Everything your english teacher told you was wrong!

This Forum is about the English language. In learning any language the non-native speaker needs to imitate the speech patterns that he or she will find useful. For most practical purposes English learners would be well advised to copy Mxsmanic's writing which is concise, clear and accurate. We know clearly what he wants to say and he does not use too many words to say it.

On the other hand, Travis' writing is almost a caricature of sloppy prose, imprecise, illogical, wordy and unclear. I can only imagine a discussion with him.

When we compare the two styles it becomes obvious why it is important to maintain standards in communication on any language.

I think that some of the posts in here are somewhat badly constructed in that they tend to be rather convoluted, unnecessarily complicated in style and not always adhering to correct grammar.

The result of this? It makes it a tad more difficult to read quickly in scan form, which is essential if you need to get through a whole morass of material in an extremely limited time factor.

Just my observation...FWIW.

Have a nice day! :-)

>>This Forum is about the English language. In learning any language the non-native speaker needs to imitate the speech patterns that he or she will find useful. For most practical purposes English learners would be well advised to copy Mxsmanic's writing which is concise, clear and accurate. We know clearly what he wants to say and he does not use too many words to say it.<<

That does not make the content of what he actually *says* any better, how much you like his writing style aside. If anything, I would consider much of what he says to be absolutely unfounded with a linguistic standpoint. (And of course, I don't think that those who approach subjects like these from any standpoint *other* than a linguistic one to have any right to have an opinion in the first place.)

>>On the other hand, Travis' writing is almost a caricature of sloppy prose, imprecise, illogical, wordy and unclear. I can only imagine a discussion with him.<<

Umm, can we say ad hominem here? Remember that my writing style itself has nothing at all to do with what I actually have said here. And anyways, we were not discussing writing styles here, but rather what *sort* of English is to be taught in the first place. If all you can do now is resort to ad hominem attacks with relevance to the given discussion, then I should assume that you don't have anything better to say here. Thus, I should consider you to have lost the argument in question.

>>When we compare the two styles it becomes obvious why it is important to maintain standards in communication on any language.<<

You're obviously changing the meaning of the term "standard" as it has to do with this discussion, as we were speaking about "standards" in the sense of "standard" language forms, be they Standard American English, Received Pronunciation, standard Hochdeutsch, Parisian French, or so on. Now you're using the term to mean "standards" with respect to writing styles and like, which is a completely different meaning of said term, and also you did not ever say that you were using such with a different meaning. Hence, you're clearly trying to divert the discussion to something else because you cannot win the preceding argument. If you could have, you wouldn't be doing this in the first place.

I did not attack you as a person. You may be the nicest guy in the world.

You write very poorly. You discourage people from reading what you have to say. This amounts to poor communication.

When I correct writing I focus on the CLEAN concept:

Clear .....succinct and to the point
Logical.....verb agreements, the logic of the languge, consistency of reference, logical arguments etc.
Effective..persuasive arguments, substantiated arguments, a pleasant tone
Accurate..correct use of words and phrases, spelling
Normal Usage.what is often called grammar, but which evolves and allows some variation. "To whom" is preferred but not obligatory, for example.

Your prose is not a model of CLEAN English, and therefore of limited usefulness outside of certain kinds of social interaction. I do not recommend it to non-native speakers. Ditto with 'jjhlk". In my experience, a person who cannot write well, cannot speak well.

If you look at the Common European Framework language proficiency levels (for all languages) you will see the kinds of expectations most language learners have. You will see that the ability to describe complicated concepts that relate to business, academic or other subjects is important. To achieve this requires learning a universally recognized standard of the language.

You and "jjhlk" represent a lazy attitude towards language which both of your writing styles amply exemplify.

I think you slightly misinterpreted what I meant in this given context by "ad hominem". I meant such in the pure sense of the logical fallacy with said name, not whether you were actually intending anything as a personal attack per se. At least to me, it very well seemed you were committed said logical fallacy, because you weren't arguing in terms of that being discussed, but rather were invoking things related to those discussing said matter which do not directly pertain to that which was being discussed. Even if I have a really unclear and verbose writing style, that has nothing to do with whether it is a good idea to teach only "standard" language forms (that is, only the literary language and its direct spoken analogue) or not.

That should be "you were committing said logical fallacy" above.

