[lg policy] terminology question

[Philippe Blanchet - Rennes 2]

Hi everybody

European English is often used to refer to the English spoken at the 
European Union by more and more representants of the member-states. A 
sorte of average interlectal multicontact English.

Philippe

tricento at ucalgary.ca a écrit :
> 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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>
>
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