Speak Global English Video Series
Part 3 of 22:
Who owns the English language?
There are about 400 million native English speakers in our world today. And when we say “native” speakers, they are geographically defined as people living and speaking English in the UK, US, Canada and Australia.
In the rest of the world we have about 1.4 BILLION non-native speakers of English.
In China alone, there are 300 million people who speak some level of English. There are an additional 350 million learning English. And what I find especially interesting is that they are learning American English.
American English is spoken by about 280 million people in the US. So basically, we have over double the number of English speakers in China than in the whole United States.
Oh, and that Queen’s English everyone talks about? Only around 1 million people in the world actually speak that variety.
To think that native English speakers can continue to claim some kind of ownership of the English language is ill-informed at best.
Communication is a two-way street, and whether you’re a native speaker or not, you still need to take responsibility for your communication. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself — we’ll talk more about responsibility next time!
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How is English REALLY being used in business? Part 2
Amazing stats made interesting…thanks Heather
Only one million people speak “the Queen’s English”. Do you mean “Received
pronunciation” of English (which is no more than a pronunciation), or do
you mean something which has some distinct vocabulary, rules, grammar etc?
Heather Hansen has obviously done a lot of research and is an expert on
this topic. She has never said English isn’t from England. She’s commenting
on how the language has evolved and will continue to evolve. Very
interesting series, Heather. Keep on educating us… some of us want to learn
more!
American English is not true English, its a mix of other languages all
mashed up together. The best English is actually spoken in Ireland, and
Heather didn’t even mention that, as i am very sure she has no clue of that
fact.
"targeted at the deaf" What? WTF? It's not even captioned.
I'm sorry +Cindy Brown It was a joke as +Heather Hansen is articulating almost aloud, but of course not comprehensible for deaf people.
FYI overarticulation is of no help whatsoever to deaf or HoH.
Not looking fake would help her better to reach her audience.
They should take into account the culture of their audience. That kind of forced face expressions look really fake.
Sure +Víktor Bautista i Roca but I picked this video mostly because it's an example of someone claiming to teach a more neutral pronunciation of English.
i find the overacting annoying as well.
It's noticeable that native English speakers with a heavy local accent are more misunderstood than the new 'second language English' speakers.
I tend to think it has more to do with fluency than accent. Generally speaking, non native speakers aren't as fluent as native speakers. That helps. And again, generally, less idioms.
And there are exceptions, depending on the first language.
Also, is anyone else surprised that someone talking about Global English has what is clearly an American accent?
Maybe I should rephrase it as 'second language English speakers often understand each other better than a mix of native and non native' +Alex Balcázar
I don't know for sure but from personal experience attending lots of international conferences and other anecdotal experience could be explained by the lower interest on actual pronunciation by non natives.
I'm pretty sure I had more problems during the first few minutes walking into an English pub than into an international gathering. And it looked like the locals had the same problem.
Possibly related to not being used to another accent? +Alex Balcázar
Oh, no, no need for rephrasing. In fact, it's something I hear all the time. Because it is true, obviously.
For most non native speakers, it is easier to understand other non native speakers. What I meant is that I think it has to do with fluency rather than accents.
As to being used to different accents, I should leave this to native speakers but my experience is that all non American native speakers understand every single American accent but it doesn't go the other way around. The obvious explanation is TV and cinema.
In case of doubt, ask Americans how much they understand here: Begbie – who the fuck are you bar fight full scene
I used to communicate with mostly Americans and the incidental Londoner without any problem UNTIL I moved to the south of Spain.
My own neighbourhood is 50% Spanish and 50% incomprehensible English. Scots, but mostly people from the northern part of England itself.
My fluency should be ok, but both parties struggled in understanding each other. +Alex Balcázar
As a (relevant) aside I stumbled across this particular video as I was looking for a way to improve my own English pronunciation which still suffers from a strong Dutch accent especially when I'm tired.
I actually wondered what would be easier in my own case: getting back to a sort of American English or trying to achieve the Queen's standard of Received pronunciation.
