[Corpora-List] 'Standard European English' ?

[Adam Kilgarriff]

Yorick, 

your admonishments come too late.  At the Corpus Linguistics Conference in
Birmingham last year one of the invited speakers was Anna Mauranen speaking
on her corpus of "English as Lingua Franca" (ELF)  (cf also Carmela
Chateau's post earlier)

My sense is that there are two slightly different things going on, one being
general the other specific.  Yes, people all over the world use English s a
Lingua Franca but the conditions for a dialect only really apply if there is
a set of people who communicate regularly and extensively with each other in
it.  The one place above all others where this holds is Brussels and the
world of the EU. So examples like Diana's performant (adj) (and I rather
like "the responsible" often (mis?!-)spelt "the responsable") are Brussels
English rather than ELF in general.  Many of the readers of this list are
engaged with EU so are familiar with Brussels English.  Given the history of
the EU and the location of Brussels, French is the biggest influence on
Brussels English. 

I'd say Brussels English is a bona fide dialect, but "Standard European
English" or "ELF" are maybe too loosely defined to have much by way of
distinctive characteristics.

Adam


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no [mailto:owner-corpora at lists.uib.no] On
Behalf Of Yorick Wilks
Sent: 03 March 2006 10:27
To: TadPiotr
Cc: 'Lou Burnard'; corpora at lists.uib.no; 'Kate Beeching'; 'Briony Williams'
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] 'Standard European English' ?

One version of this discussion was had a few years ago when it was  
seriously proposed---I forget who by--to create a corpus of "non- 
native English"; not a corpus of specific Englishes  from specific  
non-native groups (e.g. so as to grammar/spell correct the English of  
French speakers, for example, a useful and real task)---but rather  
some general corpus. I think the proposal collapsed under the  
ridiculousness of the idea. I do hope so and that its not out there  
somewhere waiting for users!
YW


On 3 Mar 2006, at 10:13, 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
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no
>> [mailto:owner-corpora at lists.uib.no] On Behalf Of Lou Burnard
>> Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 11:06 AM
>> To: corpora at lists.uib.no
>> Cc: Kate Beeching; Briony Williams
>> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] 'Standard European English' ?
>>
>> Paul Buitelaar wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Parveen and all, as far as I know the expression 'Standard European
>>> English' is sometimes used to refer to British English (as
>>>
>> it differs
>>
>>> from US English).
>>>
>>
>> Nice to know that us Brits are thought of as forming the
>> standard for European (i.e. not US) English, but I rather doubt it.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The current discussion on the list of 'Eurospeak' examples
>>>
>> however is
>>
>>> interesting
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Presumably there are plenty of equally hilarious examples of
>> non-native
>> French speakers' oddities in French, non-native German speakers'
>> oddities in German, etc. But this being a resolutely
>> anglophone list, we
>> don't hear about them.
>>
>> Lou
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>