Will we soon start to learn ESL English?

[Torsten]

Do you agree that at some point native speakers will start saying things like 'informations', 'furnitures' and 'researches'? David Crystal says it might be possible.

TOEIC listening, question-response: Aren't you supposed to be at the staff meeting?

[Jamie (K)]

He may or may not be right. What will probably happen is that some non-native usages will come into native use and some not.

I doubt that "furnitures" and "informations" or "advices" will easily enter native speakers' usage, because they stick out like a big, red sore thumb as a foreigner's errors, so those will take a long time to enter general English usage if they even do at all.

There are some times when non-native usage enters native speakers' usage relatively easily:

1. When the usage is forced on them by some official body.
A lot of the documents issued by the European Union are written in a strange language that is English in structure but French in its vocabulary. Sometimes native English speakers cannot understand that "English", but people who speak French can. For example, in English, the word "harmonize" means to make musical harmony. However, the French speakers in Brussels began using it to mean "coordinate" or "reconcile", which it most definitely does NOT mean in English. However, because that usage has been forced on native English speakers in so many contexts, they sometimes have to use it. (I avoid it whenever I can.)

2. At the phase level, when native speakers think the usage is funny.
• For example, in 1991, Saddam Hussein issued a statement saying that the first Gulf War would be "the mother of all battles". This was so funny to native speakers that they soon began using "the mother of all [noun]s" in lots of contexts, and now it's a common part of the English language.
• In the 1960s, communist China used to issue a lot of propaganda that was in hilarious English, and some of it was so popular that people started using it. Once the Chinese issued a statement calling certain countries "running dog lackeys of the American imperialist warmongering pigs". People found this very, very funny, and they remembered it. So now you sometimes hear a person referred to as a "running dog lackey" of some other person or a company, etc.
• Probably in the 1970s, an American comedy show had two characters called the "wild and crazy guys". They were supposed to be from Czechoslovakia, and they made a typical Czech mistake of often putting "and" between their adjectives. Americans found this so funny that instead of saying "wild, crazy guy", like they used to, they started saying "wild and crazy guy". Now people in their teens and 20s probably don't know that "wild and crazy" was ever funny.

Speaking of funny things evolving into something that's not funny. The title of the movie (and later TV show) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was originally supposed to be funny. The first time I read it in the newspaper, I burst out laughing. Everybody thought it was comical, because you can't imagine a girl named "Buffy" (assumed to be a pampered rich girl) killing vampires. Later, the TV show became serious, and it ran for a long time, so the people who began watching it when they were small have no idea that the title was funny in the beginning.

[Beeesneees]

I agree with some of what you say, but:
I've known 'the mother of all...' to be used for many years before 1991, so that instance is not its origin.
'Buffy' meant nothing to me when I first heard it. Perhaps the 'joke' simply didn't travel well outside the US.
_________________
Cheers m' dears!

[Jamie (K)]

"The mother of all..." was totally new to people in the US at the time Saddam issued the warning, and it got to be a fad here. Maybe there's more Arabic influence in UK English.

The "Buffy" joke probably didn't travel well to the UK, much as some British humor isn't understood outside the UK. The most opaque British humor to Americans is those gags where an Englishman tries to stay calm and polite, to his own detriment, even in outrageous situations. I never understood those skits until a Scotsman explained the concept to me.

[Beeesneees]

[Cgk]

[Beeesneees]

[Cgk]

[Cgk]

[Jamie (K)]