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 #2 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 9:47 am Which words won't they quit using? |
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The most common misused word from my students is "handy" thinking as it looks and sounds English it must be.
So if they answer their mobile or cell I tell them it would be handy for me if they switched it off. Ironically if handy did not exist before this Denglish misuse I think it would be a nice alternative to mobile or cell. But such is the evolution of words, not always logical or appropriate.
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Stew.t.
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| #3 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:11 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and |
Been eating jam on toast over the keyboard again?
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| I've got a guy now who refuses to learn the word "rectangle" and keeps calling it a "carr?". He doesn't even seem to care that people don't understand him! |
A 'carr?' is a square in French and the word for 'rectangle' is also 'rectangle'. So, it's a bit strange, unless 'carr?' is used in another language too?
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| Any other suggestions for the "stubborn word" list? |
This is not exactly a stubborn word from their own language (I can't think of any right now, except for the false friends), but rather ingrained pronunciation mistakes. A very common one is 'is' (pronounced [i:s] not [iz]) for 'it's'. Also, the final d's are a tough one for some students. The Spanish 'd' is often similar to the English 'th' in 'the', so a word like 'and' (if followed by a pause) can be pronounced as 'anth'. That's also why some Spaniards pronounce 'Madrid' as 'Madrith' -- maybe they'd have been better off not changing the Arab name for it 'Makherit'! |
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Conchita
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| #4 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:52 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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A lot of Americans who learn Spanish have a stubborn problem with the word "a?o" (year), and instead they say "ano" (anus).
A woman from Honduras told me last week that her doctor had told her, "?Feliz ano nuevo!" or, "Have a happy new anus!" (I don't think it was her proctologist.) It's not unusual for kids in Spanish class to say, "Tengo veinte anos," or, "I have twenty anuses," rather than, "Tengo veinte a?os," which is, "I am twenty years old." |
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Jamie (K)
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| #5 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 13:06 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
A lot of Americans who learn Spanish have a stubborn problem with the word "a?o" (year), and instead they say "ano" (anus).
A woman from Honduras told me last week that her doctor had told her, "?Feliz ano nuevo!" or, "Have a happy new anus!" (I don't think it was her proctologist.) It's not unusual for kids in Spanish class to say, "Tengo veinte anos," or, "I have twenty anuses," rather than, "Tengo veinte a?os," which is, "I am twenty years old." |
Yes, that's a typical mistake, especially if the students know some Italian and are influenced by 'anno'.
PS: I like your comment about the proctologist! :lol: |
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Conchita
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| #6 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 13:40 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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| Conchita wrote: |
| Yes, that's a typical mistake, especially if the students know some Italian and are influenced by 'anno'. |
But Italian has the same problem between "anno" (year) and "ano" (anus), so you'd think they'd be on the lookout for it. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #7 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 20:42 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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Jamie
This creates an interesting situation:
The Latin word for year is (or was...) "anno"
...and "ano" is pronounced identically.
so if I were to say, in pleasant conversation, to a Spaniard:
"Es 2004 anno domini..."
Would the Spanish person understand me correctly, or would he/she think that I'm saying, "It's 2004 anus of God"?
hehe
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| #8 (permalink) Sat Jan 06, 2007 23:34 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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| prezbucky wrote: |
The Latin word for year is (or was...) "anno"
...and "ano" is pronounced identically. |
'Anno' and 'ano' are pronounced differently in Italian (as for Latin, nobody's sure): 'anno' is pronounced as in 'Ann no', i.e. you have to make it stronger and longer; 'ano' is said like 'ah no'. |
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Conchita
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| #9 (permalink) Sun Jan 07, 2007 0:15 am Which words won't they quit using? |
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| Conchita wrote: |
| prezbucky wrote: |
The Latin word for year is (or was...) "anno"
...and "ano" is pronounced identically. |
'Anno' and 'ano' are pronounced differently in Italian (as for Latin, nobody's sure): 'anno' is pronounced as in 'Ann no', i.e. you have to make it stronger and longer; 'ano' is said like 'ah no'. |
Yes, "anno" is pronounced with a geminate [n], which has to be held out half again to twice as long as a normal [n], or you'll be understood as saying the wrong word. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #10 (permalink) Sun Jan 07, 2007 17:42 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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Hi Jamie (K),
Why do you think people should stop using certain words in English? If enough people use them they will eventually become part of the English lexicon.
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| #11 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 5:33 am Which words won't they quit using? |
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| Englishuser wrote: |
| Why do you think people should stop using certain words in English? If enough people use them they will eventually become part of the English lexicon. |
Some people use them and use them for decades, and they never become part of the English lexicon.
Sometimes it happens because there's already a word just like it in English that has some other meaning. This is the case with a Germlish word like "hit list". We have that term, but it SURE doesn't mean the same thing! Some Swedish psychologist or sociologist apparently had no access to an English dictionary and coined the term "mobbing", by which he meant harassment. After decades, you still seldom hear the word in English, because we already had the same word, and the meaning was much different. Or how about the foreign company that came up with the trademark "TAP Comebag"? NOBODY's going to use THAT term, considering what it really means!
One good reason for people to stop using phony English words is that they simply will not be understood. If a German calls a square a "carr?", no one who doesn't speak French (which means almost nobody) will understand him unless he talks with his hands, and even then maybe they won't. People wouldn't understand the word "friseur", for example, and if they finally figured it out, it would be comical, because it would sound like an incompetent hairdresser who makes people's hair frizzy.
