Speak American

Uriel   Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:22 pm GMT
I use 'em, Mxsmanic.
Chamonix   Sun Sep 11, 2005 7:01 pm GMT
Bandar,

I would really like to hear your accent. I don't know your age and when you actually started learning English, but I have hard time believing that you have achieved an American accent just by speaking with a few Americans and, besides that, the fact you have never been abroad, it makes me even more skeptical in this regard.
Kirk   Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:52 pm GMT
<<Then you are an exception to the rule.>>

Hardly.

<<I use 'em, Mxsmanic.>>

Yup. As do many others in written language.
Chamonix   Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:47 pm GMT
"Yes, Kirk. You are an exceptionally intelligent and educated native speaker who doesn't know better to use such forms"

Joe,

I would say that any native speaker knows how to use these forms, but it's matter just if they want to use that kind of language and how they feel about it.
I believe that any well educated idividual wouldn't use such a language most of the time. Of course there are situations when I and maybe others use them, such as in chat rooms or emails to friends, but I would never use them in any kind of forums .
Joe   Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:04 pm GMT
That's cool, I'll relay that to Kirk. Oh never mind, he'll see it.
Geoff_One   Tue Sep 13, 2005 2:32 pm GMT
Mxsmanic,
Did you say "You're *trying too* hard to sound like a native speaker."
deliberately in order to try and draw out the (long e vowel) joke from
the forum members whom you have recently been having a number of stouches with? I will be generous and not leave this message here as this would test you. In this significant part of the English speaking world, Australia, people on hearing/seeing a sentence like yours could come back, in a half joking sort of way, with the retort - "You're very trying" - meaning "You're a real pain". Given the recent background, I was wondering if this was going to happen, but it didn't. So this leads to a question -Is it common usage through out the English speaking world that "very trying" is a synonym for "real pain"?
Geoff_One   Tue Sep 13, 2005 2:46 pm GMT
Erratum:
In this significant part of the English speaking world, Australia, people on hearing/seeing a sentence like yours *may* come back, in a half joking sort of way, with the retort - "You're very trying" - meaning "You're a real pain".
Uriel   Tue Sep 13, 2005 6:31 pm GMT
Yup, we have the same expression, as well as "you're trying my patience."
Rick Johnson   Tue Sep 13, 2005 9:51 pm GMT
Geoff_One,

The same phrase "You're very trying" is well used in Britain....no great surprise I guess!
Kirk   Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:01 am GMT
<<I would say that any native speaker knows how to use these forms, but it's matter just if they want to use that kind of language and how they feel about it.
I believe that any well educated idividual wouldn't use such a language most of the time. Of course there are situations when I and maybe others use them, such as in chat rooms or emails to friends, but I would never use them in any kind of forums .>>

That's fine. You can do what you want. I don't consider the register of language used here to be completely formal so I throw in things sometimes which hint at conversational forms I (and pretty much any native speaker no matter the educational level) use on a daily basis. I'm not trying to prove my intelligence to anyone so I couldn't care less about what more informal usage conveys (and, once again, every native speaker uses forms like those). I'm just using my native language as it comes naturally ;)
Gjones2   Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:19 am GMT
Mxsmanic, I agree with Kirk that being as negative as you were in your comments is neither helpful nor fair. If you had "picked up" Arabic and written a post on an Arabic forum, would you have liked to be judged that way? ("I suppose if you want to convince people that you're a a teenager from another planet, then your writing style makes sense. But in every other case it reeks of affectation.")