Now that we're alone and no one's listening… I have worked with Scots and people from Northern England. While they were making an effort and speaking to Spanish people, I was OK and understood them. But when they addressed me, they thought, oh, this guy speaks English, and they spoke more naturally. Most of the times, I had no idea what they were saying. Americans coworkers tended to agree with me. As in, the guy left and the Americans and I looked at each other and said, what did he just say?
Oh dear, I can't watch this woman, I feel queasy..
Put a plum in her mouth then It might be an ok accent ; )
I have never heard you speak, +Max Huijgen, but every time I've heard Dutch people speak English (as long as it was not a strong accent) it sounded to me closer to American than British. Which kind of surprised me.
So I would cautiously say that it would probably be a better idea, if you were really interested in trying to acquire one of the two, to try to get an American one.
Thanks for that +Alex Balcázar as I happen to have a lot of "Geordies", "Scouse", Scots and a fair number of Northern Irish as neighbours and I found it easier to understand my Spanish neighbours.
The difference here is that they don't change the dialect whoever they talk to. They just speak louder when confronted with the 99% Spanish…
hoping they don't read here….
My accent is the typical middle aged Dutch accent which is quite strong +Alex Balcázar +Catherine Maguire can testify 🙂
My suggestion: move to some area in Málaga with more Londoners.
(also, the ones I was talking about were ESL teachers, so they knew they had to speak
understandablemore standard English to their students)Whats ESL?
And as close as I'm to Málaga I never hear Londoners..
(and learning proper Received Pronunciation is probably the hardest thing in the world)
English as a second language.
Sorry, I usually forget not everyone is in the trade.
English as a Second Language.
I can testify to your accent, I'm just forever grateful you don't sound like that woman. Preston struggled for years here with the Scottish accent while I translated for him. A constant head nod shake was going on. He's fine now. I never have had that problem no matter where the person was from, just worked harder to listen or maybe have an ear for it. The latest was.. Where is she from? Well South Africa of course.. Jeez how can that be confused with Australia?
Yes English is a first language in both cases but it says something to me about listening. I trained to teach EFL never put it to use though.
+Alex Balcázar With regards to "my experience is that all non American native speakers understand every single American accent but it doesn't go the other way around", you might find that this is less true when you get into some of the truly incomprehensible accents in the US. I realize everyone's heard the "Hollywood" version of a Southeastern and/or Appalachian accent, but the real thing can be a lot harder to follow, because so many consonants, and often entire syllables and even words, are elided. For a Spanish speaker, perhaps the closest thing I could compare it to would be a rural Mexican accent (or for any French speakers in the audience, imagine a Québecois from Lac St Jean). I say this as someone who's always lived in the Southeastern US — there are people here even I don't understand very well.
As to the question of "international English", I have a plea for all the non-native speakers out there: Please slowly take it over and regularize the mess we native speakers have made of it! You can start with the spelling, then move on to grammar…
OK, I'm guessing she must sound pretty funny. As far as I'm concerned, she looks just fine. Her facial features are such that she has a rather wide mouth but it's not like she had any say about that. So I'm going on the assumption that a lot of the reaction to her is something about the way she sounds.
Whatever accent she has isn't distorting the shape of her words too badly and the autotranscript is alright.
As for myself, I notice quite a bit of word usage variation — the choice of particular words or phrases will tip me off. (And I have to say, some particular regional dialects have such colorful phrases they derail you while the speaker goes on their merry way as you try to figure out what they meant.)
Well, English is my native speech, but when I moved from the Midwest to the South, I had a devil of a time understanding these Southerners. I even got into trouble with some teachers as I would correct their English in an effort to understand it. That made some teachers livid. I had no idea "winder" meant "window"; I thought it was some kind of fan the person was referring to. I've lived in the South over half my life now, and still I have to listen v-e-r-y closely to understand some of their speech. I think regional dialects cause even us Americans problems. There are also certain phrasings and sayings that are regional that make no sense at all in a sentence. They might as well be speaking Chinese for how understandable they are. As for the Scots, everybody has problems trying to figure out 1 word in 5 of what in the "h-e-ll" they are saying, even when they are speaking English. I listen to some of their comedians on Youtube and haven't a clue enough to know what was so funny when the audience laughs. I have nothing but immense respect for those who learn English, whether it be British or American, as I know how hard it is to learn this "crazy" amalgam that American English is. As for the Brits, they laugh at our slaughter of the Queen's English or get all incensed by the slaughter, by turns. I've heard many ESL people speak English better than many Americans and many British, as well.
