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We all get taught British English in continental Europe, even though people mostly consume foreign media in American English. It's less of a contradiction than you might think, since the boomers all think that the English associated with pop culture must be trash English
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Nov 4, 2021 13:35
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That’s like learning Castilian Spanish or Portugal Portuguese. Just because there are some native speakers nearby doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea.
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Nov 4, 2021 13:40
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Fun fact: Canada only chose to (mostly) adopt british spelling conventions in the 1990s.quote:In the 1990s, Canadian newspapers began to adopt the British spelling variants such as -our endings, notably with The Globe and Mail changing its spelling policy in October 1990. Other Canadian newspapers adopted similar changes later that decade, such as the Southam newspaper chain's conversion in September 1998. The Toronto Star adopted this new spelling policy in September 1997 after that publication's ombudsman discounted the issue earlier in 1997. The Star had always avoided using recognized Canadian spelling, citing the Gage Canadian Dictionary in their defence. Controversy around this issue was frequent. When the Gage Dictionary finally adopted standard Canadian spelling, the Star followed suit. Some publishers, e.g. Maclean's, continue to prefer American spellings. Using british spelling is for the best, though, as it provides the funniest bilingual signs. The habs play at the Centre Bell Centre. Centre Bell Center just doesn't have the same ring. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 13:41
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Platystemon posted:That’s like learning Castilian Spanish or Portugal Portuguese. On the other hand, as a random Scandinavian or whatever going about your daily life you are more likely to have to speak to an Englishman than an American. There's still rather a lot of them and they're right over there and we do a lot of business with them.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:02
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Saladman posted:I'd never heard of it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English ) but after reading the Wikipedia article - admittedly not a deep scholarly dive - it kind of just looks like "here is a list of common false friends, none of which would be accepted as correct use for a public-facing document"? Calling it a "dialect" seems like a stretch, and I've spent my entire adult life living and working in cities that are dominated by Europeans who speak ESL. Not quite, it's lingo used within EU institutions that is diverging from British and American English vocabulary. With the UK's departure from the EU I expect this trend to continue since EU institutions are increasingly unmoored from how English is spoken in the UK. The only native English speaking country in the EU right now is Ireland, and it's a small island away from the normal streams of travel. Keep in mind that this is a very recent development, but it's a point of divergence. I think it's fairly similar to what happened and is happening with Indian English.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:05
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Groke posted:On the other hand, as a random Scandinavian or whatever going about your daily life you are more likely to have to speak to an Englishman than an American. There's still rather a lot of them and they're right over there and we do a lot of business with them. I'm so sorry
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Nov 4, 2021 14:12
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Quite a few people I know (although most of them distantly) have British partners over here. Just a week ago I was at a Greek restaurant and at the table next to me there was a Fleming who had brought along his obviously English girlfriend and his parents. I don't know why or how this pairing happens so frequently, they can't all have met through Runescape
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Nov 4, 2021 14:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I'm so sorry
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Nov 4, 2021 14:36
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Here's a good example: the word 'twenty'. Now I've never said 'twenty' in my entire life. I've never pronounced the e or the second t. I could do it if I really had to, but that would essentially be code switching. I say "twunny". I've said "twunny" thousands of times in my life. I'll probably say it a dozen times tomorrow. Why do I have to keep writing 'twenty' when that has nothing to do with how I speak or how I use language on a day to day basis?? Why is my 'twunny' less valid than the false orthography of 'twenty'?? Which word do you pronounce the way it's spelled: "Through" or "Rough"?
