[Corpora-List] 'Standard European English' ?

Diana Maynard d.maynard at dcs.shef.ac.uk
Fri Mar 3 10:26:12 UTC 2006


Yes, surely the crunch comes when *native* English speakers start using such 
terms?
Isn't that the point at which a word or usage stops being an error by a 
non-native speaker and starts becoming acceptable usage?
I've never yet heard a native English speaker talking about "sheepmeat" 
although it's bound to happen sooner or later (maybe you have though Yorick?)
Although I've begun to find myself (as a native English speaker) using the 
adjective "performant" (meaning "performing well") because I see it so often 
in academic papers. We have so much exposure these days to non-native English 
that one soon begins to forget which usages are correct and which are just 
very common errors.
Diana


TadPiotr wrote:
> I have also thought that we are an international list, using a sort of
> international English, which  is quite similar to native English ?
> But: I do not think that anyone suggests that a non-German using his/her
> flawed German is actually using an nternational variety of German. My
> impression is that the number of native speakers of German (yes, I know,
> let's not talk about the varieties and dialects of German...) exceeds that
> of non-native speakers of German, while with English it is the other way
> round.
> Tadeusz Piotrowski
> 
> 
>



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