*Does your pronunciation of English fit your audience?*
Speaking ‘proper English’ often helps your credibility and international
success, but should you speak Queens English, American (and which dialect),
the lovely singsong of Indian English or another variant to succeed?
I’m not a native speaker so at school we learned British English as a
second language. We listened to the predecessors of Tony Blair, like
Margaret Thatcher and were expected to manage this strange vowel mix called
‘Received Pronunciation’
However school wasn’t that important in absorbing English. Television and
movies formed us, so the American pronunciation had more impact. The Boston
accent of the Kennedys, the drawls from Lousiana and foremost in these days
the typical nasal New York American stuck.
*The world at large is formed by the English they actually hear and with
more and more non native speakers this will become a new kind of
‘international’ English.*
If you watch the below video (and ignore that it’s blatantly commercial as
well as targeted at the deaf, seeing all the over the top facial
expressions ) would you agree that a new English emerges?
Lots of international gatherings nowadays use a sort of global English
which seems to be different from any local pronunciation. It’s noticeable
that native English speakers with a heavy local accent are more
misunderstood than the new ‘second language English’ speakers.
*Is getting rid of your local English accent key to global communications?
Should we invent a ‘neutral’ English? And what would we lose in the
process?*
My English teacher told us he didn't care if we spoke the Queens English or American English, as long as we were consistent.
The biggest compliment I've had was from an American who asked me where I was from and thought I was American who had been living in holland for several years.
I get a lot of people thinking I'm from some country other than the U.S. No one really knows what a deaf accent is, I suppose.
Well, personal attacks aside, I'm so pleased to see this conversation happening (I do get a personal email every time someone comments on my videos). Max, you and the others who have commented here bring up such excellent points, and I'm so happy to see a group of obviously well-educated people having a serious discussion about the merits of international English.
To address your actual questions:
Question 1: "Is getting rid of a local English accent key to global communication?" I would hate to see anyone "get rid of" their accent (native or non-native). I don't think that's necessary. There are very specific things we can do to improve global understanding (and they are based on international linguistic studies). Using a crisp (generally perceived as "more British") T, for example can increase clarity, as can using a more "American" (rhotic) R. This topic could be a separate post (and video) in itself because there is a lot more to it.
Question 2: "Should we invent a global English?" There is no choice here. It's out of our control. It's already happening, and there have been linguistic studies done on this for over 20 years. Languages change, develop and grow like living, breathing organisms. As the world grows closer and we have more interaction with each other, it's quite natural that a global form of English is emerging.
Question #3: "What would we lose in the process?" Good question here. I'm not sure if we're losing anything. Can't we have both? I change the way I speak based on the audience I'm speaking to. This includes my videos made for the Asian market –> this video in particular was first heard as a radio segment on Singapore's national talk radio station, along with the other 21 in the series (one aired every weekday for a month). Although I am obviously American, my closest friends and family in California would tell you I talk "funny" after living in Europe and Asia for 12 years. When I go home, or if I'm surrounded by other Americans I can slip back into a more "normal" accent for my upbringing, but most people can't actually place me. I get a lot of people (including native speakers and other Americans) asking if I'm from Canada. I hope that people will keep their accents. The world would be a boring place if we all sounded the same.
I hope you don't mind my comments. Maybe (just maybe!) they make up for how annoying many of you think I am on the video. But hey, at least you all UNDERSTOOD me, and I'm so happy to see I got you talking. Would love to discuss this with you more offline if you'd like, Max. 🙂
+Heather Hansen Thanks for chiming in. With regards to "Question 2", you're obviously correct about this — languages have evolved beyond whatever prescriptive pronunciation and grammar we attempt to apply in order to stave off this process. This is clearly a Good Thing™.
I do fear, however, that the prevalence of global written communication will actually reduce the rate of change to a significant extent, simply because new speakers are continually exposed to existing normative texts, thus entrenching our existing awkward grammar and orthography far longer than it would naturally survive. This presents new learners with a steeper learning curve than necessary, for no obvious benefit.
