idiosyncrasies, which make communication rich, satisfying, stimulating and amusing. International English is like a corpse that you revive to perform a particular task, and while its heart is beating and its lungs are pumping, it has no soul.
The third category is one that all adult learners of English (or any other second language!) inevitably pass through. They start using English by bending it to the pattern of their own native language, and while a Spanish-speaking person’s beginner’s level ‘English’ will easily be understood by a fellow Spanish speaker, an American or a Korean will sometimes be at a loss. Two English learners of the same nationality conversing can be a bit like infant twins babbling to one another in their own secret language – they ‘get’ each other, but their jabberings are largely unintelligible to outsiders.
There are two obvious reasons why this happens: First of all, there is the issue of accent. Spanish, for example, only has five vowel sounds, while English has more than twenty. For a Spanish speaker, it is extremely difficult to hear these subtle differences, never mind reproduce them accurately. So, they will pronounce the words “sheet” & “shit” and “low” & “law” exactly the same. Most often than not, the meaning will be clear from the context, but often it won’t be, especially if you’re not used to listening to a particular accent, or if there is not enough accompanying context.
The second hurdle to outsider intelligibility results from the translation process. Especially in the early stages of language learning, people directly translate what they want to say, often word for word, from their native into the target language. It’s the raw “Google Translate” mode, which yields famously unpredictable results. Just a few days ago, I had this email response from a potential new language exchange candidate:
“Ok, but I go few to Toledo. If I go, I tell you. At any rate, if you don’t come bad and you want, we can talk by the computer”
If I don’t come bad?! If you happen to speak Spanish, you’ll understand exactly where he’s coming from. The Spanish expression “Si te viene bien”, which, if you translate it directly into English, results in a non-sensical “if it comes you good”. But it actually means “if it suits you”. He’s used it in the negative here (that wouldn’t work in English anyway), which is akin to an informal version of “if it’s not too inconvenient for you”.
I know that a lot of the people who read this blog are either EFL teachers, or avid foreign language learners, or both. I’m hoping for some amusing anecdotes in the comments 🙂
You may also be interested in my specialist language blog, see here: http://multilingualbychoice.blogspot.com
Oh yes, I am very familiar with the Third Kind. I get to enjoy it around my office, which is all Russians but most of them fluent or at least proficient in English (and they were all such sweethearts when I started working there, they’d all speak English to me even tho my Russian comprehension was near-perfect). I can’t think of the more colorful examples on the spot, but recently the Russian anti-gay law has been in the spotlight, so we discuss it a lot, and my colleagues would refer to someone as ‘a gay’. ‘Oh, is he a gay?’ It’s such a small nuance – ‘homosexual’ can be an adjective or a noun, but ‘gay’ is used almost always as an adjective in this context. It is particularly baffling to me, because Russian doesn’t employ articles, so it is more common than not for a Russian person to drop them altogether when speaking English (‘This is car’).
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He’s a gay! Ahhhh! Where did Russians pick this up?! They ALL do it.
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I gathered as much when more than one person said it. But it almost makes sense, like you can say A lesbian, A homosexual, A heterosexual. English can be confusing…it reminds me of my days learning it….
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It’s a Slavic thing… they have no intuitive understanding of which articles are required where, so they just pepper them at random. It’s not just the Russians.
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Yes, the article problem is definitely true, but “a gay” is a bizarre phenomenon that I hear fro even my really advanced students. Just one of those strange phrases that they can’t get rid of. I think each culture has that — I’m sure there’s something strange that most English-speakers say in Russian, Spanish, etc.
The joy of being awkward in a foreign language!
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Yes, it’s a tricky one, that, especially as putting an article there gives it a negative connotation, like “a” black.
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Re. Anna’s comment, why “a” homosexual and not “a” gay – because gay is an adjective and has never been a noun.
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Yup, and in Russian “гей” (gay) is a noun. Oh, linguistic fun!
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Now there’s a nice lesson for you to plan out for your students!
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Polly, in Russian a gay man is just “a gay”. It is a widely used Russian noun today, not a translated word ))
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I get the ‘a gay’ thing a lot as well! I’ve also had raper/rapper confused and don’t even get me started on phrasal verbs 😉 My Russian friend sent me a message the other day that she was ‘going to make an apple pay’ – oh how I chuckled 😉
Great article and congrats again on the Freshly Pressed honour!
