What city is the best for learning English?

Travis   Tue Jan 29, 2008 7:53 pm GMT
(Oh, and even if one isn't going to school, Madison and Ann Arbor are really neat towns to live in just in and of itself. I would myself prefer to live in Madison over Milwaukee if my and my girlfriend's jobs weren't over here in Milwaukee.)
Damian in Edinburgh   Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:04 pm GMT
Whatever you do give Glasgow a miss on this one. And Birmingham, and Liverpool......and while we're at it, most parts of London! I am NOT joking! I hasten to exclude any professional or high level educational establishment in this - just ordinary run of the mill contact with the "natives"!

There was a very interesting discussion on BBC Radio Five live recently concerning the plight of the Languages in danger of becoming extinct, of literally dying out altogether. This happens more than we realise, and one very obscure Language has just passed into oblivion when its very last speaker, a man of 86, died. I forget now where in the world this was.

The BBC is currently planning a series of radio programs on this particular topic, its main objective concentrating on what can be done to ensure their survival. In the UK the prospects for our minority Languages (especially Gaelic and Welsh) are excellent, and now strenuous efforts are being made to revive Cornish (more than what exists already) and on the Isle of Man - Manx. And even Cumbric, down there in Cumbria on the Anglos Scottish border.

As for Scottish Gaelic (always pronounced as Gallic) there is a flourishing school in Glasgow, would you believe, which teaches all subjects in the medium of Gaelic, and Glasgow is a long, long way from the outer fringes of north and west Scotland, the heartland of the Language.

I've wandered off topic - sorry, but there is a reason why I went off on a tangent. The best cities in which to learn English? - in that BBC program I mentioned one guy remarked, very cynically, that English itself is in grave danger of total erosion, more than total extinction. He said that you only need to hop onto any bus in the UK at the time when all the kids are heading for home at the end of the school day to hear the "excructingly painful decimation of the English Language".

Most people who love the English Language in this country know full well what he meant.

In spite of all this, though, I think you should be fairly "safe" in Oxford or Cambridge - if you stay close to Academe. Of course the same can be said for Edinburgh, of course - we are well blessed with hallowed seats of learning, and the standards of spoken English are, of course, pretty high - even though they come in a very wide range of accents!
SJF   Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:03 am GMT
London!
The purest English is only spoken in the Southeast of England.
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:28 am GMT
>>Whatever you do give Glasgow a miss on this one. And Birmingham, and Liverpool......and while we're at it, most parts of London! I am NOT joking! I hasten to exclude any professional or high level educational establishment in this - just ordinary run of the mill contact with the "natives"!<<

So people over where you are seem to actually care about using formal speech in such contexts than over here, where careful formal speech is very limited in its overall range of use, especially amongst younger people.

>>I've wandered off topic - sorry, but there is a reason why I went off on a tangent. The best cities in which to learn English? - in that BBC program I mentioned one guy remarked, very cynically, that English itself is in grave danger of total erosion, more than total extinction. He said that you only need to hop onto any bus in the UK at the time when all the kids are heading for home at the end of the school day to hear the "excructingly painful decimation of the English Language".

Most people who love the English Language in this country know full well what he meant.<<

Again, this is just that people really do not angst about such stuff these days, unlike back in the day when "educated" people in the UK used RP and when the upper classes in the US used what is often called a "mid-Atlantic accent".

>>In spite of all this, though, I think you should be fairly "safe" in Oxford or Cambridge - if you stay close to Academe. Of course the same can be said for Edinburgh, of course - we are well blessed with hallowed seats of learning, and the standards of spoken English are, of course, pretty high - even though they come in a very wide range of accents!<<

Around here, people do not speak at universities any differently than anywhere else here, professors included. The only people that I remember from UW Madison who did not speak like such were people from outside English-speaking North America.
Guest   Wed Jan 30, 2008 4:09 am GMT
I didn't know you could angst in English, Travis. Is this new? Auf Deutsch, habe ich Angst und in English I have angst, but I've never seen angst as a verb in English. Not saying it is wrong, but I'd probably
"worry".
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:30 am GMT
Oh, it is just converting the noun "angst" in English (an obvious loan from German) into a verb without modification, which is just the kind of thing that you can very readily get away with in present-day English.
Guest   Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:59 am GMT
As many others have stated, it depends on which dialect you wish to adopt. In the United States, we are told that Omaha, Nebraska is the home of General American English, but this always a matter of debate. Unless you plan to pursue a career in the entertainment industry or the media, there is no need to seek out pure GA, as hardly anyone in the country uses it entirely--including TV, radio, and film personalities.

