LL-L "Language learning" 2008.04.19 (01) [E]

Sat Apr 19 16:07:01 UTC 2008

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From: KarlRein at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2008.04.18 (02) [E]

I am mystified at Mr. Potter's comment.  "Entre tú y yo" is used
*wherever *Spanish
is spoken, and has been for generations.

Karl Reinhardt

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language learning" 2008.04.16 (04) [E]

> From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.04.16 (02) [E]
>
> I agree with Paul! As the large majority of British English speakers
> have not had their language consistently or clearly or
> fundamentally explained to them i.e. they have not been taught to
> examine it at school / college, their understanding and use is based
> primarily on what they have heard, with a smattering of old grammar
> chestnuts which still seem to be half taught/ absorbed and half
> understood

You English can speak for yourselves!! In Scottish schools English is a
big subject and grammar is systematically taught.

The results are all too evident to someone like me who works in England.
Whenever an argument about how to write something comes up in the
office, it's me they get to explain it properly!

Something that amused me a few years ago was a person in work who had
been asked to write some guidelines for writing amendment records for
software modules that had been changed. He had written a rule that
everything should be written in the passive voice, which I ignored
because I don't see in what sense I change code passively.

So I was writing things like:

"I've deleted the MS Word code as it does nothing useful."

and I noticed that he was writing the "passive voice" like this:

"Deleted the MS Excel code to prevent abuse."

When the shit hit the fan I declared loudly that the English don't
understand their own language (nobody disagrees but it starts a merry
conversation between the two Welshmen), I pointed out that dropping the
pronoun, though correct in _some_ languages, doesn't give you the
passing voice, and that he should have written:

"The MS Excel code was deleted to prevent abuse."

but I point out the loss of information and that I'm not ashamed to
admit that it was me doing all that.

So he suggested:

"The MS Excel code was deleted by me to..."

and then started to have second thoughts!

The upshot was that I wrote an article on the company wiki explaining
the passive voice and now everybody's afraid to use it  :)

> Even more of a GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR is the inability to use 'less/fewer'
> correctly. 'Fewer' appears to be on the way out, as more and more
> journalists / media presenters are happy to use 'less' for both
> singular and plural. So instead of 'Less cake, fewer slices' they say
> 'less cake, less slices'.

I think this aspect of prescriptivism is based on the idea that a usage
that provides finer distinctions is naturally superior and that the
other is blurring these fine distinctions.

But then again, languages do and don't make distinctions more or less at
random (is French cousin/cousine inherently superior to the English
term, and if so, what should we do about it?). I think in the case of
less/fewer, this is just dialect change and doesn't make any difference
to communicative power. It doesn't have the confusion potential of
genuine errors such as "She used a very affective method of persuasion."

> Some people can be terribly sensitive about their own language and are
> often unjustifiably critical about their own standards. They  feel
> acutely that they MUST produce "grammatically correct English" if they
> are not to be judged negatively. Unfortunately this can often
> lead them into misapplying half understood grammar in the belief that
> using it adds cachet and correctness to their language - in fact quite
> the reverse! The paramount example here is 'whom', which some people
> add  - at random it sometimes seems - to their speech and writing -
> usually quite in the wrong place!  "I wrote to the man, whom replied
> to me immediately" ??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, this is simply overcorrection and there's a lot of it about. Not
only is it widespread in many forms but I'm fairly sure it can
occasionally bring about language change. So in future we might be
saying "Dr Whom and the Daleks". The pain will eventually go away!

But wait - shouldn't it be Dr Whom?  :)

> I have fought the school of thought for the last 40 years that says
> no-one speaks their mother tongue incorrectly: they all speak their
> own language perfectly. This has led to teachers not daring to either
> correct incorrect grammar or explain why it is incorrect and what
> should be said.
>
> Bought/brought are common examples of errors that when explained -
> even to adults - gets the reply: "Well I never! BRing / BRought
> Buy / Bought   it's quite simple when it's explained like that!" and
> from then on they get it right!

No, from then on, they get it wrong! Because if it's thought/think, it
should be bought/bink and brought/brink. Or else thought/thuy  :)

More seriously, as a Scots speaker I might criticise the sorry pass the
English have come to in losing the /x/ from bought, brought and thought.
But it's just language change, and we know that's not always regular.

When you consider the sort of changes happening in English English these
days, I think you have to consider the possibility that in future
everyone in England will be speaking like "Fred will be free in free
mumphs time," and I suppose you'll be going, "It's THREAD, not FRED...
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Language learning
>
> Hi, Heather!
>
> GRRRRRRR ... indeed! Never mind giving "sermons"! It's good for the
> "soul." Here comes the baritone part of the chorus.
>
> Your observations tally with mine, also what you said about "it's
> quite simple when it's explained like that!" I hear this phrase a lot.
>
> I suspect that decades, even centuries, of atrocious language teaching
> methods have been culturally internalized. People have an idea of
> language learning as involving a vast, amorphous mass of unconnected
> pieces of information and rules. It tends to make them shy away from
> anything like that, and it gets even worse when "foreign" is involved,
> "weird" sounds, scripts, etc. Although teaching methods have been
> vastly improved in many quarters, most people are not over the fears
> of the past. It did not help that in the 1960s and 1970s educators
> decided to "revolutionize" teaching by throwing out anything
> systematic and theoretical ("rote learning") and emphasizing "fun" to
> a degree that classes were turned into sideshow entertainment. What
> most people have not caught on to in the meantime is that learning of
> systems and enjoyment are not incompatible with each other, that
> learning of systems is so much more efficient than amassing snippets
> of information in a haphazard fashion. Alas, "grammar" is still a bit
> of a dirty word.
>
> And there is the factor of fear and insufficient confidence
> conflicting with a need for status and economic betterment. Oftentimes
> the very self-conscious end up overcompensating or simply winging it
> the best they can, often faking the sound of good education. Sometimes
> I can see how they suffer, and my heart goes out to them. Things could
> be so much less stressful if only ...
>
> I see a very similar situation in computer skills learning, and
> especially in anything approaching computer programming (which
> involves a type of language proficiency also). Confident and
> experienced people try to get the large picture first, acquire key
> rules and then have a relatively easy time figuring out the system and
> thus the details. Timid people try to learn details first, and most of
> them drown in the flood of them, perhaps never to get to a point at
> which they can see the large picture.
>
> So that was my sermon.
>
> Regards,
> Reinhard/Ron
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