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I. Am. Now. Officially. Swamped. You’ll get a more sensible reply in a couple of days 😉
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Btw, I have conflicted feelings re: (1). English spoken by some Welsh, Scots, or even Aussies is down-right incomprehensible to many other native speakers. And that goes far beyond a few slang words and accents.
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I know, and I’ve made that concession. But their Englishes are rich in expressions, cultural context, they are vibrant.
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We had a funny debate about near-sighted vs. short sighted and how we couldn’t use the latter in a report for an English speaking audience in a paper about glasses!
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I am SO embarrassed because for about 1.5 seconds I went, wait, why not?
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I know, it was a funny catch!
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LOL! I guess it has those two meanings, one of which has a negative connotation 😉
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Maybe being dense here, but I’m English, and I’d say short-sighted… ? Near-sighted just sounds rather formal/awkward to me. It’s never occurred to me that short-sighted might be seen as inappropriate. Maybe more a US usage?
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That’s the trouble with International English – ‘short sighted’ has two connotations, which makes it too ambiguous, and has to be avoided. IE is PC to the extreme.
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When my mom was visiting someone thanked her for holding the door, her reply: ‘Please, please!’
Another Swiss friend said: ‘…if you receive my meaning’. Which I think is adorable, but may have something to do with that friend being adorable. Also any time a Spanish speaker says he has 35 years, I can’t help but smile goofily.
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A friend of mine once posted the 10 meanings of ‘bitte’ on FB – hilarious, and correct!
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There’s a fourth kind of English too… the kind where English is actually your native language, but you’ve lived abroad for so long you keep forgetting words or using direct translations of phrases from your adopted country that don’t actually exist in English…
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You’ve certainly got a point there 😉 I do that all the time!
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…and, of course, this happens when you’re continually exposed to 2 & 3 😉
I bet you’ve started to say things like… “I live here since six years” and “I stand up at 7.30 every morning ;-)”
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LOL, I’m not quite THAT bad yet 😉
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One of my most frequent pitfalls in Russian (still) is with the word ‘conversation’. Transliterated, it becomes (in Cyrillic) ‘conversaciya’ – which actually means ‘conversion’, like in currency conversion. Wanting to say “I had a conversation” I have literally translated it into “Ya imela conversaciyu,” which in Russian literally mean “I f*cked a conversion” (because contextually the verb ‘to have’ here takes on a crude sexual meaning).
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what a perversion, lol 😉
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And I don’t think it was good for either of us…
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It would be bad, at any rate! LOLOL!
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Hah! I just said this 4th type of English in my comment (now going back and reading all the comments). So very true! And I am so very guilty of it.
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I think this warrants a separate post 😉 Must go ruminate over it… It’s not like I haven’t got direct experience… my German has atrophied after nearly a quarter of a century of no longer living in Germany.
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That is a brilliant summary of the English language. I’m afraid I do hate “gotten” as much as you suggest. Another pet hate is “off of”.
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Aw, off of… I do hate that! I remember proofing a book once for an American publisher and correcting it all the way through, lol.
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I am so glad to see that even native speakers start to forget their language. I used to be almost fluent in Russian but after 30 years of not using it I can barely put a sentence together.I don’t feel quite so bad now.
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Talk to Anna! 😉
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Ha! I am Russian borne and bred, and yet when I moved back to Moscow after 15 yrs in the US, I would be mum as a fish when people spoke to me. My Russian-speaking brain simply shut off, and I am just (after nearly 2 years back) getting back to the point of constructing grammatically correct sentences. But when I have to email the execs in my office, I still ask one of my junior associates to put together the letter in Russian, based on my Eng instructions.
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I”m finding it impossible to have a conversation in German, at a professional/tech level, and not sound totally inept!
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Lovely…this is one of my favorite topics when I begin my ESL conversations courses. You’ve expounded it very well indeed! May borrow some of your points when class begins next September! 😉
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Plagiarise at will 🙂
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Plagerise never!!!! I’ll quote you liberally!