Boston and San Francisco are both good choices, but they are both quite expensive. I happen to like Bostonian English, but I doubt that you will learn the true Bostonian accent at a major University. However, if you stay in the region long enough and associate with the true natives, you will probably pick it up over a given amount of time. The same goes for Chicago, but you might pick up a little NCVS here and there if you stay around long enough.

Seattle, WA might be a good choice, and it is home to a fairly standard Western dialect. You might also consider Toronto, Ontario if you are thinking of studying on this side of the Atlantic.
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:19 am GMT
I myself would doubt the value in really speaking "pure" GA, honestly. For instance, if one were in the entertainment business, one could easily do perfectly well speaking California English, with all its vowel fronting and chain-shifting of low and low-mid vowels. Similarly, if one spoke an Inland North dialect with the NCVS, you might sound a bit funny to some English-speakers, but seriously, I doubt such would ever really be counted against you.
Damian in Edinburgh   Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:11 am GMT
***I'm Russian.... on the verge of going abroad to study English properly..... choosing between Oxford and Cambridge in England, Boston and San-Francisco in US....I would like this place to be calm enough, with green parks and famous universities...***

I responded to our friend Joy in terms which I really thought fitted her very precise stipulations. I kept in mind her words "study English properly". She is far more likely to accomplish that in an academic environment than anywhere else, no matter where. And she did include England in her opening post, and, just as in the USA, there are many areas there where she would be unlikely to achieve the results she wants, which would include a "proper" standard of spoken English.

If she also wishes to go "street wise" in "normal everyday English" as spoken by the populace at large then by all means she can forsake the "green parks and famous universities" now and again but I get the impression she doesn't care for that too much. As many Russians speaking English seem to have an American influenced accent anyway I suggest she confines her search to that side of the Atlantic, and give England a miss.
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:38 pm GMT
The matter is more just that such a "proper" standard of spoken English really does not exist in the same way in North America as it does in the UK. Such did exist at one time, in the form of "Mid-Atlantic" speech, but that has been practically defunct since the end of WW2 except maybe amongst some theatre types. Honestly, the closest to such that you can find today is probably just how middle-aged and older people throughout the Lower Midwest speak on an everyday basis. There really is no such thing as any kind of "educated" speech associated with universities and like here today.
Damian in Edinburgh   Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:05 pm GMT
I agree - it is the same here to a degree, but the lady did mention her need to learn "proper" English, or words to that effect. "Educated" speech is hard to define, but here in the UK anyway it is not really difficult to judge the educational level of a person, no matter where in the country they hail from, purely from the way s/he speaks. I don't think any kind of "academic snobbery" comes into it at all - it's just a statement of fact. Most university graduates tend to speak English more "properly" than would the majority of people from your average UK council estate (publicly owned housing via the local government authorities). I daresay it's a similar situation in the USA even though you seemed to deny that, not that I wish to contradict you. I've seen it for myself on some American chat shows, but the issue of racial origin is very much more of a factor over there than it is here in situations such as this. "Ebonics" does seem to be almost another Language in the USA, but even so I do think that many Americans on these shows (whatever their social background) do seem to speak a more confident and articulate form of English than many of their UK counterparts under similar circumstances.

It is not unknown for some British people to adapt their style of speech, and, would you believe, their accent, to suit their surroundings and the company they are part of at the time. I think that is much more of an "English" thing. It doesn't happen here in Scotland, that I know of, and I can't ever imagine any American doing this sort of thing.
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:51 pm GMT
>>I agree - it is the same here to a degree, but the lady did mention her need to learn "proper" English, or words to that effect. "Educated" speech is hard to define, but here in the UK anyway it is not really difficult to judge the educational level of a person, no matter where in the country they hail from, purely from the way s/he speaks. I don't think any kind of "academic snobbery" comes into it at all - it's just a statement of fact. Most university graduates tend to speak English more "properly" than would the majority of people from your average UK council estate (publicly owned housing via the local government authorities). I daresay it's a similar situation in the USA even though you seemed to deny that, not that I wish to contradict you.<<

The closest thing to such that I can think of here in the US is that many Southerners or speakers of AAVE who go to universities come out speaking much closer to General American than before they went to them. However, this is not really a factor here in the Upper Midwest, where going to universities really does not change how one speaks much except if one speaks AAVE; at most one might come out less likely to use "don't" in the place of "doesn't" or "them" in the place of "those", as those are features that do tend to be deprecated overall here.