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Nov 4, 2021 14:36
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Phlegmish posted:Quite a few people I know (although most of them distantly) have British partners over here. Just a week ago I was at a Greek restaurant and at the table next to me there was a Fleming who had brought along his obviously English girlfriend and his parents. I don't know why or how this pairing happens so frequently, they can't all have met through Runescape
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Nov 4, 2021 14:44
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Dane-in-law
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Nov 4, 2021 14:49
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Phlegmish posted:Quite a few people I know (although most of them distantly) have British partners over here. Just a week ago I was at a Greek restaurant and at the table next to me there was a Fleming who had brought along his obviously English girlfriend and his parents. I don't know why or how this pairing happens so frequently, they can't all have met through Runescape When I lived in Toulouse my housemates were all flemish. They actively hated France, couldn't speak french, but loved England. Maybe it's just a genetic fetish.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:58
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Those guys were idiots and we do have our francophiles, although I know very few people in relationships with francophones, including Belgian ones. My niece being a notable exception
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Nov 4, 2021 15:08
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I don't really let it come up, but I hate it when other Norwegians affect a British English accent in how they speak English. I don't care about the cases where it's obvious that they spent some time there and the local accent rubbed off on them, that's different.Phlegmish posted:We all get taught British English in continental Europe, even though people mostly consume foreign media in American English. It's less of a contradiction than you might think, since the boomers all think that the English associated with pop culture must be trash English I mean, do we? I think this is mostly an assumption that some students and teachers might make, but having subbed in individual English classes and looked at the curriculum and textbooks there's really not much in there that outright favors British over American, and if it were it would only be some word spellings. At the end of the day people in Europe who learn to speak English decently don't really learn it through school, they learn it through consuming English-language media and using English online or (in many cases) in person in conversations with foreigners. The school part mostly really helps people with the writing and spelling. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 15:09
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There are plenty of non-native accents in Europe that are just fine to use with the English language. But a bad English accent is loving disastrous.
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Nov 4, 2021 15:17
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MeinPanzer posted:This has led me down the rabbit hole of investigating why English never developed a successful language regulator or academy the way so many other major European languages did. It sounds like Jonathan Swift and John Quincy Adams, among others, attempted to develop English academies but without success. It's the lack of absolutism and subsequent revolutions.    The French language institute was set up to enforce spelling reform under absolute monarchy but really started stamping out regional differences only after the revolution. Russian and Chinese spelling reforms similarly occurred after revolutions, which is why Russian doesn't use ъ anymore and Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional characters while the mainland doesn't.
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Nov 4, 2021 16:18
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One interesting attempt to reform English spelling was Carnegie's Simplified Spelling Board. It had limited success, Teddy Roosevelt was a supporter and tried to mandate usage by the government, but Congress and the Supreme Court resisted and it was completely reversed before long. The major issue was that simplified and consistent spelling in English looks uneducated. Which makes perfect sense, since it resembles how it looks if you try to spell words you don't know how to spell by sounding them out. So it was a major failure in adoption and an object of wide-spread derision, as the contemporary press wrote: quote:The Louisville Courier-Journal published an article which stated: "Nuthing escapes Mr. Rucevelt. No subject is tu hi fr him to takl, nor tu lo for him to notis. He makes tretis without the consent of the Senit." The Baltimore Sun joked: "How will he spell his own name? Will he make it 'Rusevelt' or will he get down to the fact and spell it 'Butt-in-sky'?" One editorial summed it up this way: "This is 2 mutch."
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Nov 4, 2021 16:18
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You need some way to immediately establish prestige. Actually, you need an infinite fractal of ways, but spelling really helps as a foundation for the rest.
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Nov 4, 2021 16:31
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Rebel Blob posted:One interesting attempt to reform English spelling was Carnegie's Simplified Spelling Board. It had limited success, Teddy Roosevelt was a supporter and tried to mandate usage by the government, but Congress and the Supreme Court resisted and it was completely reversed before long. Did they use to pronounce “Roosevelt” as “Roo-se-velt” instead of “Rose-e-velt” how people do now?