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I don’t care – I’m not precious! 😉
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Of course you are…I Bastet say so 😉
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…OK…maybe just a bit ‘special’… in the worst sense of the word! LOL.
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Silly ladyof the cakes! LOL!
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*Takes a swig of sulphuric acid* I’m still living in the UK and my English is deteriorating! I find that the English part of my brain shuts down from time to time in a mischievous plot to make me look like an idiot. I genuinely worry when a Chinese word enters my head before its English equivalent! French or Italian I could understand, but Chinese?!
I think I sometimes do a reverse version of the third kind of English, swapping English grammar for French, simply because I prefer it!
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And it’s only going to get worse….!
Ta for the reblog 🙂
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I feared that might be the case! No problem 🙂
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Reblogged this on The Polyglut and commented:
A great post about the different varieties of English that one might encounter.
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LOL! Loved this post! I am somewhere between 2 and 3 and I still remember the despair of a BBC colleague just arrived from London who couldn’t get a word of what other people were saying in English. It’s also true, for example, that I understand very well Latin natives (i.e. French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) when they speak English (since I can understand what they’re translating in their head) while true English native speakers often won’t.
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Yes, it certainly adds a fascinating dimension when you know what goes on in their heads… you can virtually see the cogs turning, only to churn out “sheet”, lol.
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Haha the ‘if you don’t come bad’ bit is hilarious! We have the same expression in Italian but I couldn’t work out what the person was trying to say until I read your explanation. Great post, anyway 🙂
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You do come across some funny things…and my cock-ups are legendary, so I give as good as I get!
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The woman who lives across the hall from me is French. She came to the US about thirty years ago. She speaks fluent English — i think. I can’t understand a word she says. She chatters on and I nod politely, but I have no idea what she’s saying. When she laughs, I laugh too. 🙂
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Maybe she speaks British English 😉
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Ha!
When she gets mad, there’s no hope of understanding her!
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Probably for the best 😉
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My Portuguese friends have difficulty distinguishing shits, shirts and sheets.
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Yup, it’s a tough one. Just tell them to remember that it’s always a bad idea to do the first to the second and the third.
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it’s so true…every region/country has it’s own version of English, be it Spain or India – each of them have adapted to English in their manner – some out of convenience and some due to need.
congratulations on being freshly pressed.
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I love the variety 🙂 Thanks!
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I understand because of my father-in-law. He spoke six languages and traveled extensively in South America, Central America and the islands. He not only spoke Spanish but different dialogues. He would be the first to agree with you. A lot of people do not realize the translation in the head that people who speak other languages do. When you get into regional considerations it is even more complicated. I appreciate your blog. I ran into a language situation in the Dominican Republic and wrote a small blog on it. I would love you to read it and let me know what you think of the situation that occurred. Sincerely, Barry Wax
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Thanks for your comment, Barry! Once you speak a language really well, the ‘translating in the head’ stops, and it’s just like a chip coming online. Of course, when you’re translating from one to the other between two people (like an interpreter does), the process is different again, and you can’t really do it well unless you’ve had training and/or a lot of experience. It’s fascinating! Will dip into your blog once the Freshly Pressed deluge has subsided a bit 😉
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In terms of richness and amusement, a lot depens on whether there’s an interesting thought inside what’s being said, not necessarily on the regional idiosyncrasies ) At least, in my experience )
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Generally, I agree with you, but you can also have fun with silly stuff, and hilarious wordplays 😉
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I enjoy peppering other languages through my English. I like to think of it as adding an exotic spice to the mundane. Native English speaker, lived in Italy. Hence, my boss is a real stronzo (shit) or you’re barking up the wrong albero (tree). I think my friends appreciate it 🙂
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Oh, I love to mix and match 🙂 There’s so many words and concepts that just don’t translate.
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I’m a native English speaker living in Israel and do the same thing. Israelis generally love it. I’m sure they’d agree about the translation thing. I’m learning Hebrew and sometimes translate direct from English with disastrous consequences! Fortunately, Israelis respond well and it’s generally a good ice breaker!