My question to you his this: Why do you think people shouldn't use English words when they speak English? Why shouldn't we just teach foreigners a pidgin and encourage them to babble half-intelligibly?
There are parts of my city where people talk like that: "I know mensch. He za Polen, za Esterreich, za Germany. He in da restaurant worken, kochen, dish waschen wit da schwarzen. He have wife, kinder. Day kommen want. He no want." The man who said this to me had lived here for 30 years. Needless to say, his career prospects were quite limited, but it's quite ethnocentric to think that this man should have learned to talk better, isn't it! |
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Jamie (K)
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| #12 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 11:59 am Which words won't they quit using? |
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Hi jamie
I think the problem or "issue" here is langauge interference. Unfortunately German is the most "infected by Enlgish " language of European languages. There are many reasons amongst them
English is Kool and the image of USA and UK predominates T.V. and Lit. More novels are published and films, T.V. series shown in Germany than the native variant.
Also I think despite the quality of dubbing (sychronising) means that there is not enough English programmes, flims in the original.
This tips the balance when you see the general level of English.
What looks English could be.
Take this example I saw in a supermarket that provided a nice service of a "bodybag". How dangerous can a supermarket be?
I think that one problem is how does a country deal with the overpowering influence of the English langauge.
One the one hand you want to protect you own language, on the other you could be seen as draconian or out of date if you do not absorb some English.
But the exposure to this issue is so global that I am sure English has had the same problems, take the historical influence of Rome, or Norman French on British English or Spanish and German on American.
At some point there will be a cross over period and we are going trough this flux right now. Many people and some languages will suffer. But it is an age old problem we just seem to think is modern.
I think what becomes part of the English lexicon is often dependent on exposure and again the balance here is with America and the UK. How can non-native usage really compete and become absorbed? Unless it gets backed by Hollywood ; )
We still have to appreciate English borrows words so often and I think that its adaptability is one reason it is surviving as the global langauge.
I agree that people should learn to communicate to a certain understandable level. Some immigrants will just have the problem that there reason to emigrate outweighs their linguistic capabilities. Or some may only ever reach survival level in a langauge. Others could be in a cross over period.
But I think a lot of this is down to globalisation. Maybe it is a by-product of the fact that English is the sometimes reluctantly accepted global language.
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| #13 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 16:19 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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| stew.t. wrote: |
| I think the problem or "issue" here is langauge interference. |
Well, yes, that's the main issue. Beyond that, though, is the fact that some people are more likely to filter everything they learn and see through their own language and culture than others are.
I find that the foreigner who has the problem of using all those pesky foreign words, even when he is not understood, is frequently the same person whose life abroad is immensely complicated because he interprets everything people do in terms of what it would mean if someone from his own country did it, rather than trying to understand why the person in the new country is doing it. All correction or indication that he's misunderstood -- or has been misunderstood -- will bounce off this person's head, and he continues making the same mistakes.
An example: I know a man who, despite years of studying English, still peppers his English with German and French words that he knows are not understood in English. He even says conjunctions like "and" and "but" in German when he is speaking English: "I tried, aber I couldn't find the street."
This same guy also goes through a lot of pain here in the US, because he won't open his mind to figure out why certain things happen. Everything he sees happen in America, he interprets according to two preconceived ideas he already had when he arrived: (1) "America limits people's freedom." (2) "Americans are stupid." (Interestingly, while I've never heard Americans say that Germans are stupid, we often believe that people in Germany have limited freedom.)
The man's brain works like this: He notices a phenomenon in the US that he doesn't like. He claims it is proof that "America limits people's freedom." You can explain in a million ways that what he sees is not a limitation of freedom, but he won't stop using that phrase. However, if you point out to him that people in Germany have even less freedom in that aspect of life than in the US, he'll forget all about the phrase "limitation on freedom" and start saying that, "This shows Americans are stupid, because they don't adhere to a strict system." If he decides at the outset that something Americans do is "stupid", and then you can demonstrate why it's actually a pretty intelligent way of dealing with a certain situation, he'll then switch over to saying that the Americans are "limiting their freedom". He ping-pongs back and forth between just two concepts, and the last thing that occurs to him is to see whether he really understands what is going on.
This same kind of mental rigidity that puts him in so much pain when he tries to maneuver a foreign culture also makes him refuse to learn English words when for some reason he prefers a German or French one. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #14 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 20:25 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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Hi Jamie,
You asked me:
| Quote: |
| Why do you think people shouldn't use English words when they speak English? Why shouldn't we just teach foreigners a pidgin and encourage them to babble half-intelligibly? |
Of course, what we want to do is to make ourselves understood. For the sake of being understood it's important to use standard English vocabulary when communicating with people from outside your dialect area. But I think it's ridiculous to imply that only native speakers of English make contributions to the English lexicon. Borrowing words from other languages isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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| #15 (permalink) Mon Jan 08, 2007 20:43 pm Which words won't they quit using? |
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Hi Jamie,
The more you contribute to this forum and others, the more you quote examples of what people have said to you about Americans, the more I wonder at and marvel at the sorts of people you encounter in your daily life. Invariably you seem to come across sharp critics of and debunkers of both the American way of life and the English that they speak. Why should this be so or is it an illusion I am living under?
A
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