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Nov 4, 2021 16:59
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It might just be for the better that there isn't some special institute with special authority for managing the entirety of English as a language. Probably one of the big reasons there was no linguistic clampdown was because there wasn't really anybody who would have the authority to create such a body. England ended up with a weaker monarch than France and more autonomy for the aristocracy, and it had far more colonists overseas that even if they knew what the rules were supposed to be (if you look at documents written by the Pilgrims, they sure didn't) they wouldn't stick to any linguistic rules that the crown tried to enforce. I don't actually know all that much about how the French institution of language, but I think a big part of it involved trying hard to stamp out regional dialects and minor languages across the country, which doesn't sound good to me. Possibly enforcing linguistic uniformity would mean worsening education and career prospects for people who grew up with their own accents and dialects. There was a whole project in the US that discovered that kids actually learn "standard" American English better if their education acknowledges their native dialect and teaches that as well as the standard English, but the project also died in controversy. Spanish seemingly has a much more reasonable and consistent spelling system that isn't some kind of alien abomination like French, but it also has to reckon with regional accents that vary wildly so there can't really be consistent connection between pronunciation and spelling. FreudianSlippers posted:Why does Greenland always get marked as (Denmark) on maps when they have about the same amount of sovereignty as Canada which gets treated as a fully independent country? Good point, stop marking Canada independent until they go through the last step. Randarkman posted:I mean, do we? Does the Scandinavian Peninsula count as continental Europe?
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Nov 4, 2021 17:44
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:It's the lack of absolutism and subsequent revolutions. My dad's language, alsatian/swabian/whatever you want to call it was also stamped out by the Kaiserreich. About five minutes of liberation in 1871, then the Preisch came and acted worse than the parisians.
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Nov 4, 2021 17:54
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SlothfulCobra posted:Probably one of the big reasons there was no linguistic clampdown was because there wasn't really anybody who would have the authority to create such a body. England ended up with a weaker monarch than France and more autonomy for the aristocracy, and it had far more colonists overseas that even if they knew what the rules were supposed to be (if you look at documents written by the Pilgrims, they sure didn't) they wouldn't stick to any linguistic rules that the crown tried to enforce. A few posts up I addressed this, but it basically came down to chance that it never took off in the late 17th and early 18th c., when there was a desire among the English aristocracy and the monarchy to institute such a reform body. And I don't think that the colonial situation for the English was much different than for the French or Spanish in those centuries, who both ended up with language regulating academies (in the French case already well prior to the Revolution).
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Nov 4, 2021 18:10
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I can’t see spelling reform ever taking off consider the number of English-speaking countries at this point. Can you imagine if instead of just learning to read and write the traditional dumb 16th century spelling you also had to learn the ‘simplified’ spelling favored in like 30% of countries, or some combination of the two ? Learn every word twice!
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Nov 4, 2021 18:24
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This thread has the weirdest interpretation of the Académie Française. They say things and the French population ignore them. As an example, the translation for "e- mail" is "courriel" but nobody uses it. Usage is always more important than regulation.
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Nov 4, 2021 18:38
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Portuguese went through a small spelling reform in the 00s to align some features of the Brazilian, European and African variants and, at least in Brazil, not even boomers complain about it anymore. This is to say that I think it would be fine if it ever happened, which it won't.
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Nov 4, 2021 18:41
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FreudianSlippers posted:Why does Greenland always get marked as (Denmark) on maps when they have about the same amount of sovereignty as Canada which gets treated as a fully independent country? Denmark still controls Greenland's foreign and monetary policy.
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Nov 4, 2021 18:43
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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cugel posted:This thread has the weirdest interpretation of the Académie Française. They say things and the French population ignore them. As an example, the translation for "e- mail" is "courriel" but nobody uses it. Usage is always more important than regulation. Washing my hair with a fistful du shampooing. Is there even an AF word for hair soap? Idfk.
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Nov 4, 2021 19:02
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Idk either, ask a french-canadian, they care more than us about that stuff.