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Yup, I think a good dose of humour is needed on both sides. I get frustrated with all the mistakes I’m still making in Spanish, but I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel 😉
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I’m inexplicably reminded of how I realized that many regional accents in English are actually foreign language accents that turned into regional version of English over time. Welsh English is like that. I couldn’t have done a Welsh accent if you held a gun to my head … until I started speaking it. Then, I’d babble on in Welsh, slip in the occasional (American) English word like “freeway” or “supermarket” … and it hit me that they were coming out with an absolutely textbook Welsh accent.
You know what’s fun, too? Reading written blogs by Deaf ASL users. Man, they use English words in ways I’ve never imagined TRU-BIZ NO? TRAIN GO SORRY …
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Sounds like pidgin English, i.e. like the version that was invented a few hundred years ago to ease trade between the English and the Chinese. That gave rise to expressions like “no go zone” and “long time no see”, which are very much in common usage now. They are direct translations from Mandarin. I love English 🙂
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I’m waiting to figure out what is international English. From a CBC (Canadian-born Chinese. CBC is also acronym for a very Canadian institution: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a partially govn’t funded Canadian national media network –tv, radio, internet and documentary). So is that really non-English language. I don’t think so..it’s a Canadianism…and understood if you are a) Chinese b) born in Canada and for the most part Canadian in style, behaviour and language.
And there is the U.S. equivalent pun: ABC, American born Chinese (also U.S. national media network).
Thank you..language establishes birthright and nationalism.
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Acronyms are yet another kettle of fish – they mean different things to different people. It’s also like this with a lot of ‘jargon’ vocabulary, which is only understood e.g. by people working in a specific field.
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I’m American, have spoken English all my life, and I ain’t got it right yet!! But that’s for the post.
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It’s a life time project 🙂
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Pingback: Freshly Riffed 46: They Just Have To Go, ‘Cause They Don’t Know Wack | A VERY STRANGE PLACE
That’s so true, I sometimes can’t pronounce “sheet” correctly, the other one should be very perfectly… 😛 , or “everything” may become “eferyfing”… I should be categorised in group 4!?
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I think there’s a certain margin for ‘fluidity’ between the categories, depending on the time of day and who we’re with 😉 You can be wherever you like!
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Love this article, thanks! I am french who live in New Zealand; I speak pretty good english but when it comes to a certain kind of english expressions, I feel lost and stupid cause everyone around me is looking at me as if I had just spoken chinese !!! Definitely 3rd group then ! It is a matter of time to reach the 2nd one 😉 !!!
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It takes a while, but it’s totally possible to get to number 1! Keep going, and enjoy that beautiful country you’re in 😉
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Pingback: Very good article. The Three Types Of English (According To Me) | crummer road
I’m curious to know how would you define international English? I’m not certain there is something like that. To me, it seems that either one is a native English speaker or English is your second language (having learnt it from childhood in additional to your mother tongue) and is influenced by your culture/nationality.
And, congratulations on being freshly pressed!
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I don’t think there is an official definition as such. I’d say that, for example, all documents published in English by organisations like the EU, WHO, NATO, etc, are in International English (although the EU will use British English). It’s a kind of language that’s meant for communication, so that everybody, even those speaking little English, can understand.
I’m not a native speaker, but I spent half my life in the UK, so I use their expressions, sayings, vocab, cultural references. When I speak English to a Brit in the presence of one of my Spanish friends, they usually don’t understand much of what we talk about, even though they speak English. For the Spanish friend, I have to switch to ‘International English’.
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The key point, which I missed out: International English is devoid of colloquial language/expressions.
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Aha…so it’s sanitized version then:-)
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Yup. Bland!
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While writing in English, I was sure my thoughts will reach all English speaking people and thus will become the global. After reading you, the doubt indwell me. It may be I am the one, who understand my writings – in other words, my writing is the talking with a wall… because my native language is Lithuanian and I know English only via the dictionary. Is there anybody who could scatter my doubts – bring the clearness on what my English look like? Thank you.
http://arthiker.wordpress.com/
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Hi there, and thanks for your comment! I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. You may not win the Pulitzer quite this year, but if your goal is to be understood by a global (English-speaking) audience, I think you’ve pretty much nailed it 😉 Keep it up!
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1- We have an Argentine friend who has lived in the States for a while now, but is still learning the nuance and slang of everyday language. Teaching him new terms is definitely a joy, as he often uses them in unexpected ways. A very fun, but definitely NOT kid or work friendly, game is Cards Against Humanity, a very racy and slang filled version of Apples to Apples. It’s one level of funny for all native speakers, but a whole different level when you have to explain many of the terms.
