By who? For who?

I really don't understand.

<<Well, Johnny, the difficulty you have not noticed is that a native speaker can get away with errors that a learner could not. Travis would probably insist that "there's" followed by a plural noun was correct, simply because some sloppy native speakers use it.>>
So you are saying that it's no use trying to imitate native speakers as best I can, because in the end my English would suck anyway? That's not the right approach to learning, in any field. If everyone around me uses "there's + plural", do I have to avoid talking the same way because it's wrong and I am not a native speaker? Probably. I am a non-native speaker and I am supposed to sound odd, so I'd better avoid talking like everyone else or I'll sound too good. LOL. I am not saying it's ok in every situation, but there's no reason to avoid it completely.


<<However, the use of forms such as "to who" (instead of the hypercorrect "to whom" and the normal "who to") is not what you described as "normal, average, idiomatic English". It might occasionally be heard by native speakers. It would be regarded as wrong by most native speakers>>
There's a problem. You say it's not ok even though it sounds perfectly ok to someone else. Who's right? You are claiming you're right and the others are wrong. You are basically saying your variety of English is the only correct one, and "native speakers of English" are the ones who speak your variety. That doesn't make much sense to me. Just because you don't say something, doesn't mean it's wrong. Otherwise, either "take the lift" or "take the elevator" must be wrong.
We should consider varieties instead of talking about what's correct or incorrect.

Some people still use "whom" and yes, some of them are young. I think I usually try to avoid this construction, but I read it in books and certainly I know it in "To Whom it may concern", so it's not dead.

Take the lift and take the elevator are just dialectal variations in vocabulary. How could either one be incorrect? But "to who" is wrong in all parts of the English-speaking world. Try writing that in your school exams in the US, and you will lose marks.

Johnny, you don't get it. I am not telling you "not to imitate native speakers as best as you can, because you will still suck". You should be imitating native speakers as much as you can - but you need to show discernment. If you imitate the least educated, or people like Travis etc who believe in dumbing down, then you will not learn good English. You should imitate the speech of the educated class. For example: there are English people who say "brought" instead of "bought", eg "I brought it in the shop". But the distinction between these words is still maintained by educated speakers, and so it would be better for you to copy a more cultured person.

As far as things that are not standard, not part of an educated person's English, but are genuinely found in the native speech community, and maybe fun for learners to ape, you need to be careful that you can do it well enough to get away with it. Standard English, or the English of the educated, doesn't require such care when imitating it, as it is standard. But if you try to do Cockney, and fail, the result would be absurd. There is a book on Lowland Scots by the Lilith trust, with CDs for those who wish to learn Scots dialect. Now, Scots was once a literary language, in the days of Robbie Burns, and so one can understand irritation among Scots observing the change in status of their dialect over three centuries or so. But, it would be a very bad idea for you, Johnny, to imitate Scots. The book by the Lilith trust actually warns foreigners about this, saying that foreigners trying to speak Scots could be attacked physically by people in Scotland who assume that they're trying to take the mickey out of them!!! I could witter on, but...

>>Take the lift and take the elevator are just dialectal variations in vocabulary. How could either one be incorrect? But "to who" is wrong in all parts of the English-speaking world.<<

Ahem, no. "To whom" is in many areas largely literary in nature, and is likely a conscious formalism when used by many English-speakers today rather than a natural aspect of their everyday speech.

>>Try writing that in your school exams in the US, and you will lose marks.<<

Ah, but the matter is that what one would use in exams in school is purely *literary* English, which almost invariably differs from how people *actually* speak on an everyday basis anywhere in the English-speaking world.

>>Johnny, you don't get it. I am not telling you "not to imitate native speakers as best as you can, because you will still suck". You should be imitating native speakers as much as you can - but you need to show discernment. If you imitate the least educated, or people like Travis etc who believe in dumbing down, then you will not learn good English. You should imitate the speech of the educated class. For example: there are English people who say "brought" instead of "bought", eg "I brought it in the shop". But the distinction between these words is still maintained by educated speakers, and so it would be better for you to copy a more cultured person.<<

How people speak has nothing to do with level of education or like, to begin with. For instance, I would definitely consider myself to be educated, and yet I speak a rather progressive form of the dialect here rather than effectively speaking literary English all the time as you seem to advocate. Also, speaking literary English all the time does not make you educated - if anything, it likely indicates that you are a pretentious ass who likes to sound "educated", which is completely different from actually being educated. It is unlikely that actual educated people, aside from the occasional pretentious ass, really speak literary English all the time in reality, as they almost certainly speak just like most other English-speakers speak in Real Life.