Learning a natural language is very much like learning a computer language when it comes to the utility of adhering to a standard. Whenever any method of communication is used between two entities, the efficiency and precision of that method depends on the degree to which the two entities mutually adhere to a common, precise standard. When two computers communicate in ASCII, their success in understanding each other depends on slavish adherence to the ASCII code standard. When two people communicate in English, their success in communicating depends on slavish adherence to a single standard of English.

It is possible to communicate in natural languages using slightly different standards between speaker and listener, but whenever this is done, part of the communication is lost or distorted. The only way to communicate 100% correctly is to use exactly the same English standard at both ends. This is a proven consequence of information theory, not just speculation.

Therefore, ESL/EFL students who wish to communicate with maximal success and efficiency in English _must_ study and adhere to a standard that is as close as possible to all the standards they are likely to encounter in their use of English. In practice, this means one of the formal standards of English, such as RP or GAE. If they wish to communicate only with Australians, then Australian English would be a better choice. But if they wish to communicate with all English speakers worldwide, then Australian English would be a poor choice, because it is less congruent with the most prevalent standards than are RP and GAE.

Most ESL/EFL students want a general capacity to communicate in English, and teaching them the most widespread standards (RP and GAE) achieves this goal. Unlike linguists who have nothing better to do than argue points of linguistics all day, ESL/EFL students need a reliable tool for communication, and ivory-tower discussions of the imperialism of this or that standard are worse then useless to them.

When I am paid to teach ESL/EFL students, these students want practical results, not academic debates. I teach them GAE (one of two widely recognized and nearly identical standards of English, and also the one I happen to speak), and try to get them to adhere as closely as possible to this standard. When and if they come to master English as educated natives do, then certainly they shall be free to experiment with more bohemian standards of English, but NOT BEFORE. That's not what they want, and that's not what I teach. I just provide them with a reliable tool for communication. Discussions of aesthetics, social impact, philosophy, and the like are entirely irrelevant to this goal, and so I ignore them. This is the way students want it, and I don't blame them.

The problem though is that you make the assumption here that such "standard" forms are what are spoken by the general populace in the first place overall. For example, you make reference to Received Pronunciation as such a "standard", in the context of the UK of course. The matter is that only a small portion of the population of the UK ever spoke RP to start with, and now RP has become socially deprecated in many cases, is consequently being replaced by Estuary English. Hence, on a spoken language level, can you actually say that RP has much relevance at all to language forms that most of the population there uses on an everyday basis? If one were to choose a truly "standard", as in basically average, form for spoken English English today, it would almost certainly not be RP, and would most likely be Estuary English instead.

Likewise, as much as "General American English" is called "general", that does not mean that it is really representative of what an "average" version of spoken everyday North American English would be. For example, everyday spoken NAE differs significantly with respect to modal constructions and cliticization, amongst other things, from said "standard" form. This is partly because it is linked with the formal/literary language, which only marginally has cliticization (or has limited cliticization, but not nearly to the degree of everyday spoken NAE) and has a wholly different modal system, for all practical purposes, from the everyday spoken language. Additionally, it is too heavily informed by what grammarians and like have arbitrarily said is "correct" and is generally too literary in nature, and thus is out of touch with the actual everyday spoken language. Hence, in this case as well, what is called "standard" is not necessarily representative of what is actually spoken by the general population of English-speaking North America as a whole.

Everyone _understands_ RP and GAE, even if not everyone speaks it. The two standards are so geographically widespread that a person speaking with them cannot be easily identified with any one region or minority group; at best, one can speculate that the GAE speaker is American and the RP speaker British (although even these assumptions are not entirely safe).

ESL/EFL students want to speak in a way that doesn't sound "foreign" or "from somewhere else." They want to be heard for what they say, and not how they say it. The best way to accomplish this is to teach them a very vanilla, standard English that isn't closely associated with any one geographical area or human group. GAE and RP are best for this.

The problem with Estuary English is that it is associated with … well, the Thames estuary region. Received Pronunciation isn't associated with any part of the world (except the UK, and even that association is weak because RP is taught in many other countries). Similarly, GAE is what CNN speaks, and CNN goes around the world in 30 minutes.

It is not necessary that an English standard be widely spoken, as long as it is widely understood. And it helps if the standard is neutral enough to prevent any clear identification of the speaker (and the prejudices that might go therewith). Neutral RP and GAE satisfy these criteria.