2- I coached lacrosse and basketball in England for a while, and quickly learned how the jargon and language of sport does not carry over very well. The one that I learned not to use very quickly was ‘shag your ball,’ which means if you miss a shot you have to go and collect your own ball. It never failed to cause about 2 minutes of uncontrolled giggling. ‘Hustle,’ a very common phrase in the US to run and move faster, doesn’t really translate either.
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I didn’t realise hustle had that connotation, thanks for adding to my jargon banks 😉
I’m bogged down with learning Peninsular Spanish slang, which is, of course totally different from Latin American Spanish slang, which, again, varies hugely from country to country. The whole process frustrates and delights me in equal measures.
Thanks very much for commenting!
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I understand where you were trying to go but statements such as:
“For example, I’ve adopted “gotten” as the past tense of “get”. A Brit would rather take a swig of sulphuric acid than let that one pass his lips. For the most part, though, I stick to British English, ’cause that’s what I know.”
Are far too narrow to make this entirely credible in my honest opinion. What manner of “Brit” are you talking about and what manner of “English” are you referring to? Because there is no standardised use of English in Britain at all. We don’t all sound the same. Having said that, I understand you are speaking lightheartedly. 🙂
I enjoyed nevertheless.
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I agree with you, and it’s the diversity of British English that I enjoy 😉
And no, I wasn’t aiming for a watertight analysis here – there are numerous holes in my rationale, I’d be the first to admit that. Just a bit of fun mixed with my observations.
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There is NO SUCH THING as BRITISH ENGLISH! LoooooL. No such thing at all. You write beautifully. I love the humour.
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We can argue the toss about that as soon as this blog stops getting 200 hits an hour 😉
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Your blog hits have what bearing on there being no such thing as “British English” … Take the “write beautifully” compliment and leave the misplaced insouciance alone hunny lest your piece suffers for it. Content is king!
Have a beautiful day.
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Man, I meant that tongue-in-cheek-ish…! I’m a tad overwhelmed right now and finding it hard to respond properly to a hundred times the volume of comments I normally get, that’s all.
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I know. looool. Enjoy. xxxxxx
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Reblogged this on ENGLISH LANGUAGE REVIEW .
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Funny! Have you seen the photo of a Spanish menu that is rounding on facebook?
It says:
Vino en botella – She came in a bottle
LOL
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Nope, not spotted that yet… only a matter of time, some take a bit longer 😉
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We can argue the toss about that as soon as the blog stops getting 200 hits an hour 😉
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In going from a native language to a target language, learners stair-step through stages that the renowned linguist Larry Selinker termed “Interlanguage”. Two learners who speak the same native language understand each other because they they share a common interlanguage.
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Ooooh, somebody’s just made up a fancy word for it 😉
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I was told when I moved to Florida from Illinois, that I have a , “Anchorman Accent”. Who knew that when you went to ‘anchorman school’, that they teach you to speak with a Midwestern accent, as someone has deemed the Midwestern accent to be the easiest to understand in the U.S.
Interesting read & congrats on getting pressed!!
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I’d never heard of that about the Midwestern accent! The stuff you learn with this blogging malarkey… 🙂
Thanks for joining in!
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I’m from the United States but I’ve lived in Ecuador for a while. My boyfriend is Ecuadorian and we speak in sort of a mixture of English and Spanish at home (we both speak both languages fluently). We recently visited my family in the states and I found them staring at us during some of our conversations because he would be speaking to me in Spanish and I’d respond in English, or vice versa. We do it without thinking and never realized how much we did it until my family was around to point it out.
Also, Ecuador has some of the craziest slang and the strangest grammatical constructions. A lot of the modern Ecuadorian slang comes from the influence of Quichua, the language spoken by the indigenous people. For example, “chuchaqui” is “reseca,” “llucho” is “desnudo,” and “guagua” is “niño.”
It’s been super interesting to me to learn Ecuadorian Spanish, versus the Spanish I grew up learning in a textbook. It’s completely different.