Sadly, I have no solution to propose. I just wish we would do some linguistic housekeeping every fifty years or so, like the Germans do 🙂
Really good point, +Joel Webber. This is quite apparent in the English of former British colonies (I'm thinking of specifically India and Singapore here). Especially adults in these countries speak what could be considered to be a very "old-fashioned" style of English due to the use of older textbooks left by the Brits. This is changing with the younger generation, but slowly.
The link between written and spoken English is very interesting, and I'd love to do more study on it. We're seeing huge shifts towards a lot more video (maybe +Max Huijgen could also give his thoughts about this from a tech perspective), and I wonder if we'll soon encounter a world where the spoken language becomes more important?
What we are seeing both in Global speech and writing is a simplification of the language, so maybe your dream will come true (though not in our lifetime!). An overhaul the spelling system (even more than Americans have managed) would be part of my ideal world, and would make my job SO much easier!
Hi +Heather Hansen
guess you got an email thanks to me explicitly mentioning your G+ name just like I did in this comment
Québecois French is the same way. They were cut off from 16th century France by ice (and not a small amount of neglect) most of the year, so many parts of both spoken and written language got fixed to centuries-old norms.
I'll keep my fingers crossed for the advent of video speeding up the reform process a bit. I'm not normally one to hope for reduced normative literacy, but for once it might be a good thing…
Language is a pretty stubborn creature and will do what it will. Portions of American English are thought to actually preserve parts of British speech that fell by the wayside after the Hanoverians took over the throne, so you could argue those bits are more "authentic".
And written versions of any language are almost always more formal than spoken — there's the opportunity to fix things, rearrange for one's audience, etc, that simply can't be done in most extemporaneous speech.
The problem with English is that the link between the written language and the pronunciation is very weak. A language like Spanish is probably more difficult to learn than English due to all the tenses, but pronunciation can be learned in a few hours.
Although I noticed that especially English native speakers have an exceptionally hard time pronouncing Spanish. Some English natives really master the language grammatically and have a rich idiom, but they keep pronouncing it like it were English words.
+Alex Balcázar did you ever notice this?
Huh. I dunno about the part with English speakers trying Spanish. People here mangle it all the time, but of course there's no real effort to actual learn Spanish in most cases, and Americans are quite notorious for never bothering to learn other languages at all. IME, the difficulties are mostly in the R, and then the issue of converting all vowels to schwa's.
I actually speak spanish as well, but I'd be an outlier in any case 😉
Ah, forgot to mention the elephant in the room: pronunciation as a class divider! At least in the UK. Not so sure about the US.
I guess non native speakers often want to get rid of their original accent to come across as 'better educated' / 'higher class' and preferably acquire the 'Received Pronunciation' instead of a more neutral accent. Don't you have that experience +Heather Hansen?
We're not quite as bad about that in the U.S. but some regional accents are definitely more disparaged than others. Southern accents, and very strong accents tend to count against the person, depending on where they are or what the context is.
On the other hand, the U.S. seems to have a collective boner where British accents are concerned… 😉
Funny anecdote +Cindy Brown A friend of mine learned Spanish as a second language and was extremely good in it. Fluent like a native.
She then moved from the south of Spain to Barcelona and people kept laughing as she spoke like a farmer from this region which was highly amusing coming from a well-educated non native.
It took her quite some time to get rid of the Andalucian accent 🙂
Yup, I got a lot of second looks in Spain because my Spanish while clearly well past the beginner stages was Mexican and I was clearly not Mexican… 🙂
Yes, regarding the elephant in the room, +Max Huijgen, that's very true, although I agree with +Cindy Brown that this is probably more pronounced in the UK than the US.
As far as whether I see non-native speakers wanting to learn RP, it's hard for me to comment. I don't attract learners who want an RP accent. If people do come to me with that goal, I generally direct them to someone who specializes in that.
Most of my clients want to be respected for their message and not judged because of their accent. They want to be clearly understood and want an accent that is "neutral enough" that it's not a distraction, without losing their identity in the process.
That's why I advocate Global English pronunciation patterns (referred to in academic circles as the Common Core), which are most easily understood by the greatest number of people globally. Unfortunately, I'm the only practitioner I know of doing this, so I have a big mountain to climb… Please let me know if you find others in your search. I'd love to compare notes.