I agree with you about the importance of learning to write formal English, but a few colloquialisms thrown in from time to time isn't a great crime, especially on an internet forum. Though no chatroom, this forum can be rather casual at times. (Also I wouldn't classify what he wrote as "gangsta" English.) You could have made your point, recommended that he leave words or spellings like 'kinda' out of forum posts, and still given him some credit for accomplishing as much as he has.
Travis   Wed Sep 14, 2005 2:56 am GMT
One reason why I do tend to try to actually avoid much use of non-formal writing conventions in contexts like forums is specifically because I am intentionally trying to use literary language-type conventions, including the grammar and usage which would normally be out of place in the everyday spoken language, and am often using a style which is formal enough that mixing it with informal orthographic conventions would seem out of place. Stylistically, mixing things like the use of "shall" and the freestanding use of both the past and present subjunctives with non-formal orthographic conventions such as the use of "shouldna" and suffixed pronominal clitics which attempt to more closely represent the spoken language would be highly inconsistent in nature.

On the other hand, in contexts where I writing specifically informally, such as in chatting online, I try to represent the spoken language as I speak it as closely as possible to the extent that such is actually readable by those reading. I do try to use existing informal writing conventions, like those mentioned above, to avoid confusing individuals and to specifically indicate a level of informality to the reader, but I will however extrapolate upon existing informal orthographic conventions to try to generalize them to all cases to which they apply. Furthermore, I try to intentionally avoid formal grammar and usage which would not be representative of spoken usage, except when such is intended specifically for effect or emphasis. This is because I am not simply just trying to use informal orthographic conventions, but rather am attempting to actually approximate the spoken language as close as reasonably possible in the context of a written medium. Likewise, I try to eliminate unnecessary formal orthographic conventions whose elimination would not confuse most readers. For example, with cliticized personal pronouns, I actually attach them to the ends of preceding words, without any interceding spaces and separated from them only by apostrophes; the specific reason for this is that they are to be actually enunciated as part of the preceding word, so hence writing them out as if they were separate words would be inaccurate. Similarly, I often generalize the use of the written suffix -"a" from informal written forms like "kinda", "sorta", "alla", and like to *all* cases where formal "of" would be cliticized in practice in most everyday speech here. Of course, there are drawbacks to all of this, as many non-native English speakers are not that familiar with many informal written English conventions, such as the use of "shouldna" to represented "should" when negated and perfect, due to having been primarily taught formal orthographic conventions in English and having had less exposure to informal written forms in English than most literate native English-speakers. (Of course, the same thing goes the other way around, as I have seen plenty of near illegible (for myself) written German in IRC, even though *most* of the native German speakers seemed to understand said German just fine.)
Boy   Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:59 am GMT
Travis:

yesterday I was reading a book on good writing skills in English. The author of the book wrote that at best if writers wanted to write a long sentence, its length should not be exceeded more than two short sentences. Breaking points into different paras may help ordinary readers to understand the context easily. I'm not giving this piece of advice but the American author himself. Take a look at your above post. Too long sentences and no paras. To be honest, I have read posts of native speakers not only on this forum but also on others, and I didn't find
anyone who wrote such long sentences where a full stop is coming after4-5 sentences. I know your are very fluent in spoken English but come one don't write written English the way you speak. I always wanted to read your points of views on different topics but I got exhausted or dozed off
in the middle of the posts easily and as a result I tried to move on to other posters. I just wonder why don't you use short sentences??



Thanks.
Sanja   Thu Sep 15, 2005 3:43 pm GMT
I agree that Travis' style is sometimes a little bit hard to read and maybe I would give up if I was in a hurry, but when I actually start reading it, I don't have any problems understanding it. Wow, I'm proud, that means that my English has gotten to a pretty high level :)
Mxsmanic   Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:41 pm GMT
It is better for me to be frank with a student than for others to laugh at him behind his back without his knowledge. If he sounds stupid, I'll say so, because if I don't, he'll continue to sound stupid and people will continue to call him stupid indefinitely, only he won't know it, and will only notice the consequences of gossip.

As for learning Arabic, you can be sure that if I did so I wouldn't try to use slang to "go native." I learned French years ago and I speak it reasonably well, but I still do not use slang or substandard French. In fact, I don't even do this in English, my native language. I can communicate much more effectively using the standard language, and I don't have to sound like a junior-high student to do it.