Anyway, a little off topic, but I find this stuff so interesting it usually gets me going off on some tangent haha 🙂
Congrats on getting freshly pressed!
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I love tangents! In fact, I’m the mother of all tangents!
I don’t know who actually speaks textbook Spanish, they certainly don’t in Spain. It took me ages (months!) to be able to follow a conversation between Spanish people. They express themselves in a way that would be largely unacceptable in Latin America. No sentence here is complete without at least one of these words: culo, coño, joder. Yup.
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The common swear words from Spain are the best ones! My boyfriend’s mother lived in Spain about half of her life and says coño and joder quite a bit haha.
I consider myself fluent in Spanish but it’s still difficult for me to keep up with a conversation between Spanish people. I learned to speak Spanish here in Ecuador where they speak at a decently slow pace and the accent is easy to understand. Spanish in Spain is like a completely different language!
I really enjoyed your post, can’t wait for more!
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There are quite big differences, certainly, on a colloquial conversation level. We live and learn… 😉
I still have no end of trouble understanding my dentist and my accountant. But I think this entirely psychological, as the conversation is invariably followed by an enormous bill!
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Nice one, But I Hope I belong to first category but addicted to second category, Also I love to say that many situation brings 1st and 2nd category as same… Any dis-agrees…
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I agree – there is a lot of blurring between those categories.
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Yeah ofcourse, As you said…
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@ladyofthecakes Thanks for that
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🙂
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Over ten years ago a friend of mine in high school in Ethiopia said to me, “My expensive friend”. He meant “my dear friend”. He was translating from the Amharic expression for “dear”.
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LOL! Well, some friends can be quite expensive 😉
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I love your description of international English. That is exactly what I feel about it too. I can recognize one when I encounter it in books and on the radio. It is not very appealing especially for those of us who enjoy not only reading ideas but also how they are expressed. But I myself may be speaking and writing that variety of English as I am an EFL student.
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It serves a purpose, and we do need it. And unless you’ve lived in an English speaking country for a very long time, it’s hard to acquire a sufficient command of colloquial English, or the cultural reference points which shape the usage of English in any given English-speaking country.
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These are the main catgories indeed. We Dutch can make nice pronounciation mistakes as well, especially when there’s a b or a d at the end of a word. For instance web in Dutch just means web, but it’s pronounced ‘wep’. Bed = bed, but it’s pronounced ‘bet’, and Dutch tend to pronounce it like that in English too – without realising they are making a totally different word from it 😉
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Ah, yes, now that you’ve said that, I recognise it as a Dutch ‘problem’ 😉 The Spanish tend to cut off final consonants, so “bank” becomes “ban”, etc. I find that a bit annoying, as they are perfectly capable of pronouncing the “k” sound in “banco”, so it just seems like such a lazy thing to do!!!! If you’re struggling to produce a sound that doesn’t exist in your mother tongue, I understand that it may be really hard (or even impossible) to get it right.
Germans famously have problems with distinguishing between the English “w” and “v”, and then there’s the “th” thing as well.
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Yes, the “th” is horrid!
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The Spanish have no problem with this, because that’s pretty much how they pronounce the “d” at the end of a word.
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Congrats on being FP! What do you call it when a native English speaker modifies the way she speaks English to be better understood by locals who speak English as a second language?
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Dumbing it down!!!
I guess that would be a case for “International English” to the rescue 😉
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I am experiencing some of this in my English class at the moment. I am currently studying for the TOEFL test and am taking lessons with a native speaker from the US. Before this though, I haven’t been speaking English very much and now, when I try to have a conversation with my teacher I realize how my German speaking pattern is forcing itself into my English sentences. It’s quite annoying because I know it just doesn’t work like this and it makes me feel really awkward. ^_~
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Yes, it’s darn frustrating (I’m at this stage with my Spanish at the moment) but this awareness, i.e the fact that your poor diction irks you, is absolutely essential if you want to improve. Only if you keep the revision process going will you be able to break through to the next level, given sufficient exposure.
Once you stop minding that your English isn’t quite up to scratch, because, after all, ‘everybody understands you’, you’ve lost the game 😉
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You’re right, of course, just sometimes I care too much and become so frustrated that it’s not going forward either way. ^_~ Anyway, it helps that my teacher is very encouraging and patient. Also, I am trying to teach myself not to get upset when I get stuck in a conversation but to start over and to try to explain my point in a different way.