I definitely don't want to end up as a faux RP speaker +Heather Hansen as internationally I doubt if it's a real advantage.
I don't really have an issue with any English, unless it gets really mangled like a lot of people from India do, or for instance whatever it is they speak in the hills of Kentucky. Everything else is just as easy as anything.
No, I can't say I've noticed that native English speakers have stronger accents when speaking Spanish than speakers of other languages. I'll be paying attention, from now on.
Then again, I don't get to hear many English speakers with heavy accents speaking Spanish. I just change to English. Still, I'll try to see if I can back your theory.
#BecauseScience
I'm not an expert but I would say that even Elizabeth II's accent has softened, maybe due to age or possibly media coaching. RP I would venture is dead or certainly dying as an English native accent.
There is a legacy aspect of RP based on outdated notions that it is the accent of British English, it was never true for the other home nations that aren't England and it was only true for a tiny percentage of the privileged elite, who at the time were also the voice of the media.
There is a "posh" accent that ranges from almost RP to generic Southeast England.
That's my layperson interpretation.
+Max Huijgen not sure about English native speakers speaking Spanish, but with Catalan I think it happens. My Chinese sister in law speaks no accent Catalan. I know people from Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Chile, who speak with almost no accent. Argentinians amd italians tend to sing, more than speak, the intonation might be a little weird, the accent is good. But English speakers tend to have a thicker accent. There's even a writer, mostly a writer in Catalan, although he also writes some columns in English, who, having been here for more than 30 years still has a distinctive accent. His vocabulary is very rich. His syntax, perfect. But the accent! Oh, the accent!
Anyway back to the topic at hand: is an accent a problem or will it disappear in the huge melting pot of new English speakers as +Heather Hansen argues?
Take f.i. the Indian accent. I have some friends who in the past felt ashamed by it, but who is bothered by the beautiful soft spoken English by +Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft)
It's not about accent +Max Huijgen but about understandability.
To be honest, she sounds more like a hoity-toity wannabe from a B-Movie. I would prefer +Lisa Miller's English because it's really good to understand for everyone in her +English Practice Hangouts. Here is an example: Hangout with Lisa Miller
To me accents are nothing to worry about as long as it's clearly understandable and not like the one of EU-Commissioner Oettinger. Well, he has a strong Swabian accent when speaking German too. Oettinger Rede (englisch)- Oettinger Talking English.flv
For not to start with my own German accent when speaking English. +Catherine Maguire or +Michael Ellis may be able to tell about. :-))
To answer +Max Huijgen's question: I guess the different accents will not disappear in a melting pot because they come from the native tongue people have and use all day long during their life.
It's possible to get rid of the accent but it's hard work and needs hours over hours of constant practice, as well as a good teacher too.
For example, when I moved to northern Germany to attend a boarding school, I couldn't hardly speak High German, only my home dialect with some High German phrases mixed in. I had to learn it like a second language because no one, incl. my teachers, understood me, although I already had known almost all of the words from TV and books. It took me app two years and countless hours of exercises with an acting instructor to get rid of my accent. But, even now, 50 years later, if I talk to my brother or visit my hometown, I'm back in my native dialect within a second.
I should probably drag out the gear and turn the volume up and see what this sounds like…
Since I was mentioned by +Wolf Weber and notified of the conversation, I'll chime in. I've been doing the +English Practice Hangouts since the beginning of G+ and have spoken with many people. When they ask about their accents, I point out that I can understand them and that is the single most important aspect of learning another language.
I grew up in an accent-rich city (Miami, Florida, US) and noticed and appreciated accents from all over the world. The dedication immigrants displayed in learning English to better their lot in life astounded me. If they had a residual accent, it meant nothing and still does, especially to Americans. That produced my attitude that refining your English accent to the point that it's 'correct' (there's no such thing) is time-wasting at best and futile at worst. In my opinion, any time or energy you have left in an adult's life should be spent practicing and improving vocabulary and writing skills.
