tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512716256533133364.post8886345198527302700..comments2023-09-19T15:00:39.811+03:00Comments on A Nomadic View: Arizona's Grammar and Accent PoliceNomadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03686282358562565742noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512716256533133364.post-77678571079838572010-05-29T01:00:19.615+03:002010-05-29T01:00:19.615+03:00Becoming an English teacher has given me a deep lo...Becoming an English teacher has given me a deep love for the language and its beauty. I love how English, in the hands of a skilled artist, can paint such detailed and exact images. <br />One page from Conrad, for example, and you can see that ship, Patna, trudging across the ocean- with one black streamer of smoke and one white ribbon of foam in its wake. And best of all, Joesph Conrad was a rather late blooming English language learner.<br /><br />Headway was a pain in the butt as I recall. It never made any sense to me to teach low level grammar while using moderately high level vocabulary. Of course, every language book I've ever used had some kind of problem. One book- and it could have been Headway- that created a memorable headache. <br />One of my brighter students asked me with wide eyed innocence why we didn't say THE America but we do say THE United States. Well, put the coin in the slot and the monkey hits the drum. So, I gave the standard reply about titles and names.. that "The United States" is a title, filan falan. And- turn the page- and the unit's title was "Discover the America you've always dreamed of." I think my eyes rolled so far back into my head they needed a crowbar to get them unstuck. <br />The amazing/wretched part of that news about Arizona was how similar the motives are between language imperialists- to keep the invaders out. Or, to discriminate the "us" from the "them." <br /><br />Meanwhile, China becomes the largest English speaking nation on the planet and will - in a generation or two- be teaching us how to speak English correctly.<br /><br />By the way, that link to H.L. Mencken's book is great reading. Thanks for your insightful comments, Stranger.Nomadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03686282358562565742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3512716256533133364.post-27212466317136784802010-05-28T23:02:55.141+03:002010-05-28T23:02:55.141+03:00I've been mulling over this post quite a lot, ...I've been mulling over this post quite a lot, please excuse (pardon?) the slow response.<br /><br />I'll never get linguistic imperialism. I'm not sure if it's because I'm American, or a linguist, or just me. <br /><br />It seems to me that non-native influences are what lead to the organic evolution of language. The British who think they have a "pure" language are kidding themselves. If you apply the same linguistic processes to English that you would to any other language (and extract the obvious historical events), you could derive a sort of proto-Franco-Germanic language. Latinate words overlaid on a Germanic grammar. That's why we have these sort of classist synonyms-- jail and prison, house and mansion. So the theory goes. The poor (conquered) people spoke one language while the rich (conquerors) spoke another. Throw Gaelic into the mix, and English is the history of conquering. Not that it detracts from what makes it cool. I think that's what makes it cool, and why it's so pigeon to creole to dialect to lingua franca-friendly. It welcomes conquering and is open to change. I find most changes pretty exciting (minus the annoying crap grammar from both sides of the pond, but even that will take an interesting turn eventually).<br /><br />Did you ever (yeah, I used simple past on purpose there) have to teach Headway, with those sections on RP pronunciation? That used to make me so mad-- a bit on the silent letter in "world" and "farm." And of course students always want to do that part because it's usually the "fun" part of the unit. Why not focus on features of English pronunciation that give everyone trouble like good old "ship" and "sheep?" Add that to the RPA phonetic alphabet I had to learn, as opposed to IPA, and I was one beleaguered and embittered American teacher.<br /><br />Add that to the snobbery about my crappy American MA (or that of an Australian teacher) our British taskmasters used as an excuse to pay us on the same scale as the 6-week CELTA folks at dershane. But clearly there were other factors at work there.<br /><br />I still run into Turks who believe British English is "better" than American English, and I always had students who felt slighted by having an American teacher. As though their English will ever be anything more than Turkish English. I forever fail at settling arguments between my German friend and her Turkish husband-- whenever I say she's right (or that they're both right), her husband goes, "Well, she's American so what does she know?"<br /><br />Indeed.<br /><br />I've entirely ignored the Arizona issue in my comments. That's just a plain old travesty perpetrated by idiots, much like that law in California years back that banned bilingual anything. Lot of "good" that one did. Language issues are so beautifully fraught.Strangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09933997864575809110noreply@blogger.com