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You’ll get there. Give it time 🙂
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Thank you, I will certainly try. 🙂
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And then there’s Hinglish…. Spoken in India, consists of Hindi words used in English constructs, with English and Hindi words interspersed into to the same sentence.
I suspect that similar instances exist elsewhere in the world. Spanglish and Franglais for example.
Good read.
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Yes, and ‘patois’
Languages… never static, always changing, evolving, being messed around with 😉
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As someone who taught English in South Korea I can relate to all of this.The word that always made me crack up (inside my head of course) was the mispronunciation of beach (bitch). The stuff that always frustrated me was teaching idioms. It is difficult for non-English speakers not to translate it literally.
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Spanish speakers also have this bitch of a problem 😉
Many idioms are so tightly linked to culture, that they are impossible to explain. Very often, there’s a direct equivalent of an English idiom in German and Spanish, but I should imagine that this may not be the case in many Asian languages, as the cultural gap is so much greater.
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Reblogged this on Hyperactive Inefficiency.
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Love this post. 🙂
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Thank you 🙂
I shall try and think of some more gross generalisations for future posts 😉
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Ha please do. I’m moving to Italy in a few weeks to teach English and will love to see how the generalisations play out!
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Oh, great. I’m about to start teaching English, which will be a new thing for me, so there will be lots of head-banging about that.
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I can’t wait to read all about it! Don’t worry, I haven’t a clue what I’m doing…
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Makes two of us!
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I love it when non native English speaking friends of my kids (generally spanish) telephone the house and say “I am Elena, can I speak with ….” !!
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I’m not sure I get it… both “speak with” and “speak to” are valid…?
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I’m Portuguese, living in Belgium and doing my daily life in English, with a dash of the local language, which is Dutch, and among influences of mostly Italian but also Spanish, Galician, French, German… After a few years here I think I now speak an hybrid idiom.
Because my native language is Romance, there are many words in Germanic and Anglo-saxon language with the same roots in Latin or Greek. This makes it very tempting to just grab the word I know from my mother tongue and “Anglify” it… sometimes it’s correct, many times it isn’t. And most frequently it is correct but most people around me, who are not native English-speaking, don’t recognize the word because, despite being very common in Portuguese, its equivalent in English is either obsolete or a tad more erudite, or at least less approachable for non-natives. Examples: prevaricate, intercalate, susceptible, amalgamation, puerile, idoneous, irrisory… Earned a somewhat snotty reputation! 😉
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Yes, it’s really tempting to take a latin-based word you know in one language, use it another, and say something totally different to what you intended!
Another example is ‘molestar’, which means ‘to bother’ in Spanish, but in English…. totally different connotation!
Thanks for commenting 🙂
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I live and teach in Singapore, the only Asian country where the national language is English. We have a special blend of English here called “Singlish.” At first I hated it, but now I quite like it and actually use it all the time! My favorite is the use of the word “can.” You can use it in any situation where your response is in the affirmative. If someone asks you if you want milk in your coffee, you say “can.” If you ask the doctor to give you a medical certificate to get a day off work they say “can.” I love the power of the word here!
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Excellent! Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Haha – a very enjoyable read! I have all three kinds of Englishes at my school since I work with expats from all over the world. We occasionally have light-hearted disputes about whose English sounds better or seems more logical. Some of our students have managed to get to level 2 English because they understand that grammar and pronunciation do matter. The rest, sadly, repeatedly ask me the same question, “but you understood my meaning, didn’t you?” They can’t imagine how other native speakers who aren’t so used to hearing English turned into “word soup” through thick accents might have a difficult time understanding them. It makes for a lovely and interesting day. Loved the post! 🙂
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Thanks Bethany!
It sure is never dull, and makes you question all kinds of things you’ve never thought about before. I’m mainly experiencing that in German now…
A British friend of mine who’s moved to the Florida Keys is having trouble with her English being understood by shop assistants, many of whom are from Cuba. She went in there once asking for a pair of ‘shorts’. They had no clue what she meant. Now she’s learnt to say ‘shawrrtz”. 😉
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