+Heather Hansen, you do have a big mountain to climb. Given the challenges involved in learning another language, most ordinary people will be satisfied in being understood. Polyglots will move on to learn more languages. because that's what they do 😉
Back to the question +Max Huijgen poses. I think the answer is already there. Some places care, other places don't 😉 Some accents will always be more appreciated (and vice versa) than others, again varying by place… I think the majority of English speakers don't really care so long as the person can be reasonably easily understood (whether they are foreign or dialectical speakers).
+Wolf Weber I appreciate that you bring in 'new voices' to this discussion but being so derogative of +Heather Hansen is not what I like on my threads.
I brought her in as an example of pronunciation lessons, not to ridicule her or her possible accent. This promo video is a bit over the top tell sell like, but I have heard other videos where she comes across as a serious teacher interested in this highly specialized topic.
I don't know her, but I have also listened to a few of her student testimonials. They don't mimic Heather so she must be doing a good job in letting people find their own English voice.
end of interruption, back to the thread
+Lisa Miller There certainly is a place for English conversation classes. Getting people more secure, enriching their idiom, getting more fluent are valuable lessons. d
But accents do matter. If you sound like a hilly-billy you won't land the desired business deals so this is true for native speakers as well as second language learners.
Practise is great, but targeted pronunciation correction can make sense as well. Even if your goal is just to be understood, it often helps to get rid of heavy (foreign or native) accents.
I think one of the more interesting accents I've run across was a rather heavy german accent with english clearly learned way down south. Turned out he'd spent a fair amount of time in New Orleans. Whoa.
Here in Spain I meet lots of people who are actually ashamed to speak English because they are convinced that they can't.
When you get them into a conversation it's often not too bad. Understandable, capable of expressing their thoughts etc, but the accent is so heavy that most native English still don't understand.
I do as I'm tolerant for deviations. I have spoken English with tens of nationalities and you get used to all the variations.
We have mostly Brits here though, so maybe the US is easier on variations as they are much more of a melting pot anyway.
The rest of us need to work harder to tune into accents. I call it lazy not to.
You nailed it, Catherine!! We've got to meet in the middle and TRY to understand and WANT to understand, instead of getting stuck in our own judgements of others. It is laziness. You're absolutely right.
Thanks for the support, Max. Don't worry, I don't take judgements of me based on a 90 sec video from 2 years ago that seriously. I know your intention here was not a Heather-bashing thread, and how I sound and my accent has absolutely nothing to do with the greater discussion of how we can be best understood in global environments.
Happy to learn about your conversation lessons, Lisa. My clients desperately need more opportunities to hear and speak English so they can practice more. I'll be sure to mention your hangouts.
I do not teach English at all. I used to, many, many years ago, but really have no interest now. I am only trying to help with articulation and am absolutely not trying to achieve any certain accent, because as you said, there is no 'correct accent'. I think we need to move away from the term "accent reduction" and talk about diction and elocution, because the goal is to be understood, not change an accent.
+Catherine Maguire maybe some of the rest of us. I make no apologies for my inability to do so very well.
My sister was like that +Cindy Brown and not for a lack of trying.
I've worked very hard to understand audio at all since 3 years of age, so…
Ah, I think I managed to forget that for a minute +Cindy Brown
I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how little trouble I had in Scotland recently. Of course, the natives might have been taking some pity on me too 😉
OTOH, my german speaking friend…ack!
I didn't know you were here, you'll have to let me know if you're coming this way again 🙂
For a map of the regional dialects in the USA, see http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2013/june/regional-us-language-dialect
Not quite as nice of a map, but considering Britain as roughly the size of California, it has a lot more variation…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English
We lack proper Brits in this topic. Especially lower and middle class seem to be very fond of '_proper_ British spoken'
Apparently that's regardless of specific accent as long as it's not from outside of the British Isles.
True, I'm not a proper Brit either, given I'm Irish. The variation of accents here is amazing and the colloquialisms are wonderfully diverse across the UK and Ireland.
The accent is one thing. I experienced exactly the same phenomenon in writing. The use of different (UK-specific) vocabularies and idiom makes it impossible to understand each other's English without using a dictionary. That goes for spoken language as well as in writing. Using lesser known words makes you hard to understand, whatever your accent may be.