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Nov 4, 2021 19:04
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I propose with go with “Soundspel”Wikipedia posted:It was on th ferst dae of th nue yeer th anounsment was maed, allmoest siemultaeniusly frum three obzervatorys, that th moeshun of th planet Neptune, th outermoest of all planets that wheel about th Sun, had becum verry erratic. A retardaeshun in its velosity had bin suspected in Desember. Then a faent, remoet spek of liet was discuverd in th reejon of th perterbd planet. At ferst this did not cauz eny verry graet exsietment. Sieentific peepl, however, found th intelijens remarkabl enuf, eeven befor it becaem noen that th nue body was rapidly groeing larjer and brieter, and that its moeshun was qiet different frum th orderly progres of th planets.
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Nov 4, 2021 19:09
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Is that by that American teenager that turned out to have written the entire Scots wikipedia by writing with an accent?
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Nov 4, 2021 19:19
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just use IPA phonetic alphabet for English. it's even made for making the writing and vocalization consistent, right?
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Nov 4, 2021 19:47
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Space Kablooey posted:ʤʌst juz aɪ-pi-eɪ fəˈnɛtɪk ˈælfəˌbɛt fɔr ˈɪŋglɪʃ. ɪts ˈivɪn meɪd fɔr ˈmeɪkɪŋ ðə ˈraɪtɪŋ ænd voʊkəlaɪˈzeɪʃən kənˈsɪstənt, raɪt?
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Nov 4, 2021 20:00
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you forgot the relative vowel diacritics, the labialization, aspiration, the tap r, etc
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Nov 4, 2021 20:02
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give it like 3 generations and it would look as good as regular latin script
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Nov 4, 2021 20:03
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Tweezer Reprise posted:you forgot the relative vowel diacritics, the labialization, aspiration, the tap r, etc Simplified vs traditions IPA spelling will be a marker of class distinction
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Nov 4, 2021 20:06
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Just replace all languages with Marain imho.
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Nov 4, 2021 20:34
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yeah poo poo on french spelling but it's consistent. You might sound stilted but you can say any word correctly once you learn spelling. Not so for english. Simple grammar for babies, balanced out by nonsense spelling. I'm sorry my man but that's just not true. Yes, French has a more consistent pronunciation/spelling matching record than English but that's like saying you're the least incontinent person in a home for the elderly and decrepit. If you're an L2 speaker of French and you're presented with a word you've never heard pronounced that ends on an S or a T, good luck figuring out whether to pronounce that letter or not. Even some L1 speakers make that mistake, for instance you're supposed to say the S in 'Anvers' but many people from France don't do it because they've never heard 'Anvers' pronounced. Antigravitas posted:I don't think it's collapsing into one at all, it's fracturing. Effectively, English is being democratised. Like Saladman said, to call it a dialect is a bit of an exaggeration. Though I can imagine 'Euro English' evolving into a kind of Koinè Greek status. It will never not be kind of grating to my ears, partly because it confronts me with the fact that I spent years trying to perfect my English pronunciation and then have it all be for nothing (and my pronunciation still isn't perfect). Space Kablooey posted:just use IPA phonetic alphabet for English. it's even made for making the writing and vocalization consistent, right? Well that's the problem right there. An American or an Irishman would say kard, for instance, while a South Englishman or New Zealander would say ka:d.
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Nov 4, 2021 21:16
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Pope Hilarius II posted:I'm sorry my man but that's just not true. Yes, French has a more consistent pronunciation/spelling matching record than English but that's like saying you're the least incontinent person in a home for the elderly and decrepit. If you're an L2 speaker of French and you're presented with a word you've never heard pronounced that ends on an S or a T, good luck figuring out whether to pronounce that letter or not. Even some L1 speakers make that mistake, for instance you're supposed to say the S in 'Anvers' but many people from France don't do it because they've never heard 'Anvers' pronounced. Place names are hardly fair
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Nov 4, 2021 21:23
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He's right. Sure, on average you don't pronounce the last three letters of any given word in French, but that still doesn't tell you exactly which ones
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Nov 4, 2021 21:27
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It's all about the letter's you don't pronounce
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Nov 4, 2021 21:35
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