This is a question asked in class by Barbara C. "What about the language they teach us at school?" Do they teach us old fashioned, boring and stiff English? How does that relate to our currrent communicative needs?"
Martina from the C1 course says "the only people who are hard to understand at conferences are the English".
At the very beginning ...this sounds strange, but... what do 'not Italian people' think about 'Italian people' speaking Italian? Perhaps They think that 'not Italian people' are more likely to be understood then 'Italian people' themselves. Why?
When you learn a foreign language at school you learn the grammar and (hopefully)the correct accent.
But do you think all the British or, in this case, all the English speak in the same way?
In Italy there are so many accents, dialects and ways of saying that Italian people themselves hardly understand other Italian people from another region. I think the same happens in England for the English people. English is their language and so inside it they have their dialects, their accents and their ways of saying.
when I was fifteen I can remember many teenagers using the wrong article before a noun like "il doccia" and not "la doccia". They were aware that this was wrong but They liked it. It was with-it.
When you speak a language different from your mother tongue you don't do such a thing. This is because you try to speak as well as possible, using your knowlege at the best.
In British English/American English you can find "gotta", "wanna" and "dunno". "Wanna" and "gonna" are frequently used in speech in informal colloquial English, particularly American English, instead of 'want to' and 'going to'. "Dunno", meaning 'I don't know', is characteristic of very informal speech in British English. So, if an American/English man/woman speaking to us uses these words we'll probably don't understand anything. This is because at school we have never learnt such informal words. All the other people (not English or American) will never use these expressions so, for us, it becames easier to understand what They say, don't it?
But this doesn't mean English people speak bad, it just means that all not English people are more likely to learn the same language then English people, even though this can sound very strange!!
I think it's the same for 'not Italian people', I think They understand everybody but 'Italian people' :)
Another thing I would like to remark is that the more confortable a person is speaking a language and the more quickly he/she is prone to speak. I mean English/American people speak more quickly then 'not English/American people' and this makes more difficult to understand Them. ..... .....
I agree with Sara, I reckon that sometimes, when I'm speaking with the Turkish or Romanian guy working in my department, they don't understand, just because I, unknowingly, used some Tuscan expression or word they obviously don't know... even if I try to speak the most correct Italian as possible, sometimes I fall and speak dialect. So, comparing with how we behave, it's natural that native-english speakers are harder to understand than non-native ones, simply because the first ones manage their language at best, and this is not a guilt!!!!
About the English we learn at school, instead, I'd like to ask luisa if she would consider wrong using expressions like "gonna" or "wanna" during the speech of a student. I'm asking that 'cause, when I was at school, my teacher always circled in red those expressions in my homework, and I (hard like a donkey) intentionally kept using them, since I thought those were English; not the one written on grammars, but still English.
I have been working in tertiary education and foreign language teaching for over 16 years. My professional areas of interest are Language Awareness, Tandem learning, Learner Counselling, Cross Cultural communication and language learning in multimedia environnments including Second Life.
7 comments:
When watching a football match the "English of the commentators follows the direction of the ball". Mithu.
On the meaning of "film". "Does film mean 'film film' or 'film'. Ciro on the difference between film and cinema.
This is a question asked in class by Barbara C. "What about the language they teach us at school?" Do they teach us old fashioned, boring and stiff English? How does that relate to our currrent communicative needs?"
Andrea from the B2 class says" If you go onto wordreference.com the word 'draw' means everything.
Martina from the C1 course says "the only people who are hard to understand at conferences are the English".
Martina from the C1 course says "the only people who are hard to understand at conferences are the English".
At the very beginning ...this sounds strange, but...
what do 'not Italian people' think about 'Italian people' speaking Italian? Perhaps They think that 'not Italian people' are more likely to be understood then 'Italian people' themselves. Why?
When you learn a foreign language at school you learn the grammar and (hopefully)the correct accent.
But do you think all the British or, in this case, all the
English speak in the same way?
In Italy there are so many accents, dialects and ways of saying that Italian people themselves hardly understand other Italian people from another region. I think the same happens in England for the English people. English is their language and so inside it they have their dialects, their accents and their ways of saying.
when I was fifteen I can remember many teenagers using the wrong article before a noun like "il doccia" and not "la doccia". They were aware that this was wrong but
They liked it. It was with-it.
When you speak a language different from your mother tongue you don't do such a thing. This is because you try to speak as well as possible, using your knowlege at the best.
In British English/American English you can find "gotta", "wanna" and "dunno". "Wanna" and "gonna" are frequently used in speech in
informal colloquial English, particularly American English, instead of 'want to' and
'going to'. "Dunno", meaning 'I don't know', is characteristic of very informal speech in British English. So, if an American/English man/woman speaking to us uses these
words we'll probably don't understand anything. This is because at school we have
never learnt such informal words. All the other people (not English or American) will never use these expressions so, for us, it becames easier to understand what
They say, don't it?
But this doesn't mean English people speak bad, it just means
that all not English people are more likely to learn the same language then English people, even though this can sound very strange!!
I think it's the same for 'not
Italian people', I think They understand everybody but 'Italian people' :)
Another thing I would like to remark is that the more confortable a person is
speaking a language and the more quickly he/she is prone to speak. I mean English/American people speak more quickly then 'not English/American people' and
this makes more difficult to understand Them.
.....
.....
I agree with Sara, I reckon that sometimes, when I'm speaking with the Turkish or Romanian guy working in my department, they don't understand, just because I, unknowingly, used some Tuscan expression or word they obviously don't know... even if I try to speak the most correct Italian as possible, sometimes I fall and speak dialect.
So, comparing with how we behave, it's natural that native-english speakers are harder to understand than non-native ones, simply because the first ones manage their language at best, and this is not a guilt!!!!
About the English we learn at school, instead, I'd like to ask luisa if she would consider wrong using expressions like "gonna" or "wanna" during the speech of a student.
I'm asking that 'cause, when I was at school, my teacher always circled in red those expressions in my homework, and I (hard like a donkey) intentionally kept using them, since I thought those were English; not the one written on grammars, but still English.
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