Foreigners ruining English?
I didn't realise English native speakers borrow linguistic habits from foreigners when it comes to their own language. I always thought it was the other way around.
In any case, I will happily stop speaking English, if English native and non-native speakers are willing to address me in Greek. I'll be an angel, too; you can keep your "awuful accent", I don't mind.
Foreigners ruining English? What a sweeping and senseless statement that is. How yould you define the word "foreigners" anyway? Those whose native Language isn't English I suppose.
Let me tell you this from personal experience here in the UK.....many such foreigners here in this country (and there are loads of them) speak a very high standard of English - gramatically correct, well constructed, clear and concise - even with a strong accent.
It certainly isn't the foreigners "ruining English" hereabouts - it's a large number of the native born Brits who are doing a pretty good job themselves with the slaughtering of it. A Polish guy correcting a local guy's grammar is not that rare an event......and anyway, we have foreigners actually teaching English to Brit kids. Talk about taking coals to Newcastle........ :-)
From the viewpoint of an American, this thread is awful, cruel, and really out-of-line.
I don't know if Franco's an American, but historically, the US has been the most tolerant nation in the world for immigrants. His comments aren't what most of us feel.
If I had to agree with one element of Franco's post, it would be that many immigrants from Latin American countries spend insufficient time learning the language; the ubitiquousness of Spanish-language ATMs, et. al., makes the problem worse by enabling them.
How come this thread is racist? Honestly, how anally retentive can you get? If anything restricts free speech and represses legitimate opinion then it's futile political correctness. You can slag off Scots, or the British generally, until you're blue in the face and see if we get all steamed up and up our own back passages. You'll be disappointed....we won't.....well, not so you'd notice anyway! :-)
Maybe my first post was harshly worded. What is my point is that learning english is seen only as chore these days, and lots hate it for that. Learners dont care for the culture and such, but just want to learn it in such way that a child wants to learn to wipe themself up, so as not to be reliant on others. This degrades English's cultural significance in the eyes of everyone.
I'm a learner too, so why would I hassle myself? I'm too vain for that.
Of course there are exceptions, so don't begin whining that YOU happen to like the culture, because YOU arent the majority.
<Learners dont care for the culture and such, but just want to learn it in such way that a child wants to learn to wipe themself up, so as not to be reliant on others. >
In "contemporary" use, there is no single culture connected with English. It's been that way for a few hundred years.
Franco : « English has much status but it lacks 'quality' because so many foreigners speak it and degrade it. »
Mais de quels étrangers parlais-tu ? Les Anglais pourraient penser que tu songeais aux États-uniens.
Jo etè hablant des extrangieros que no tenòn ingles como lengua de nacèdat.
Afin d'apprendre une langue que vous n'avez pas besoin d'approuver ou comme la culture du pays duquel il a commencé.
Learning English language and english culture has no connection for most people.
No hablera frances que no ententè jo sona lengua.
<Of course there are exceptions, so don't begin whining that YOU happen to like the culture, because YOU arent the majority. >
What is this culture you keep talking about? There is NO SINGLE CULTURE assocoated with English. If you think thre is, give us some aspect of what you think make up that culture.
"English has much status but it lacks 'quality' because so many foreigners speak it and degrade it."
No language is set in stone and no language can be preserved, no matter how much "quality" you may consider it to have at any given moment. The English considered 'standard' (and that's almost impossible to define) at the moment would sound totally strange & full of mistakes to someone born a century ago. IMHO, there's no such thing as 'degrading a language', we speak it and we change by doing so.