In my localisation practice, I often de-UK'd ('internationalised) English texts to make them more understandable for the native translators in 15+ language regions. The international content that I get, often originates from the UK because 'it has to be in English so we do create it in UK'. The result can be so full of typical British idiom that many translators have a hard time finding the correct meaning.
(Sideline: These translators are professionals but selected on being native speakers in their respective languages, not affected by English influences and specialised in certain fields like tech or finance. Their English is varying form adequate to excellent and they translate into their own language and not vice versa. If they live outside of their own country for say more than five years, they're not considered native speakers anymore.)
Anyway, I often converted UK English into a more International English to make sure that the translated results would be spot on. If that resulted in poor English, at least I add explanatory comments where I expect that they will be appreciated.
If I write an English text myself (do that sometimes for Int'l head offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam), I assign an English translator/editor to translate it for use in te UK, treating UK English just like all other languages. My own English may be mediocre but it's seldom hard to understand. It's up to the translators to find e.g. one single worded expression for 'seldom hard to understand'.
(+Max Huijgen I thought you might recognize this 😉
+Anton Theunissen That's interesting… could you give an example of a written sentence before and after "de UK ing" it?
I once wrote an English text mentioning the word 'airco' several times. Two British proofreaders said the text was ok, apart from the small typo in 'airco'.
No other proofreaders mentioned it, but I did check what could be wrong. How many typos can you make in such a short word.
I got back to the two Brits saying it seemed fine everywhere the word occurred. Confusion….
Turned that Brits not only use the word 'aircon' for air conditioning, but they didn't even realize that most of the world shortens it to 'airco'.
I had to show them comparative hits on Google to convince them that 'aircon' was not the fruit of my lack of the English language.
(oh, and it did become 'aircon' as the main target group were Brits)
+Anton Theunissen +Cindy Brown
Likewise I had to get used to be called 'mate', 'cheers' as a greeting instead of a toast, sentences like 'hi mate, fancy going to a gay bar';)
+Max Huijgen How interesting! I've never heard it called anything but airconditioning around these parts 😉
Mate is odd to me as well, though I thought it was more Aussie than Brit (and I learnt recently that Aussie is pronounced with a z sound rather than s!)
I toured Europe once with a troupe made up of Americans, Brits, Irish, and Aussies. We all had great fun with each others' accents and odd sayings to unfamiliar ears. When you tour with a troupe, there's a lot more camaraderie between stage and backstage folk and kidding about on the planes and buses. The Aussies, who were doing lighting, were regular clowns; they had more jokes/pranks than the Irish, which was a revelation to me. Though we all spoke English, the mix of accents and dialects were quite a study.
For those who can't figure out how to order from a British pub menu, even though it's in English, there's this http://mentalfloss.com/article/58701/28-keys-decoding-british-pub-menus
Stumbled upon this video and it took me five minutes to understand the speaker. Thanks to the repetitious subject it was easy from then on, but I can see that people like +Heather Hansen have a job.
Programming Interview: Tower of Hanoi (Greatest Recursion Problem)
Did you +Jo Dunaway +Cindy Brown +Catherine Maguire understand the man perfectly in the first 30 seconds?
P.S. not meant to ridicule this man. He does a good job of explaining a topic which many find difficult.
Yep, straight off.
Sure, +Max Huijgen , my brain has run across that accent, often.
+Max Huijgen This is a voiced over clip… I have no hope of understanding anything without a face to lipread.
That defies my earlier thesis that non natives would be more tolerant of pronunciation deviations….
It lasted a full three days. Not too good for a theory in which I believed for years 😉
(If you can find me an example with a decent view of the face of the person talking, I'm willing to give that a shot.)
Ah, sorry +Cindy Brown Didn't think twice (or maybe I didn't think once when mentioning you)
This is as close as I can get to some lip movement +Cindy Brown 😉
Programming Interview: Tower of Hanoi (Greatest Recursion Problem)
+Max Huijgen serious? You think that guy is difficult to follow? He's so clear I didn't even need to get in tune with his voice.
Now some of the tech support guys I have deal with, they can talk to me for 5 minutes and it might as well be Chinese.
So far, I learnt hardly nothing with these videos
We, the English do, you silly woman!
How can I contact you
You are so great and your lessons too.thanks