When I speak French, if one subtracts out my American accent, the French I speak is a rigorously neutral French, that "isn't from anywhere." I tell people that I was born in the Radio France building. The best anyone can say when listening to me (disregarding the American accent) is that I'm not from their village, but they can't tell exactly where I'm from, and so they have no prejudices concerning me. I prefer it that way. That's what I try to convey to students as well. If you talk like a CNN or BBC announcer, people may recognize that you're not from the neighborhood, but that's as far as they can go.

In my opinion, the variety of English you speak also depends on the teacher, who in any case will serve as a model. At high school, I had a teacher (non-native) who spoke the "classical" RP, and I found that her accent corresponded roughly with the "neutral" accent used in the British media, so I tried to imitate her accent somewhat, but without the RP mannerisms I perceived as old-fashioned (like the over-pronunciation of the dipthong in "no", for example). At university, I mostly had native teachers, and it was particularly an Irish one whose speech influenced my accent the most. I don't think it is wrong to have a slight regional flavour to your speech, which almost inevitably happens if you have a native teacher right from the start. For example, I read of an Irish teacher whose Hungarian pupils started to speak with the Belfast accent she used (apparently at her classes as well). Maybe you will encounter some prejudice if you speak with an accent like that, but to me this is still better than speaking with a strong foreign accent, which is really off-putting in most cases.

You can avoid taking on your teacher's accent by having multiple teachers.

I agree with Mxsmanic that it's usually best for students to try to conform to one of the formal standards. These standards are more widely understood. Also most students will need to learn a formal dialect for writing anyway, so why not learn a spoken one that's fairly close to it? If they learn one that diverges greatly from the written language -- in the United States, for example, the dialect of uneducated hillbillies or of street people in an urban ghetto -- they'll end up having to work much harder. Then too dialects have status. Most foreign students want to give the impression that they're well educated.

I wouldn't discount the importance of recognizing the meanings of slang, but using it should be postponed until the students are competent to judge when it's appropriate. Of course, some students will be especially drawn to it (because of an interest in popular songs, for instance), and I wouldn't want to take that enjoyment away from them. I'd stress the more formal language in class, though, and expect them to know it.

I'm referring mostly to vocabulary and syntax rather than to pronunciation, but there too one of the radio announcer accents would probably be best. Easterner, I agree that having an Irish (English) accent is better than having a foreign one, but it seems to me that with all the electronic media nowadays students should have many models available. (I used to listen to short-wave radio for my models in learning foreign languages.) By using many models, they should end up with a more generic accent, but one that resembles one of the major standards.

>like the over-pronunciation of the dipthong in "no", for example [Easterner]

That sound always amuses me. Just the other day I was watching a rerun of a British TV program, and my attention was drawn to the pronunciation of 'no' by one of the characters. (The character was Lionel, in that situation comedy in which two ex-lovers meet again in middle age.) I repeated the word several times, trying to say it exactly the way he did, and chuckling each time. I won't make the value judgment that this is a over-pronunciation, but I'm amazed sometimes at the length and also the nuances of intonation that some of these English chaps can put into that word. (Is 'chaps' still a word that somebody who draws out that 'o' would use? I'm just playing -- I don't ordinarily mix in words like 'chap' in my American dialect.)

However, Mxsmanic, that ignores the issue of being able to *understand* things that may be common but which are outside of the formal "standards". When speaking with non-native English-speakers in Real Life (primarily at school), it's more common that the individuals that I'm speaking to have trouble understanding me than the other way around, if I do not codeswitch into formal NAE. Being more easily understood than one can be understood, except if whom one is speaking with is speaking quite formally, indicates that the problem is that not that one doesn't speak a variety that is widely understood. Rather, it indicates that one isn't sufficiently familiar with whatever variety of the everyday spoken language is being used by the other party, which trying to more closely focus on teaching a strictly "standard" variety will *not* help.

There are no "dialects of english". Of course english is spoken a little differently in certain places. For instance, If you was a black kid from New York City you might be talkin like this but why you gotta say its only black kids talkin like that. Ni66a for all you know everyone up in here be talkin like this.

I dont consider that a dialect, just kindof crappy english. And Im actually not trying to insult anyone but thats the way alot of people here actually talk(except they say ni66a about 10x more).T
The technical word for it is Ebonics.