[lg policy] terminology question

[tricento at UCALGARY.CA]

Of course there are descriptors/descriptions and then linguistic reality. 
I've had many students from Asia who will tell me "I speak British
English", or "We were taught British English" and what comes from their
mouths is not remotely British English in terms of accent, prosody,
syntax, or lexis.  So, the term European English probably means nothing
from a descriptive point of view;  it's more of an idea, aspiration, who
knows what.

I have heard the term used in the context of Europe (at conferences), and
I highly doubt it exists even in Europe, even if it has been posited as
real.

Tom Ricento
Professor and Chair, English as an Additional language
University of Calgary

> It's not I term I have heard much in the US.  When I taught in Sweden, I
> recall some of my colleagues referring to 'European English' as a kind of
> localized variety of English that was neither British Standard nor
> Standard American English.  It was never fully clear to me what this
> meant.  Swedish English?  Any English spoken by people in Europe?
>
> It was definitely seen as more acceptable by some English teachers than
> 'Swenglish' [Svengelska].  This may be English spoken by Swedish speakers
> with syntactic and semantic transfer from Swedish
> (http://www.wordforword.se/Swenglish04.pdf) or Swedish spoken with (mainly
> lexical) transfer from English (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svengelska)
> (In English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swenglish).  'European English',
> on the other hand, was associated with greater education and/or social
> class, but different from one of the major standard target varieties.  A
> similar term used even more frequently in Sweden is 'Transatlantic
> English' (http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn=0195157044), a
> hybrid of sorts between British Standard and Standard American English (in
> Sweden often the elusive 'General American English' is sometimes used to
> refer to the target language in English education).
>
> In the European context, I'm not sure it should be seen as offensive, just
> very vague.  It does seem odd to use 'European English' in the context of
> Singapore, though.
>
> Francis
>
> --
> Francis M. Hult, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies
> University of Texas at San Antonio
>
> 2010 Language Learning Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence
> (Language Research Centre, University of Calgary)
>
> Web: http://faculty.coehd.utsa.edu/fhult/
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu on behalf of Anthea
> Fraser Gupta
> Sent: Wed 5/5/2010 2:43 AM
> To: Language Policy List
> Subject: [lg policy] terminology question
>
>
>
> I have a question, especially for people in the US.  A speech-language
> professor in the US contacted me with questions related to Singapore, and
> used a term that baffled me: "European English". I didn't know if it was
> regional (how????) or racial (why???) and simply couldn't interpret it.
> When I asked him what he meant by the term he explained that he "was
> referring to the English used in the schools in Singapore. Perhaps I
> should have refered to it as standard European English. Here in the U.S.
> we have standard American English. My use of European English is more
> specific than just the general term standard English."
>
> Have you ever come across this term, apparently being used where other
> people would use 'British Standard English'? Is its meaning clear to
> people in the US? I find it odd and rather offensive.....
>
> [My regular readers will know that I reckon there is ONE Standard English
> and that categorical regional differences are tiny and rarely worth
> mentioning.]
>
> Anthea
> *     *     *     *     *
> Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
> School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
> <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
> *     *     *     *     *
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