As for what I speak of so often in here, it is just everyday spoken English, or various dialects thereof. It is not "dumbing down", but rather speaking about how real native speakers actually speak on an everyday basis, as opposed to pretentiously advocating that people try to speak literary English all the time as prescriptivists such as you do. As for teaching leaners of English such, the matter is that if they only learn literary English without learning normal everyday spoken English, they will sound like a book the whole time to native English-speakers, which is often looked down upon, and they are likely to have problems understanding actual native English-speakers, who don't normally speak literary English.

<<Also, speaking literary English all the time does not make you educated - if anything, it likely indicates that you are a pretentious ass who likes to sound "educated", which is completely different from actually being educated. >>

Bravo!
You ROCK Dude

DX, since you're such an educated person, perhaps you would know what "persona non grata" means?

Travis, you tried to argue against my point regarding "to who" by saying that "to whom" would be regarded as too literary. Talk about non sequiturs! I have said in this thread that "to whom" is literary, but my point was that "to who" is incorrect even in casual speech whereas "who to", while not being the literary form, is natural and correct in casual speech. Shifting the conversation to "to whom" does not answer a point on "to who" versus "who to". Deary me! And you think you're educated! Think again!

>>Travis, you tried to argue against my point regarding "to who" by saying that "to whom" would be regarded as too literary. Talk about non sequiturs! I have said in this thread that "to whom" is literary, but my point was that "to who" is incorrect even in casual speech whereas "who to", while not being the literary form, is natural and correct in casual speech. Shifting the conversation to "to whom" does not answer a point on "to who" versus "who to". Deary me! And you think you're educated! Think again!<<

I was speaking purely about case usage there, not what the actual positions of "who" or "whom" and "to" are in the sentence as a whole. It would technically not be "who to" anyways, though, as "who" would actually fall in initial position while "to" would fall in final position, with the whole rest of the clause in between...

Don't get excited. That was simply typo.

<< But my point was that "to who" is incorrect even in casual speech whereas "who to", while not being the literary form, is natural and correct in casual speech. >>

And my point is you're still a poor judge of what actual US English usage is. Your advice may be accurate for British English, but it does *not* apply to US English here. If you want me to prove me wrong, show me an authority on *US* English who says what you're saying.


<< DX, you're not welcome here. Find another forum. >>

Sigh. I'm afraid that's probably not going to happen. Perhaps he doesn't know what "persona non grata" means after all.

DX, what's your motive here? Why do you insist on evading a ban? This does not reflect very well on your "cultured" personality. Or do you think you're so high and mighty that you can just do whatever the hell you want?

You know, perhaps if you would just behave, like a cultured person surely would, you wouldn't need to evade a ban in the first place.

Is he that bad? I probably missed something. There are posters who are MUCH worse. There is a regular poster who was perfectly polite, but then I happened to read something he wrote in another language (I imagine that he thought and still thinks noone understood it.) and I got a true slice of his character. I think the thread was deleted, but had he dared to write it in English, I think he'd be banned too. Yet, every week I see post after post by this poster. It's very easy for some people to slip some garbage through here. Even Josh has been fooled by a couple of them, no, make that three of them.

If you read something like this in English, would this get you banned?

"Ha! Ha! Since no one can read this, I'll take the opportunity to say that I HATE English speakers"

This was part of the covert message I read in December or January from one of the innocent-sounding posters here. I suppose that it is possible that someone used the poster's nick here.

What language was it writen in? I don't remember to had read such a thing.

<< Is he that bad? I probably missed something. >>

He got banned when he called somebody -- I think his name was Rasheed -- "Raghead". "Raghead" is a racial (or at least cultural) slur.

<< There is a regular poster who was perfectly polite, but then I happened to read something he wrote in another language (I imagine that he thought and still thinks noone understood it.) and I got a true slice of his character. >>

That might have been a different person who wrote that. It's easy to be impersonated on these forums. I've been impersonated a couple of times, myself.

- Kef

If Josh had to ban everyone who uses words like that in the languages forum , almost everybody there would be banned. I think that appart from that insult, which is not that uncommon here , and I 've not seen Josh banning everyone who said similar things, there is an special hatred towards DJ by some people (Josh included) and it's not related to the strict behaviour of him , I suspect.

Josh,

It's too much work. I shouldn't even mention it, I suppose.