English Language Altered-hard for foreigners to understand!

from JoeUser Forums

Has anyone noticed how much Americans have altered the English language? I mean REALLY... What ever happened to the standard "yes" and "no"? No, the American citizens, in particular, have significantly altered the english language.

My friend Ennet, a foreign exchange student from Romania recently spoke to me about the difficulties she had when she first came into the country. She informed me that many of the words and phrases that she had learned back at home were not very useful when speaking to American teenagers. As I asked before, whatever happened to answering questions with 'yes' or 'no'? Now, it is Yeah/sure/okay/yep, or Nah/uh uh/ nope/huh uh. Has the English language gone so far down the toilet that we have to resort to GRUNTING to answer someone? I swear, we could hold an entire conversation with grunts... which is pretty sad. As stated in my intro, I admitted that I say "Ya'll" sometimes... and at my school, a lot of people resort to what I call "hick-talk": Yampto, Dgeatyet, awrite, ya'll, and Usetacould; meaning "you want to?", "did you eat yet", "all right", "you all" and "i used to be able to"... (the latter being my favorite.. hehe). Anyway, poor romanian Ennet had no idea what these words meant. I'm sure if everyone actually thought about the phrases and sentences we actually say, we would all be surprised to discover the corruption of the authentic language. If we all realized these alterations, foreigners in particular would have a much easier time comprehending and communicating with us.

Have a great day!
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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well you do have a point in teh curruption of the English Language, but now take a moment and think about the language of English itself. If you go through the dictionary and look at the origin of most of the English Language itself, it in itself is a corruption of every single word that we have taken from other languages. The only reason we do not think of it as a curruption of the base languages that we already know of is simply because we use the language every day. And the purpose of a language is to adapt as do the speaker of the language... there has been many a time that I have seen people that spend massive amounts on the computer speak in eletronical acronyms etc. such as but clearly not limited to RAM. Now in everyday language ram should me the male of a herd of sheep but more than likely with those that use computers more and more ram means random access memory.. this is just an example of how the language is changing around us.
It should also be said that American English and English in general is the most adaptive language globally. For the simple that it HAS taken from other languges to make its lexicon fatter and larger than any other language. Let it also be said that it is widely known that the English Language is the hardest language to learn. Any other language even Hebrew and Greek and Japanese all these languages are infinantly easier to learn.
So there it is.... that is why English has changed and went down that shit hole you could say.

Thomas
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Nice Points Cann1bal- i hadnt thought of the English language as being corrupted versions of other languages.. Its just crazy how some english teachers in foreign teachers teach the basics, or what the book tells them to teach, but when the student travels abroad, it is discouraging. I found it interesting when speaking to my foreign exchange student friend how bad our english has gotten. thanks for the comments and good points nice to meet you by the way (i joined today!)
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
this is solely my opinion. having spent far too much time in chats that drew users from all over the world, ive concluded the most fluent and grammatically correct english typers are scandanavians. its difficult deciding which of the native english-speaking countries produces the least fluent citizens because not one is significantly better than the rest hahahah.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
lol.... nice one King.... never thought about that... though I will say this... Im American, I live in Texas for all you blogger out there that think I live in aus... I dont... my girl friend on the other hand does... so I guess to me even though this may sound weird as all hell, I can almost understand australians better than I can some regions of americans... go figure... but I think this is quite possible because I have talked to my girl friend so much, at least 12 hours a day that thier speech patterns become more recognizable to me then americans. Maybe I am more aussie than american, wouldnt suprise me at all.

Thomas

Post Script... glad to have ya... blog on young padawan!
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
It is an affront to the English language that Americans actually claim to speak 'English'. What particularly annoys me is when British people adopt the language of America. Phrases which particularly annoy me include; "Can I get a coffee/doughnut etc..." No you may not get one, if you were getting it then you wouldn't need to ask would you? I also dislike the use of the word "guy" instead of chap, or as the peasants might say "bloke". The way in which Americans spell is truly terrible and so simplified that it only confounds my view that America is a nation of buffoons.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top

The language that a person learns in school is prescriptive.  I think that it is good for language students to learn how language should be spoken.


Learning how a language should be spoken always comes into conflict with how a language actually is spoken.  It doesn't only happen with English either.  I studeied Russian in college, but wasn't able to speak it very well there until I picked up some of the local dialect.


I studied textbook Japanese, but nobody talks like that either.  It is nice to know, but a person comes off as kind of weird speaking it.


I have heard plenty of anecdotes about how academic Spanish is difficult to communicate with in Mexico/ Spain/ Guatemala/ Puerto Rico/ ...


As a second language teacher, I am amazed at how readily slang creeps into the writing and communication of my students.  On one hand it makes their English more "normal," but on the other hand it makes them seem less intelligent.  I think that it is important for language students to be familiar with more than one register of language to be able to communicate effectively.

Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
thanks for the interesting comments everyone! its great to have so many different experiences come into a convo!