>>I've seen it for myself on some American chat shows, but the issue of racial origin is very much more of a factor over there than it is here in situations such as this. "Ebonics" does seem to be almost another Language in the USA, but even so I do think that many Americans on these shows (whatever their social background) do seem to speak a more confident and articulate form of English than many of their UK counterparts under similar circumstances.<<

I would not call AAVE a separate language from English here, but it is definitely the most divergent dialect group within NAE; the difference between it and the rest of NAE aside from some Southern dialects is akin to that between, say, Northumbrian and southern English English. It varies, though; the AAVE that one hears in the media is very easily understandable by most NAE-speakers in general, but I myself have heard AAVE spoken here in Milwaukee that I seriously could not understand at all (which was problematic, as I worked with people who spoke such AAVE at the time).

>>It is not unknown for some British people to adapt their style of speech, and, would you believe, their accent, to suit their surroundings and the company they are part of at the time. I think that is much more of an "English" thing. It doesn't happen here in Scotland, that I know of, and I can't ever imagine any American doing this sort of thing.<<

Actually, I would have to say that there is some variation of that sort here. I myself am more likely to use more dialect-specific features when talking primarily to other people from Wisconsin, whereas I am likely to avoid some of the more dialect-specific features when with company primarily from outside the Upper Midwest (and especially from outside North America). However, by far the largest variation in my speech is dependent upon social context; in particular, if I am talking to people in some kind of personal business transaction I tend to use a far higher register than I normally speak in (even at work and even people for other companies), to the point that I even notice a distinct change in my pronunciation (for instance, I largely do not have the raising and diphthongization of /æ/ in such contexts). Likewise, when talking at home with my girlfriend, or in the past with my parents and my sister, I readily use much more extreme dialect features than even when talking with them in public.
Jasper   Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:51 pm GMT
<<2. Pick a smaller city, but one that is less "international," e.g., Milwaukee, Spokane, Syracuse--places that speak varieties of "General American English," and usually have a university and other cultural amenities. >>

Milwaukee and Syracuse? I don't know about that one, Edo. Both have dialect features easily picked out by non-natives; I, for one, can hear them a mile away. I chuckle when I hear people tout certain midwestern cities as a model for General American speech.

I agree with you about Spokane--and one other poster about Seattle. Western US English isn't pure GA, but it's pretty close. Or almost any big city in California. San Francisco speaks purer GA than LA.

As Travis has correctly noted, pure GA is pretty hard to come by; Omaha, perhaps? But that's already been mentioned.
Travis   Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:05 pm GMT
>><<2. Pick a smaller city, but one that is less "international," e.g., Milwaukee, Spokane, Syracuse--places that speak varieties of "General American English," and usually have a university and other cultural amenities. >>

Milwaukee and Syracuse? I don't know about that one, Edo. Both have dialect features easily picked out by non-natives; I, for one, can hear them a mile away. I chuckle when I hear people tout certain midwestern cities as a model for General American speech.<<

I always am amused by that too, honestly, since I live here in Milwaukee, and we definitely do not speak GA here...

>>I agree with you about Spokane--and one other poster about Seattle. Western US English isn't pure GA, but it's pretty close. Or almost any big city in California. San Francisco speaks purer GA than LA.<<

If one accepts the cot-caught merger as a valid variation within GA, I would have to say that western US dialects are pretty close to GA overall, at least away from the Pacific Coast that is.
Jasper   Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:36 pm GMT
<<f one accepts the cot-caught merger as a valid variation within GA, I would have to say that western US dialects are pretty close to GA overall, at least away from the Pacific Coast that is.>>

(nods head with agreement)

Remember the field study I did? I found one native California speaker--born and raised in Sacramento--who retained the cot/caught merger.

Someone--was it you, Travis?--reminded me that there is a small pocket of cot/caught distinction in and around the SanFran area; presumably, this would include Sacramento, which is a very short distance away.

In none of the other Western candidates, out of about 10 speakers, no one else retained that distinction.